ENPages
p. 6
6
Imagine a girl, who for some years had enjoyed the freedom of an American home, suddenly married to a boy of 19 whom she had never seen before her wedding day, and thrust into a house where century old traditions were held to be sacred law. This family were natural [illegible]. The young husband forbade the wife to leave the house except in company with her mother-in-law, but as this functionaire was thoroughly moulded and set in the Moslem cast. Months passed and this young creature never stepped foot upon the street. She was still a Moslem, but a now wretchedly unhappy girl. I never saw, and under the pressure of the narrowing life, she was slowly proving whiter, and thinner. A liberty loving bird beating its wings in vain against the unyielding walls of prison cells, was she. I asked the sodden, illiterate mother-in-law what she thought of sending girls to schools and she replied in spiteful tones that in her opinion it was a shame...
p. 7
7
...to teach girls to read. That was quite unnecessary and was the business of men, but girls might well go to school to learn and sew and knit. We paid our next visit to the head mistress of a Moslem school, who had invited all the teachers of the school to be present. One of these women was an exceedingly original character, clever, quick in repartee, and had her lot fallen in a land of higher civilization would have made a successful career. For thirty years she had been the teacher of the Koran in this girl's school and had taught it to much of the younger women of Jerusalem. At our request, she read for us, but reading the Koran is not reading at all, but a weird chant. It sounded so precisely like what we heard daily from the Sheikhs on the minarets that we concluded she deserved the reputation of being the best woman reader in Palestine. We asked this group of teachers what they thought of more advanced education for girls. The Koran teacher thought girls capable of any amount of learning...
p. 8
8
...and believed opportunities should be open to them to secure all the education they might deserve. The others, however, thought a knowledge of the Koran and sewing was all that was necessary for girls, although to be able to read Arabic was an accomplishment not to be despised. We asked if there was any movement among them for the removal of the veil, whereupon the whole group became so agitated that we thought we had offended. The interpreter hastened to relieve our minds by explaining that there was only a difference of opinion. The prettiest girl among them exclaimed with bitterness that if she lived to be a hundred years old she would never do so shameless a thing as to show her face in the street before men. But my friend of the Koran, who must be nearing sixty added quickly that she believed she would live to see the veils taken off. This woman had refused to marry because she would not submit to the humiliation of the position assigned to the married women.
p. 9
9
Our last call of the day was in another house of the upper classes and known as progressive. I asked the old mother how many children she had, and the answer was 'two'. The interpreter explained that mothers and fathers always gave the number of sons when asked that question, so I tried again and asked how many daughters she had. With a shrug of her shoulders she replied that she could not count. She had been married at ten and was a mother before she was twelve and the children had come along so rapidly she had never had tim to count them or to think. The youngest daughter was probably thirty and had resolutely declined to marry while the position of married women remained as it is. Her father had desired to educate his daughters, but the mother had outmaneuvered him and managed to get them all married at an early age except this one. She had enjoyed such opportunities of education as the country afforded and spoke French fluently. She had never heard...
p. 10
10
...of the woman movement, but was at once interested in our account of it. She and thought it all out alone and endorsed every proposal for freedom for women. With much spirit she declared that the wearing of the veil was not a religious command, but a mere custom. 'Custom I find,' she added, 'is much more difficult to change than even laws or religions'. She told us the veil was hated by the women of her class, but each woman hesitated to remove her own, first because the men of her house object, and second because she dreads to be made the target of criticism. One must not forget that Palestine is a land under Turkish rule and that the Holy Land has never been loved by the Sublime Porte. A land without a daily newspaper, a postal system or a public telephone, scarcely belongs to the 20th century. The Arabs within a few hundred years were supposably a wild, untamed, barbaric people. Hampered as they have been by oppressive overlords, ignorance, and narrowing religious customs, they have despite these conditions progressed to the stage where they count many cultured...
