CHAPTER VIDAILY LIFE—WOMEN

a.Halyard tackle.bbb.Stays.c.Fêsha.Fig. 37. Rigging of asambûk

The rig is a single lateen sail of cotton canvas, which in a boat over 50 feet long is of great size. A mizzen mast is stepped, but the mizzen sail is only used under the very best of conditions. I have often asked the headman of one of these boats why, on starting out with a light breeze at 6 o’clock in the morning he did not set his mizzen, and have been told that, as he knew the breeze would freshen about 10 a.m., it was not worth while. They are excellent sea boats and will stand a great deal of bad weather. Despite the extreme clumsiness of the rig and the apparently haphazard way thenumerous half-naked sailors tumble over one another and yell like Babel when anything has to be done, they are cleverly handled. When travelling in them I have sometimes seen situations calling for an extreme nicety of manipulation to avoid an accident, manoeuvres which were carried through with skill and coolness by men who, placed in an English boat, would seem both clumsy and mentally unbalanced.

Plate XVIII

Fig. 35. Pearling canoes coming in from diving

Fig. 36. A pilgrimsambûk

Besides the clumsiness of the lateen rig with its huge single yard, the primitive blocks and tackle used necessitate a large crew. One of my boats, 50 feet long by 10 feet beam, requires a crew of nine, and the headman considers this too few. Generally all passengers join heartily in the hauling

Fig. 38. Diagram of halyard

and yelling, which (especially the latter) is necessary to raise the great yard. Two thick ropes, named the Fêsha, attached to the yard pass through rough sheaves at the mast head, the other ends being both attached to a hanging pulley block of four sheaves or more. Through the sheaves of this hanging block pass the halyards, which, running through a block at deck level form a tackle by which the hanging block and the “fêsha” ropes are hauled down and the yard of course rises. In practice there are two halyards, both passing through the same hanging block, as there is not room for the whole crew to haul at a single rope. The cordage is all made of coconut fibre and there is no standing rigging, all stays and the“vang,” or stay to the yard, being moveable and set up with simple tackles. They may be made very useful in hauling heavy goods aboard when loading.

There are two principal disadvantages of this lateen rig which call for special skill. The first is that at the end of each tack in a head wind you cannot “go about” in the ordinary way but must fall away from the wind and wear round. In an ordinary fore and aft rigged vessel this operation would involve gibing, the sail going over with a violent bang which would be extremely dangerous in a high wind, especially where the tack of the sail is fixed down forward of

Fig. 39. Ladensambûkunder sail(From a photograph)

the mast. As this sail has no boom gibing is avoided by letting go the sheet and carrying it and the sail forward while the tack is unfastened and brought aft, both meeting at the mast, so that the sail is practically furled. The long yard, being balanced by its suspension at the mast head, is brought to a vertical position, the sheet carried forward of both it and the mast and so round to its new position on the other side and carried aft. As there is no tackle[33]on either sheet or tack the boat is so steered as to help these movements andthe sail does not draw until the sheet is made fast. It is to facilitate the movement of the heavy yard from one side of the mast head to the other that the mast slopes forward so markedly. The operation is ingenious and calls for good seamanship, especially in a strong wind and heavy sea, when any fault might result in great force being unexpectedly applied to the rigging with awkward results. Just as this is the reverse to our gibing so, instead of carrying weather helm, the vessel falls off from the wind instead of luffing if left to herself, and where the steersman of a fore and aft rigged vessel would luff to a big wave or strong squall the Arabian falls away. As there is but one sail, a large part of which is forward of the mast while the deepest part of the keel is aft, it is impossible to have any of the sail set when at anchor, and so the anchor must be raised, sail set and way got on the vessel almost simultaneously, indeed the sail must draw as soon as it begins to rise and the yard is not at the mast head till some distance has been travelled. Similarly on coming into harbour the sail is lowered completely, long before the anchorage is reached.

Like most sailors of the warmer seas the Arabs are amphibious. For instance, the order is given to carry out an anchor away from the vessel, which is to be moved by hauling on the anchor rope. If the distance is not great and the depth inconsiderable the sailors will consider it less trouble, instead of lowering a canoe in which to carry out the anchor and rope, to throw them overboard and then go after them with a run, a yell and splash, to the sea bottom, where two or three men seize and run with the anchor a few yards under the water, come up for a breath of air while others go down, descend again and carry the anchor another stage, until the anchor rope is fully extended. Generally when the anchor goes overboard at the end of the day’s journey one or two of the crew go down after it and work it nicely into the mud. Similarly in getting an anchor up if it is caught in the coral, instead of manœuvring the boat to loosen it in theusual way a man goes down to see what is the matter, and either loosens it or directs the operations of those in the boat. How would an English yachtsman regard diving after his anchor? Not as an everyday occurrence, but as an adventure of a lifetime.

To the Arab sailors such a voyage as from Bombay to Aden, and on through the whole length of the Red Sea, must be an adventure like that of a voyage of Ulysses. As to the old Hero so to them all accidents are due to the personal intervention of God, or of good and evil spirits, and there is no dividing line between fact and legend. Distances, which for us have so dwindled, remain for them enormous. I have myself spent as long over a voyage of a hundred miles, anchoring each night in yet another desolate creek or “khor,” as over the whole voyage by steamship from Marseilles to Port Sudan. At that rate 1000 miles in asambûkwould be almost equivalent to a circumnavigation of the globe in a modern vessel. But what a difference! In the latter case, to the passenger deck chairs and novels, to the officers methodical routine and the keeping the running correct as per time-table, in the former ceaseless personal effort, at frequent intervals the direct pitting of oneself against the chances of the sea, the winds and waves, reefs and hidden coral pinnacles, the everyday hardship often aggravated by the rarity of the points at which water and food may be procured. Rarely are two days alike, and the date of the voyage’s close is, as they would express it, known to God. And adventures everywhere, the calling at strange little desert towns, the outer fringe of even Arabian and Turkish civilisations, islands and harbours unknown to the outer world, wild peoples, communities living apart, connected with the world only by some rudiments of their common faith, savages even to the Arab sailors. There is too, even yet, the chance of meeting pirates, or of a windfall or ruin resulting from some smuggling adventure. I would that they could be conscious of the poetry of it all. To them the glory of thebattle is but the hardship of everyday life, strange scenes and places only the possible failure to procure provisions or the chances of being robbed by petty tyrants. At least it is a life that makes real men, men who must have learned some communion with the God of Nature and the Sea.

Plate XIX

Fig. 40. Hamitic fisherman

Fig. 41. A small pearlinggatîra

Fig. 42. A large pearlingsambûkwith ten canoes

The Hamites are skilful sailors of their small boats and of the little dug-out canoes in which pearl fishing is done. These measure about 16 ft. in length with a beam of 18 in. to 2 ft. For a short distance weather seems to be of no consideration to them; one sees canoes tearing along under full sail, the steersman busy throwing out[34]the water with his spare hand, while the other occupant hangs to the mast which threatens to be carried away by the wind at every moment, and leans as far over the side as he can to prevent her capsizing. I know several cases of men travelling eighty to a hundred miles along the coast in such canoes, partly on the open sea and partly on the shallow water over the reefs. One instance is particularly remarkable, a bent old man, practically blind with age, appeared, having travelled from the next village to the north, eighty miles away. His only companions were two particularly irresponsible-looking little boys, whose ages I should estimate at 8 and 10. I enquired how he managed the boat seeing he was blind. “The boys tell me to luff or bear away and I do as they say” he replied, as if that were quite a simple, safe, and easy method of travel.

Pearl fishing is carried on by the Arabs all over the Red Sea by means of vessels of every size from the smallest, carrying four men and a boy, to the largest with a crew of twenty or more. Frequently the captain is a patriarch, the crew being largely his family and connections, with a few negro slaves or ex-slaves.

Thesambûkcarries as many canoes, dug out of solid tree trunks, as it can, up to half the number of the crew, and theactual fishing is done from these canoes, the large vessels being merely means of transport and eating and sleeping places.

On reaching the fishing-ground thesambûkanchors, under the shelter of a reef, perhaps miles out to sea, or perhaps near some islet or sandbank. The canoes with which it is loaded are launched and two men paddle away in each. Though both can dive they go in pairs distinguished as “captain” and “paddler,” the former being chosen for good eyesight and skill in distinguishing the pearl shells from the weeds, sponge, and stones among which they grow. A bad captain “sees every stone as a shell” which results in waste of energy in useless diving. He examines the sea-bottom by means of a “water telescope” (Arabic “Maraya,” a word also applied to mirrors, among other things), a paraffin tin with a glass bottom. The glass is pressed on the surface of the sea, thus flattening out ripples and giving a smooth surface through which, in this transparent sea, objects can be clearly seen at a depth of from twenty, thirty, and sometimes even sixty feet[35]. So the canoe is slowly paddled over the sea until a shell is sighted, when the canoe is manœuvred into the proper position, and the diver descends and secures it. The business is not generally a simple dive and return, though that is a clever enough thing to do without upsetting the canoe. In the case of not quite fully-grown oysters the creature is attached to the bottom by a very strong silky green cable, and I have watched the diver plant both feet firmly on the bottom, and wrench and twist at the sharp-edged shell with both hands for some time before it would come away.

The average duration of a long dive is 90 seconds, two minutes being the longest I have seen. To one in the boat counting the seconds waiting for the reappearance of the diver this seems a long time, and doubtless the exaggerated reports of divers staying under water for five minutes havethus arisen. Two minutes of considerable exertion under the pressure of 30 ft. of water is surely a sufficiently remarkable feat. The greatest depth to which a naked diver descends is thirteen fathoms, equal to seventy-eight feet.

Plate XX

Fig. 43. A pearl oyster seen; manœuvring the canoe

Fig. 44. The dive

Fig. 45. The “oyster” secured

Fig. 46. Landing on Dongonab beach

The captain only dives for an hour or two in the morning, after which he saves his eyes for finding the shells which his paddler secures. These men, whether Arabs of thesambûksor Hamites who go out from their villages in canoes, dive without any apparatus at all. A few negroes descend by a weight and cord in likely places where the water is too deep to see the bottom, on the chance of coming across shells. The Hamites ridicule them for using this method, but so far as I can see their results are just as profitable. Two or three large shells seem to be considered an adequate reward for a day’s great labour.

The provisions for asambûkscruise of six months are of the simplest, sacks of dûra corn and a barrel or two of the brackish warm water of the desert wells. Stones for grinding the corn, a big cooking-pot and a basin or two are the whole equipment. The fire is kindled on a box of sand. A sheep kept alive until a feast day, is sometimes seen on board, but coffee is the one luxury. It is a terribly hard life. Think of coming in from a day’s work of diving and paddling a canoe under that blazing sun to a meal of tasteless dûra porridge, sometimes a little fish, burnt rather than cooked[36], and warm brackish and dirty water, eaten probably without shelter from the sun, or at best under a scrap of flimsy cotton, here set against a sun which blazes and scorches rather than shines. Well have they earned their night’s rest, yet what a bed is theirs, a surface of hard wood without even the flatness and smoothness of the plank bed of a prison cell.

Though sharks occur and are sometimes common in the Red Sea, a native does not look round for them before goingoverboard, though if one should be seen, diving is over for the day. To one locality, named Shark Island, divers will not go for fear of these beasts, but diving is continually going on in a bay where several sharks are captured each year. I have only heard of one fatality, in which case a man’s feet were taken off and he bled to death after regaining his canoe.

Fishing is done by running a net round a shoal of fish, by throwing-net, hook and line, trolling with a scrap of white rag or sheepskin with white wool left on, and by spearing. The latter method alone is peculiar to this coast so far as I know, so the former need but scant mention. The throwing-net is circular, about twelve feet in diameter, made of fine string with small mesh. The circumference is weighted with small pieces of lead. In use the fisherman grasps the centre of the net and folds the rest over his arm carefully, after wringing out excess of water. He then walks cautiously along by sandy shallows, looking for the ripplings, invisible to foreign eyes, which indicate the movements of fish. On seeing these, bending double, he creeps up as cautiously as possible until near enough to throw. This is done very suddenly and with a circular motion, so that the net spreads out parachute fashion in the air and descends vertically upon the fleeing fish. The fisherman kills any that are enclosed by biting their heads through the meshes of the net before removal. The fish thus captured is generally a species of mullet about the size of a herring, and excellent on the table. Its native name is El Arabi, i.e. the Arab. The method is of course only possible in shallow water with a sandy bottom, but such ground occurs at the head of all the harbours, so the throwing-net is much used. I have seen two men returning from fishing with festoons of “Arabs” covering their whole bodies, but such good luck as this is not common.

Hook and line fishing is the same here as anywhere else. The favourite baits are “sardines” and pieces of the flesh of the giant clam (Tridacna) or of the big whelks (Fusus,Murex, andStrombus), all of which are as easily obtained aslug-worms or mussels at home. Clams’ flesh is the commonest, and anyone interested in curio-collecting should ask a fisherman to keep for him the pearls found in them. As the clam shell is an opaque white, so are the pearls, which, though consequently valueless, are as much true pearls as those formed by the lustrous pearl oyster.

“Sardines” are known even to the natives by this name, but are a small species of anchovy of the sardine size. At certain times they collect, presumably for breeding purposes, into shoals in the shallow water so dense as to form black patches 10 or 20 yards across, from which it is easy to collect a bucket-full in a few minutes by means of a sheet. They are kept alive by the fisherman allowing his canoe to be a third full of water in which they swim until thrown overboard to attract fish, or impaled on the hook as bait.

The number of species of fish thus caught is large and the greater number are very good. The best are several species ofCaranxknown as “bayâda,” some of which attain to a great size, sometimes four or five feet long, but the smaller are better for eating. The most peculiar is perhaps the “abu sêf” or “father of a sword,” a most appropriate name. It is ribbon-shaped, three feet long or so, back and belly quite straight and flattened from side to side, in fact just the shape of a sword blade. Further, its sides are of the most dazzling whiteness, brighter than any silver, and its ferocious teeth and vigorous movements bring the terror of a sword to all the smaller fish.

The nets and spears bring in the greatest variety of all, the brilliant blue, pink, and green species of the parrot-beakedPseudoscarus, which actually eat coral; the queer bladder-fish, in which also the teeth are fused up like beaks, which can blow themselves up like footballs, in one species (Tetraodon hystrix) thus erecting the hundreds of fearful spines into which its scales are modified; the box or coffer fish, the skins of which are quite stiff and bony and cover square bodies, which in some species have horn-like spikes pointing forward overthe eyes; file fish (Ballistes) which feed by crunching up shellfish (including pearl oysters) with their powerful jaws; in fact enough variety of strange habits and shapes and colours, striking by their brilliance or interesting by their resemblances to the inanimate environment of their possessors, to fill another book (were half known) or stock a museum.

Besides fish of ordinary size the larger species, such as rays and sharks, are generally captured by spearing. Nowadays the spear is a piece of round bar iron, half an inch in diameter, a rough unbarbed point at one end and with an eyehole, to which a line is attached, at the other. It is twelve feet long, and quite small fish may be impaled upon it in twenty-four feet of water. Its use is often combined with pearl fishing. Should the captain see a fish the spear is handed to him as he leans over the side of the canoe, and he watches the fish through the water glass in one hand, the spear being held in the other, with perhaps half its length in the water, more or less according to the depth. The canoe being rightly placed, a sudden jerk sends the spear shooting downwards, and more often than not the fish is impaled at the first attempt; so little splash is there, that it is often possible to throw it several times without driving the fish away altogether.

There are in most tropic seas certain gigantic rays or skates, whose horizontally flattened bodies are like a huge square, ten to twenty feet across. One corner is the head, eyes above, mouth underneath, the two side corners are fins, while to the fourth is attached the tail. This is a strange thing for a fish, being like a whip-lash, say 6 feet long, provided at its base with one or more erectile spikes four to six inches long, sharp and barbed all along each edge, and further very poisonous. The natives of both Zanzibar and the Red Sea assure me that even in the case of the smaller species, to tread on these spikes is death. Hence the common name of the family, Sting Rays. It is interesting to note that these dangerous implements are used purely in self-defence. All species are conspicuously coloured, one being yellow brownwith large bright blue spots, another black with round white spots. The largest are black, and so conspicuous on the sandy bottoms they frequent that none but the most unteachable animal, human or otherwise, can incur the dreadful penalty of careless interference with them. Otherwise the animals are perfectly harmless, living on shellfish which their small but powerful jaws can crush up[37]. Yet so impressive is the size of some species, so ghostly the appearance of a vast black living shadow rising from the blue depths under the boat, and so queer the formation of the head in some, that they are universally known as Devil fish. And for all their harmless diet and their warning colour which considerately advises that one interferes with them at one’s own risk, I join in hearty approval of their opprobrious name.

Plate XXI

Fig. 47. Pearl-divers

As is so sadly true of most marine organisms, we know far too little of their habits. What is the reason for the strange leaps they make into the air, falling back on to the water with a thudding splash that can be heard a mile away? It is usually done by night, a circumstance that adds to the strangeness of this sudden obtrusion upon our minds of the existence of a scarcely known world beneath the water, which we, in our preoccupation with our own half of the world, had almost forgotten.

So much for the prey, now to its hunting. They occasionally appear on the surface, two or three pairs swimming together, the black point of the side fin appearing above water, now on this side, now on that. On one occasion I was out in a small sailing boat with three or four canoes of pearl-divers, and as the fish when chased went down wind, we were able to follow, spread out in a long line so that whichever vessel saw the prey could signal to the others. We thus kept the chase going for an hour or more, striking with fish spears repeatedly, but as these are not barbed, andas in all that hundred or more square feet of body the brain and heart occupy but a few square inches, the spears may go through and through, and be withdrawn again when all the line has been run out, with no appreciable damage to the animal. So on this occasion we made no capture, but the hour’s chase over this silver sea with glimpses of mystery beneath was a pleasure to remember.

Another chase, also without capture, was stranger still. I found a pearling canoe moving over the dead calm sea with no visible means of propulsion. On reaching them I found they had made fast to a fish and dared not play the line attached to the spear for fear of its breaking away. Looking down into the blue with a water glass one saw the dim shadow of one of those monsters,Pristisby name, half shark, half ray, in which the snout is prolonged into a beak, into the sides of which are set formidable teeth, an object frequently exposed for sale in curio shops as the sawfish’s jaw. This was one of the largest species of the genus and must have been ten to twelve feet long without the toothed snout.

We seemed to be in a dilemma; hauling upon the line would almost certainly withdraw the spear before the fish would be near enough for further attack, and the canoe had already been drifting about for two hours or so. However I understood that there was some hope of capture if the beast could be induced to approach shallow water, though I was left to wait and see the bold plan which was in the natives’ minds. By dint of careful manœuvring we at last approached a reef, when one of the sailors unrove the boat’s rigging and made a running noose with which he actually dived to the bottom, braving the six feet of two-edged saw, to slip the noose over the monster’s tail! I, watching in safety from above, saw one of the finest diving feats imaginable, the man with the noose swimming to and fro, following the slow beats of the gigantic tail, watching his opportunity. Alas, as might have been expected, the monster was startled, a sudden wriggle and he disappeared, carrying the spear with him.

Theoreticallythe women are supposed not to shew their faces and to be hidden from the world, liable to divorce at the caprice of the husband, and to be their downtrodden mindless slaves. As a matter of fact so far from men having four legal wives and numerous concubines, practically every marriage is monogamous. A tribe of nomads cannot enclose their women within high walls, and as for veiling, the most that is done is to hold a corner of their robe over the mouth, or perhaps between their teeth, and this is probably done as much to ward off the evil eye as from any ideas of modesty. No woman will, however, enter the yard enclosing my workshops without urgent cause, and if brought into my office by her husband she covers her face completely and squats out of sight behind my writing table, whence the husband must cuff her on to her feet before business can proceed.

As a general rule the manner and look of the women is as of persons who know they have rights and a position, and who habitually make themselves heard in the family councils. Often I have been aware of the idea in a man’s mind which in English might be expressed by “I must ask the Missis,” and often it is bluntly put into words. Indeed, among these Northern tribes the women have a remarkable freedom, too much for the characters of many of them, as some subsequent anecdotes shew.

In any dispute brought before me, formally or informally, I find that, though it appears to be between men only, andto deal with men’s concerns exclusively, a woman turns up sooner or later, and often that complainant’s whole case has been put into his mouth by his wife or some female relative. It is safe to say that if the men only went to law on their own account, and were left to settle things their own way, the hard lot of the magistrate would be much lightened. While blaming the women, it is only fair to say that the men shew themselves born lawyers in their statements of a case. The complainant’s account of a transaction makes things look black for the defendant, and certainly justifies his being sent for, even if a hundred miles away, but on his arrival one frequently finds that, though containing no direct lies, the complainant’s story will bear a different interpretation.

As for divorce, and the consequent laxity of the marriage tie, all natives feel the difference between a regular marriage and an irregular alliance, and, if an individual did not, the wife’s father and brothers would soon point it out. Indeed, a wife can keep her husband in due subjection by appeals to her relatives.

One morning, after we had been out at sea since sunrise, when I gave the signal for breakfast, one of my sailors remarked, “That is good news; wearehungry this morning.”

“Why more than usual?”

“We were out with you yesterday till seven o’clock so when we got home there was no supper.”

“But you are married men; did not your wives have anything ready for you?”

“Oh no, they had eaten their own suppers and gone to sleep. Women do as they like with us. You see, in a town we could go out and buy something ready cooked, but that is not possible here.”

The idea that wifely duty involved getting up and providing something, rather than that a husband who had been kept at sea overtime should go hungry to bed, seemed to them a sweet, but unattainable ideal. I deprecate wife-beating, but I asked “Did you not feel inclined to strike them?” butthat course would have meant settling with the father and brothers-in-law, the explanation that the husbands had come in hungry from the sea and had found no supper provided being, to their ideas, adequately met by the retort, “You must let them do as they like, that is the custom of our tribe and you must do as others do.”

Plate XXII

Fig. 48. Spinning goats’ hair. Note nose ring and bead ornaments(N.B. The word WAR on the tent door merely means that the sack originally contained War Office stores)

Marriage is by purchase, and though the bride has no choice, brothers and sons-in-law are carefully chosen. I once ventured on the impertinent question, “Now that your sister’s marriage with so-and-so is not to take place who will she marry?”

“It is so hard to find a husband who will treat her well.”

“Oh yes, of course you don’t want her to marry a man who might beat her.”

“No I don’t, for if he did it would be my business to beat him, and I do not intend to have that bother put upon me,” brotherly love being thus seen to have a practical side.

I know of few cases of legal polygamy and but one or two of concubinage. One of the former cases is that of my oldest skipper, a really good old man, whose one grief is that he remains childless near the close of life.

Divorce was suggested in a case of persistent causeless desertion, but the husband’s reply was, “I took her when she was such a little thing, so I love her.”

In another case the woman is a hopeless imbecile. Relatives begged me to fire a gun close to her head in the hope of awaking her senses, which I declared useless and dangerous, and refused to do. “She is my cousin, so I cannot divorce her,” said the husband, an elderly man who shews her every kindness.

After some months of consultations, in which I shared and tried to act as peacemaker, one case actually did lead to divorce, and the lady was known as “the mother of Ali’s child” instead of as Ali’s wife. In a few weeks, however, Ali came begging for advance of wages. This being refused he entered into explanations, “You see I am going to takemy wife back. Being divorced, she has had nothing to eat for a month, so now I must give her a good feed.” This literal translation of his speech must evidently be taken in the spirit, for the lady still lives.

Pecuniary questions are so intimately associated with all matters of marriage and divorce that men’s actions must not be read as though they indicated feelings only. In the same way the women’s independence is not only due to their knowledge of their value as women but also to the fact that the husband, if of the poorer class, paid, say, six goats, a camel, and four pounds in cash for them, besides providing for the wedding feast, this involving a debt which will take him a year or two to pay off, sometimes many years.

Ibrahim’s story is a good illustration of the freedom of women, which is often abused, and the subjection in which they keep their men folk. It gives an instance also of the pagan devil worship which is the real belief of these Muslim when faced by calamity.

Ibrahim is a simple kindly old man, one of four brothers, all of whom have passed their lives upon the sea. They are old men now, and their sons are sailors too. The portrait of one of the four is onPlate X, and decrepit though he looks he still goes to sea in his own boat, or rather canoe, taking the few goats which are his wealth across to an island where a shower has fallen. There was a touch of heroism when he came to me saying, “If you will give me work as a sailor you will see I am quite strong still. I used to be captain, but I cannot be that now as my eyes have gone dim, but try me as a sailor.”

Coming of such a family Ibrahim easily obtained the post of skipper of my little schooner when it became vacant in my absence. But though conscientious according to his lights, and a good sailor in native fashion, he turned out to be not quite the man we needed. He would travel two hundred miles to fetch the letters, the arrival of which made a gleam in the darkness of isolation in which we live here. Hisarrival was the event of the month—or should have been, but his reply to the demand was often “Letters? I forgot.” People who have never been quite alone for even one month cannot imagine the disappointment, though they may gauge the effect upon business.

As is so often the case here he was an elderly man when he married a girl of fourteen or less.

I once asked, “Do you think it really quite right for a white-haired old man to take a little girl like that?”

“If he has the money of course it is quite right” was the expected reply.

Marital love seems almost unknown, but family affection sometimes rises strong in later years, apart from its normal origin in the mutual love of young man and maid, but if the marriage is childless, or circumstances make it uncomfortable, the worst results follow in many cases.

His young wife, as wives often do here, one day decided that to live with her father’s people in the hills would be more agreeable than with her husband by the sea. By and by Ibrahim began begging for leave to go to see her, his appeals that she should return to him having been in vain.

Her replies, as he repeated them to me, were certainly explicit. “I have only got a couple of girls by you. That’s no good, so I don’t wantyouany more.”

Cases like this give rise to an immense amount of solemn conference between relatives to thenthdegree and the village elders[38], in spite of the fact that many women go their own way in any case. The stages were reported to me at intervals, and in the end the woman reappeared of her own accord. Alas, her motive soon became obvious, for she was illegitimately “burdened,” i.e. pregnant. So poor Ibrahim’s joy was turned to anger and perplexity. He dearly loved his two little daughters, the two who were held as “not goodenough” by their mother, and wished to keep them while divorcing the mother. My advice being asked (though I am about half the age of complainant) I was in a quandary, since the infants were not old enough to do without a woman’s care and Ibrahim was not prepared with a substitute.

At this point I came home on leave, and on my return three months later I found that Ibrahim had actually become reconciled to his faithless wife; the child of “some young fellow in the hills” had been born a week or so, and the old man rejoiced over him as though he had been his own son.

A week later, and surely the hand of Providence was visible even to fatalists.

“Please come and see Ibrahim’s wife, she is very ill.” Even I could see that the woman was dying, and that nothing could be done for her, but at least I succeeded in saving the child from being fed on “samin,” stinking native butter, which might soon have killed him.

The inconceivable stagnation of life in a desert coast village makes any event a godsend. Illness brings joy to all, even the sufferer seeming to be supported by the knowledge that he is a benefactor to the public. He is invariably surrounded by a deeply interested crowd, and never fails to shew appropriate symptoms.

In case of wounds the men are absolutely stoical, where a white man could not restrain evidence of suffering, and the application of a red hot nail, which is a frequent treatment for most complaints, is borne without a murmur. And so the gentle groaning of the sick is never allowed to become indecorous, but merely serves to prove that the host and patient is conscious of, and means to fulfil, his duty to his guests.

In this case things were very different, the woman was beyond even involuntary groans. The first thing to do was to send a boat for Ibrahim, who was absent on an island ten miles away. His return was delayed a full day by his going another five miles down the coast to the next village, wherehe spent a month’s wages on new clothes and borrowed all the jewellery he could. With these his dying wife was decked out, as a means of persuading the evil spirit, which had caused her illness, to depart. At home meanwhile drums were being vigorously beaten outside the tent, a few feet away from her unconscious head, in the hope that what suasion could not effect in the mind of the malignant spirit might result from fear.

A stifling crowd of women and children filled the tiny tent, crowding upon the dying, while behind, in the shade, another party were making tea very cosily, around one who appeared to be already sewing the shroud.

The day after Ibrahim arrived the shrieks of this crowd of women suddenly announced the death. Within half an hour the body was buried and the mourners were about their ordinary occupations. Ibrahim wept like a child, though why he should grieve for such a wife it is hard for a white man to say.

Negro women, being escaped or liberated slaves, and so having no relatives who can settle disputes with their husbands, sometimes come in to complain of being beaten, though they owe protection to the fact that negro women are fewer than the men, so that a husband who is disagreeable to his wife runs the risk of losing that valuable property. Hamitic women only come to try and get an increased allowance from their husbands rarely to complain of ill-treatment, from which they are protected by their relatives.

The making and mending of clothes, that great part of women’s daily work, is non-existent with us, for, as before stated, the lengths of flimsy cotton are worn as they come from the shop. Washing is often in progress, rather a miserable business in sea-water without soap, but the thinness of the stuff makes it easier[39].

Besides cooking and the care of children and animals the women have certain manufactures. The palm-leaf matting for the outer covering of the tents and houses is bought ready made, but the inner coarse blanket material is woven at home from the hair of the owner’s goats, which is collected and spun into coarse thread as it becomes available. The spinning is entirely by hand, the thread being merely wound on a dangling stick which is kept spinning by hand. When a dozen or so large balls of this grey-black and brown thread have accumulated, a rough weaving frame of three sticks is pegged out on the sand, and weaving goes on for some days. Neighbours are called in to help, three to six women generally working together.

Any man passing near women who are working at blanket making must beware lest they should throw the balls of wool at him. If he is struck by one the women have the right to demand a present, which is divided among the helpers.

The palm-leaves used in basket making and for the “Serîr” or sleeping mat are brought from Suakin, no palms growing in all our country. These baskets are so closely woven that when once the fibres are thoroughly wetted they become watertight. The figures onPlate XVIillustrate a milk-bowl made in this way; the other baskets have covers and are used to keep women’s trinkets &c., or the fragile earthenware coffee-pot, one being ornamented by the interweaving of strips of thin leather, the other by pieces of red flannel and tufts of camels’ hair. In other cases the leaves are bought ready dyed and the resulting basket displays bands of colour.

In making a “Serîr,” or sleeping mat, a woman slits up the midribs of palm leaves and provides a number of goat-skins scraped free of hair. These skins are cut into narrow strips like string and woven in and out between the palm midribs which are laid side by side, and the number of skins used in making one mat is surprising. The work is tedious,and she gets neighbours’ help; the result, as an addition to comfort, seems hardly worth the labour.

Plate XXIII

Fig. 49. Weaving. Behind the three women is finished blanket, in front the threads of the warp

Fig. 50. Marriageable girl of thirteen cooking rice in antique brass pot

It is the women’s business to strike and pitch the tents. In the village this is done not only on arrival and departure, but after the tent has stood some time in one place it is shifted to a fresh site by way of a “spring cleaning.”

Old women and children drive the goats out to “graze” in the desert in the early morning and may feed and tether them on their return, but, as already remarked in Chapter III, a peculiar superstition declares that men must do the milking. They also bring water from the well, in goat-skins on donkeys.

Women suffer sometimes from a mysterious disease, the symptoms of which seem closely to resemble those of the “vapours” of our ancestresses. The help of a female shêkh has to be called in, sometimes at great expense. First seeing the patient she prescribes what articles of clothing, especially what ornaments, are to be worn, and then goes off alone into the desert, where, according to my informant, she behaves like a maniac, apparently invoking good and exorcising evil spirits. “Vapours” would of course yield most easily to suggestion, and the little break in the monotony of life, the fuss and mild excitement, are quite enough to bring about a cure.

In my demonstration of the independence of women even in a Moslem community I am conscious that the less agreeable side of their character becomes unduly prominent. I would now leave on record that in many cases the standard of wifely duty is far above what one has any right to expect from the conditions of their lives.

The best women are often the least conspicuous members of any community, but their presence is made evident in the existence of any kind of prosperity or real happiness. I conclude my account by saying that in this village amid all the laxity of an Oriental civilisation bordering on savagery, in spite of its desolation and poverty, lack of defence againsteither the dreadful heat of summer or the cold of winter, the hunger that makes men eat the food of cattle, and where fresh water is often an unattainable luxury, men find the happiness of home in a way which multitudes of our own urban poor do not know. Where this is so goodness must necessarily be; though its laws differ from those we ourselves know, its presence is none the less evident.

Plate XXIV

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