CHAPTER XIX
HAREM INTRIGUES AND SCANDALS
Polygamy, as exemplified by the harem system, favours intrigue. Even the ikbal of a great and influential pasha, though much petted and lavishly endowed with money and fine jewels, often sighs for a real and romantic love affair. She may have entered the harem at a tender age, knowing very little indeed of the needs of her heart and dormant emotional nature. Her owner may show her much favour and kindness, and treat her with a courteous respect. And yet discontent and restlessness assail her. She may loathe the very hand that caresses her.
While the rulers of the harem exercise the most cautious and elaborate selection in the purchase of their mistresses, no such choice is open to the woman. Sold in childhood, they enter married life without any experience of men. No wonder that harems are often hotbeds of intrigue between the inmates and the outside world.
It may be urged that under monogamic marriage thousands of women experience dissatisfaction with their chosen partners, and suffer a terrible ennui from conjugality. At all events, the woman of a monogamous nation is able to exercise very considerable free choice, and even before the strictest marriage of convenience, arranged as in France, the plighted girl is allowed to meet her future husband in society. The maiden destined for the harem has not this opportunity. She goes to an union with an utterly unknown man, who may be morally and physically repulsive to her.
The wife of the average shopkeeper and artisan in Egypt has, of course, rather more freedom of selection. She is not brought from a foreign country, and condemned to a kind of gilded durance amid a number of women. We must not forget that a large proportion of the population of the East are practically, if not always, quite strictly monogamous.
For the present we are concerned with the life of the women of the harem, and their specific temptations to inconstancy. Let it be remembered that, from racial causes, and the sensuous atmosphere in which they are reared, these women are peculiarly susceptible to passion. Their whole thought is concentrated upon love and its pleasures. In the state of hyperæsthesia thus set up, it is not strange that they should brood incontinently, and long for experiences denied to them in the seraglio.
Does not every ardent woman yearn for a great passion? Polygamy does not expel the polyandrous instinct from a woman's breast. A psychic craving for a true heart-mate may dominate an inmate of the harem. She demands a love that she cannot secure under polygamy. Often, no doubt, her restlessness and spirit of rebellion springs from lack of occupation for the mind.
A measure of liberty is accorded to the women of the Egyptian harems. Once a year they may leave the Abode of Bliss for a few weeks, and, under a certain amount of supervision, mingle with the world. They are, of course bound to wear the veil, and to observe the ordinary conventions governing the conduct of their sex in public places.[1] Freed for a spell, and filled with a spirit of adventure, the girl walks the fashionable promenades of Cairo.
In the cosmopolitan throng, ever going and coming in the glaring thoroughfares, the beauty from the harem paces, observed for her grace and the irresistible challenge of her deep eyes. It is not difficult to find an excuse for a sudden uplifting of the veil. A mosquito may have stung her cheek; a fly may tickle her nose. At the instant when the veil is swiftly raised, a handsome young Englishman, American, or Frenchman may chance to pass. It is, of course, a mere accident that a man should pass by at that moment. The glance is enough; the flame from those languishing eyes, the witching smile of the curved, ruddy lips, showing a treasure of pearly teeth, and the delicate ivory of the complexion, touched with a rosy pink, have aroused throbbing emotions in the breast of the young man.
In this enchanted region of mystery and romance, elusive, seductive, incomprehensible Egypt, the young and adventure-loving stranger is prone to speculate closely upon the womanly loveliness immured behind the formidable barriers of the harem. He longs to emulate the exploits of Don Juan, who, in spite of bar and padlock, contrived to enter the sanctum of a royal seraglio. He recalls the lines of Byron upon "a thousand bosoms there beating for love, as the cag'd birds for air."
"A bride from the harem"; the words ring with romance. The visitor retraces his footsteps. His eyes are dazzled, and aching for another glance at those exquisite features. Again he encounters the fair Georgian, and may be this time her eyes subtly express the agitation of her heart. She, too, is fascinated. It is not the first time that she has glanced covertly at the broad-shouldered, attractive young tourist.
The spell is cast. These two are secretly enamoured. They wish to converse; they long to be alone. But a whisper in Cairo is heard a mile away. Spies lurk everywhere; they seem to hover invisibly in the air. One is never safe from them. The crafty eunuchs do not lose sight of their charge. She is watched by vigilant eyes; dogged by unseen hirelings, who hold her very life in their keeping. Even a gleam from her eyes may betray her to her custodians. Her look should be demure and downcast.
Tingling with curiosity and assailed by tyrannous desire, the stranger waits the next day, in the hope of snatching an answering flash from those peerless eyes. He is rewarded. But his triumph is marred by the approach of a dark-visaged, sullen guardian, who eyes him with a smile of cruel menace. He is an eunuch. Is this creature bribable? The young adventurer has heard of elopements from the harem, aided by the guards. He returns the eunuch's leer with a significant expression. He is now bent upon the conquest and abduction of the lovely Georgian, whose image is before him by day and night.
These things are done. By a contest in wily methods, the would-be champion and deliverer of the damsel succeeds in parleying unseen with her dusky spy. The man's palm itches for baksheesh. Probably he loves a girl in the harem, and he would like to escape with her to a far corner of the country, or to a foreign land, and make her his wife. Allah has given many women to the rich. He needs money for his project. Even if he has no such plot concealed in his innermost bosom, he still loves baksheesh. Remember his life is in peril. The price must be high, if he is to abet in this daring business.
In spite of his cupidity, the lover rewards the eunuch to the full. No sum is too high a price for the winning of the beautiful Georgian maiden.
One day the girl is missed from the pasha's harem. The Chief Eunuch is distracted; his subordinates tremble. There is an inquiry. Probably there is the mysterious disappearance of an eunuch about the same time. Outside of the harem little or nothing is heard of the scandal. A week or so afterwards there is a quiet wedding in Paris between a wealthy young Frenchman and a charming lady of foreign extraction.
The kidnapping of men into the harem is contrived by the eunuchs at the instigation, and through the heavy bribery, of intrepid ladies suffering from extreme boredom. Wise persons in the East do not ask questions. Whatever happens, no matter how strange or staggering on the senses, do not say anything. Pass on as though nothing had happened out of the common course of daily affairs. Men go into the alleys. They are seen no more. Apparently the earth has gaped and swallowed them. If they chance to be personages of small importance there is no hue and cry, no quest. "East is East."
Miss Emmeline Lott, who dedicates her book on "Harem Life," written in 1865, to "His Highness Ismael Pacha, Viceroy of Egypt," makes some astounding statements concerning the mysterious poisonings, sudden deaths, and tragedies that happened in the harems in which she lived as a governess. I have no desire to make over-statements; on the contrary, I wish to approach the question of the status of women under polygamy with an open and impartial mind. I imagine, however, that Miss Lott would scarcely have dedicated her book to the Viceroy had it contained questionable statements or exaggerations.
This lady recounts several instances of cruelty practised upon slaves and women. She is explicit in her charge that the eunuchs conspire to introduce men to the harems, and she relates how she witnessed a saturnalia of men and slave girls after dark on a moonlight night.
"I had heard much and read a great deal about the impossibility of men entering the harems of the East, considered as 'sacred' by all Moslems; that not a true believer has ever been known to visit the 'Abode of Bliss' of a true Mussulman. But now that I had seen the female slaves of the harem rambling about at night with the eunuchs, the guardians of these girls, and other muffled figures, I could not help giving credence to the assertion of a celebrated writer on Oriental life that, crabbed and cross-grained as the eunuchs may be, still there are many of them who bow the knee to the sovereign ruler of Egypt, Prince Baksheesh, and that golden keys do sometimes throw back the rusty hinges of the doors they guard, or else how came the slaves and their partners, those muffled figures?"
- ↑ A friend just returned from Egypt informs me that the upper class women now wear transparent veils, and that some have discarded them entirely.