our own making ; it is a barrier 

 of religion — a religion that al- 

 lows one man to have four 

 wives at once. 



VISITING AN ARAB HAREM 



In Bagdad I went to an Arab 

 harem and visited with the 

 *'hareem," as the women are 

 called. It was not an ordinary, 

 ill-kept harem of a common 

 trader or desert sheik that I 

 saw. It was the ornate do- 

 mestic establishment of a rich 

 and influential person — a for- 

 mer government official and a 

 man of prominence in the days 

 of Abdul Hamid. 



I went one Sunday morning 

 in spring. The Pasha's impos- 

 ing home — a Moorish house of 

 high walls, few windows, and 

 a flat roof with parapets — 

 stands near the Bab-ul-Moaz- 

 zam in Bagdad. Scores of tall 

 date palms grace the garden 

 about the "Kasr" — palace. In 

 a compound beside the palace 

 pure Arab horses stood hob- 

 bled, and a pack of desert 

 hounds called slugeys, used for 

 coursing gazelle, leaped up at 

 my approach. 



The dignified old Pasha him- 

 self escorted me through his 

 domain. Clad in shining silk, 

 turban, flowing abba, and red 

 shoes with turned-up toes, he 

 looked as if he might have just emerged 

 from the dressing-room of some leading 

 man in a modern musical comedy. His 

 make-up was common enough for Bag- 

 dad, but to me he seemed positively 

 "stagey" ; but he was all affability, talk- 

 ing brightly in very fair French. He 

 showed me a remarkable falcon — a hawk 

 only three years old, with over 200 

 gazelles to its credit. In a cage near the 

 palace door were two lean, gray lions, 

 trapped in the jungle marshes along the 

 Tigris. Finally we entered the corridor 

 leading to the "bab-el-haremlik," or gate 

 to the harem. 



During all the talk about horses, dogs, 

 and lions I had been consumed with curi- 

 osity to say something about the human 

 liarem pets of the old Pasha ; but in Arab 



Photo by Frederick Siinpich 



AN ARAB WOMAN OF BAGDAD AND HER EUNUCH 

 SERVANT 



eyes it is a gross impertinence to ask 

 after the women in a man's family. Like 

 as not he would reply that the ''wretched 

 creatures are barely keeping alive." So 

 I had to wait till the Pasha himself spoke 

 of his harem and asked me to come and 

 see its beauties. 



EANCY AS EACT 



As we walked toward the doorway of 

 the walled, windowless structure, wherein 

 the women Avere imprisoned, my fancy 

 rioted with visions of languorous Eastern 

 beauties in baggy bloomers and gilt slip- 

 pers. I thought of all the insipid, maud- 

 lin rot slung from the false pens of 

 space-writers whose paths never led to 

 this maltreated East. I thought of mar- 

 ble baths, wherein olive-skinned beauties 



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