WHERE ADAM AND EVE LIVED 



585 



is divided into two parts ; where the men 

 stay is caUed the "selaam-lik" ; the wo- 

 men's apartment is known as the "harem- 

 Hk." A high curtain separates the two. 

 Cooking utensils, children, and clothing 

 are stored in the harem-lik, while the 

 guns, spears, camel saddles, etc., are piled 

 in with the men. 



An Arab is jealous of his wife, but on 

 the desert married women are seldom 

 veiled and are permitted to laugh and 

 joke with other men. In camp the wo- 

 men milk the camels, grind wheat in a 

 hand-mill, churn butter in the "sequilla," 

 a goat-skin hung from a tripod and filled 

 with sour milk ; they weave cloth from 

 hair and fiber ; they make matting from 

 date leaves and are always busy. While 

 the Bedouin woman is enjoying all these 

 pleasing domestic pastimes her husband 

 sits in the sand before the tent smoking. 



BEDOUIN SUPERSTITIONS 



Some of their superstitions are fanci- 

 ful indeed. They believe that when a 

 man dies of thirst that his soul goes forth 

 in the form of a green owl, which flies 

 about above the desert a thousand years, 

 screaming for water. If a fish leaps 

 from the water into a boat where a wo- 

 man is riding, it is a sure sign that she 

 will soon bear a son. They live in daily 

 dread of the Evil Eye ; the Arab mother 

 fears for her child, lest this curse de- 

 scend and blight its life. Some say a 

 man so possessed has merely to cast his 

 baneful glance on a bird flying, when the 

 creature will fall to the earth stone dead. 

 If an Arab woman finds the threads in 

 her "nuttou"^loom — have become tan- 

 gled, she blames the meddlesome evil 

 spirits. Many women have their limbs 

 and bodies tattooed in fancy designs, as 

 much as a charm to ward ofl^ disease as 

 for beauty's sake. 



Manna is still much eaten among Mes- 

 opotamian Arabs ; the women collect and 

 prepare it from the ground beneath cer- 

 tain hill trees, from whence it drips. Yet 

 the Arabs — and the Jews and Chaldeans 

 as well — firmly believe that this sweet, 

 whitish gum-like food is cast down from 



heaven ; that it is the same manna which 

 tradition says was cast down from heaven 

 for the Children of Israel. 



DISTRUST OF WOMANKIND 



Useful as the Bedouin wife is to her 

 husband and the tribe, however, through 

 all the tribal songs, legends, and poetry, 

 there runs a note hostile and abusive of 

 all womankind. A woman's nature is in- 

 herently wicked, the Bedouins say, and 

 like a cat she has nine lives. They be- 

 lieve that in all other animals save man- 

 kind the female is the better. Doughty, 

 in his work on Arabia, says : "The Arabs 

 are contrary to womankind, upon whom 

 they would have God's curse." 



In all the year I spent in the Middle 

 East I never heard of an Arab woman 

 who could read or write. To educate a 

 woman is called by Bedouins a foolish 

 waste of money. Women are at the bot- 

 tom of all the evil in the world, Arabs 

 say, and jehannum — hades — is full of 

 them. Here are two of Burton's trans- 

 lations of Bedouin ballads, which show 

 in what esteem the nomads of the desert 

 hold their women folk: 



"They said, marry ! I replied : 

 'Far be it from me 



To take to my bosom a sackful of snakes. 

 I am free. Why, then, become a slave? 

 May Allah never bless womankind !' " 



"They declare woman to be heaven to man ; 

 I say, Allah, give me jehannum, not this 

 heaven." 



As yet no "Seeing Bagdad" motor- 

 busses hum along the Tigris, and the 

 horde of Yankee tourists get no nearer 

 Bagdad than Damascus and Jerusalem ; 

 but the railway is encroaching fast, has- 

 tening the day when travelers to the East 

 may avoid the long sea trip via Suez. 

 Then, with the "Hanging Garden Inn" 

 thrown open to the public, "Edenville" 

 and "Babylon" made places of interest, 

 with side trips to Jonah's tomb and Nin- 

 eveh, Bagdad will compete with Cairo 

 as a tourist center, and men will come 

 back to poke curiously about Adam's old 

 home. 



