The woman’s life seems to centre around her children, since it is this evidence of Allah’s blessing that makes her greatest happiness. A great part of their talk is involved in the discussion of their children’s ailments, the remedies, their children’s education and life in general. There are no nurseries in Egypt, and both boys and girls live within the harim until they are seven years old, when the boy, if he does not go to school, has a tutor and lives in the selam-lik. When, as at present, Government schools are established in every small town and village in Egypt, both boys and girls go to school. The girl is kept strictly harim even in the school, and the teachers are women, who guard carefully from men’s eyes the girls who are entrusted to them for the day.
Besides visiting with their friends or relatives, the Egyptian women go to weddings, where they look upon the dancing and hear the singing from their places behind the screens, or they make pilgrimages to the tombs of saints or holy men, where they pray for the health of their children; or, if they have not been so fortunate as to have children, they pray for that blessing. They do not pray _to_ the saints, as even Mohammed himself cannot answer prayers, but they believe that the austere lives passed by these holy men will intercede for them with the Great and One God.
An Egyptian friend of mine, telling me of the efficacy of one of the places of pilgrimage in the cure of eye troubles, said:—
“Yes, I believe in these charms obtained at the tomb of some of the marabouts, and I have been on several pilgrimages, although it is not much encouraged in our family. You saw my brother’s wife to-day. She has visited the tomb of every saint in the vicinity of Cairo, but it is just because she is restless and wants to get out. She cares no more about the saints than you do, but it gives her an opportunity to get away from my mother. My life, that you think so restricted, is wildly exciting to what it was when I was a girl at home. Mother is most conservative, and will not even allow a man-servant near the harim. Her cook has never seen her, although he has been in the family since I was a baby. Here in the country I have men-servants who see me unveiled, but they are the descendants of slaves who were in the family of my husband for generations, and that is permitted if we are not too orthodox.”