LADIES’ OUT-DOOR AND IN-DOOR COSTUMES

As we have found that, in spite of appearances, ‘Ali Muhammad after all wears trousers, we may perhaps find that his sister, Rubabeh, wears a skirt, and so indeed she does, but it is so short as not to be very noticeable indoors, while out of doors it is completely hidden by the big baggy over-trousers, gathered in at the ankles and footed, which she wears when she goes in the street. An English missionary once suggested to a young woman that a skirt reaching to the knees would look better, but she said she was not an old woman yet. The old women generally wear quiet colours and long skirts, reaching down to the knee, but young women and girls like something more dressy. They like a nice bright-patterned skirt about a foot long, but wide enough to reach half across the room. This they draw up with a string over the white cotton trousers, and the short shirt hangs loose outside. The shirt is generally white but may be coloured, and a short coloured jacket is worn over it, varying from plain coarse cotton to velvet embroidered with gold and pearls.The indoor chadar, or “prayer-chadar,” is often of pretty print or muslin, and when Rubabeh puts on her clean white trousers, shirt and headkerchief, with a bright frill of skirt round the waist and a pretty jacket and chadar, she makes a very bright and effective picture. But when she goes out she must put on dark over-trousers which cover everything up to the waist, and over her head, in place of the pretty prayer chadar, she must throw a large black chadar which hangs over everything, while a long strip of white cotton hangs down in front of her face with drawn thread work in front of the eyes, so that she may be able to see without being seen.

So, unlike our streets, the Persian ones get their colour from the men and boys, while the women and girls supply the darker, duller element. Bright blue is the commonest colour for the men’s coats, and green is not uncommon, while, at the New Year, pink, yellow, lilac and other colours make the streets very gay indeed.

The children are dressed just like their fathers and mothers, and are little imitation men and women. The little tots look so funny sometimes; tiny boys toddling about in long trousers, frockcoats, and grown-up hats, and wee girls, who cannot yet speak distinctly, in the long trousers, short skirts and chadars of the women.

It seems to suggest that no great distinction is made between children and grown-ups, and really there is not as much difference as we find at home. The children are taught to take life very seriously and are treated as little men and women before their time, and so they have no time to grow up into proper men and women, and the result is that we find the children too grown-up and the grown-ups too childish.

You will find, roughly speaking, if you look at animals that the higher the animal, the longer its childhood lasts, because it has more growing up to do. Caterpillars and tadpoles look after themselves from the time of coming out of the egg, mice grow up in a few weeks, horses in a few years, and man takes longer to grow up than any animal.

Now Muhammad, the false prophet whom the Persians believe in and obey, had no such high standard to set before them, no such high ideal for them to grow up to, as our Lord Jesus Christ set before His followers and enables them to grow up to; and so his religion provides only a short time for growing up, and stunts instead of assisting the growth both of individual Muhammadans and of Muhammadan nations.

But we must get back to our Persian children and their clothes. Their day-clothes we have seen; what about their night-clothes? They have none. They just take off their outer garments and lie down in the rest, and in the morning they just get up and put on their outer garments again. Sometimes they do not put off anything.

“We are so tired,” said some ladies one New Year’s morning. “With all our new clothes on we could not lie down, we should have crushed them, so we sat up all night.”

You wonder why they were so foolish as to put them on on New Year’s Eve in that case, instead of on the morning of the New Year itself. The reason is simple. A Persian only puts on new clothes after a bath, and a bath in Persia is not a mere matter of half an hour; it takes half a day, and sometimes a whole one. Some of the richer people have baths in their own houses, but most people go to the public baths.

All Persian women and girls love a day at the bath, and will not shorten it if they can possibly help it. It is something like a Turkish bath, and there they meet their friends and sit about in steamy rooms, talking, laughing, gossiping. No wonder they look forward to it, for a Persian girl has a much more secluded and restricted life than girls in Europe and her intercourse with her friends is much less free. One girl of fifteen told me that except for her weekly visit to the bath she had only left her house once in a period of six months, and in her own house she received very few visitors, the calls of her English missionary friends being great events for the whole household.

At the bath they wash their hair, dye it with henna, and plait it up in a dozen or more long plaits which hang down their backs under the headkerchief and chadar, not to be undone again probably until the next visit to the bath. The henna is a reddish dye and though it does not show on black hair it turns fair or grey hair a carroty red. The newcomer to Persia wonders to see so much red hair, till he finds that this is the explanation. But the boys and girls nearly all have black hair.

Boys have their heads shaved, though sometimes a handful of hair is left over each ear, or a lock in the middle of the scalp. This shaving is probably the reason why Persian boys always keep on their caps or hats indoors and only take them off to sleep. Instead of taking off their caps, Persian boys, and girls too, take off their shoes when they come into a room, and this, together with the absence of chairs and tables explains how Persian carpets last a hundred years. They are actually more valuable after several years wear than when they were new.

Besides the hair, the fingernails, palms of the hands and soles of the feet must, by Muhammadan rules, be dyed with henna. The richer bathers have all these things done by the bath attendant, but the poorer ones do it all themselves, and the very poor often omit the henna, except on special occasions.

Just as no Persian likes to put on clean clothes without going to the bath, so he will not go to the bath without putting on clean clothes.

“Khanum, give me a new shirt,” begged one old woman, displaying a ragged one she had on. “For want of one I have not been able to go to the bath since this was new.”

But where there’s a will there’s a way, and some people who are too poor to have a change of clothes go to the bath, take off their clothes and wash them, and then wait in the bath till they are dry.

There is a large tank in which the people wash and a ceremonial washing requires a dip right under the water. The usual idea of changing the water is to take out canfuls to water the tiles round, and then fill up the tank again with clean water, so simply adding a little clean water to the dirty.

During a cholera epidemic the Governor of a Persian town ordered that the bath water should be changed at least once a month. One cannot help wondering whether the monthly change was carried out as described above, and I am sure you would prefer the little village baths where there is often so small a tank that no one can get into it, and they ladle out the water and wash in basins.

The common use of the one tank, with the only partial changing of the water, and the general carelessness of infection, make the bath one of the greatest means of spreading disease.

The Muhammadan religion provides strict rules as to clothes and baths and washing. In the washings before prayers it even decides which hand and which side of the face shall be washed first. And all this the parents teach the children as carefully as, generally much more carefully than, such matters as truthfulness, honesty and kindness.

Here again we see Muhammad giving his people what we may call “nursery rules,” treating them as children, while our Master expects us to grow up so that we can arrange these matters for ourselves.

As children we must live under detailed rules, but always with the object before us of growing up right. The very fact that the detailed rules of Muhammadanism are binding through life shows that the Muhammadan is not expected to grow up as we understand growing up.