What are the women like? Are they pretty? How do they bring up their children? How do they keep their homes? Do you like them? Are they lovable?

Such are a few of the many questions which are put to the traveller and resident in Egypt, by those interested, for various reasons, in the land and its people.

How differently these questions can be answered. The ordinary tourist sees the black-robed figures (with features invisible except for two eyes peering over a black crape veil) walking in the streets of the cities, or driving sitting huddled together on karros,[A] and he remarks on the discomfort of the costume and the cleverness with which they succeed in balancing themselves on the jolting springless carts. Or again he sees ladies of the upper class driving in their carriages and motor broughams, wearing indeed the inevitable "habarah" and veil,[B] but the former cut so as to well expose the upper part of the person which is clothed in rich satins and adorned with sparkling jewels, and the latter made in such fine white chiffon and hung so loosely over the lower part of the face only, that the features are distinctly visible; and he marks with a smile the effort made by woman to emancipate herself from customs which deny her the prerogative of attracting admiration to herself.

Again, perchance, he sees the "fellahah" carrying her water jar with ease and grace along some rough uneven track; or, may be, in company with others bearing with agility and strength loads of mud and brick to the builders, measuring her steps and actions to the music of some native chant; and he is impressed with the idea of her bright existence and her powers of perfect enjoyment.

Again he sees her, whether in city or village alike, following the bier which is carrying all that is left of one who may or may not have been dear to her, and he hears the shrill death wail, and he notes either the bitterness of hopeless sorrow, or the hollowness of a make-belief grief; and he is struck with the demonstrativeness of the women and the peculiarity of the scene, and will try to get a snap-shot of it on his kodak, and then he passes on to things of other interest. Thus the tourist gets to know something of the women, it is true, but all that lies behind these outside scenes is closed to him, and rarely known.

To the British resident the Egyptian woman is usually less interesting than to the tourist. The novelty of her peculiarities and picturesqueness has worn off, and between her and her more fortunate sisters of the West there is a great gulf fixed. Very rarely is an attempt made to bridge this gulf; language and customs apparently form an impassable barrier, and though many English ladies live in Egypt for years, they never enter an Egyptian house, or speak to an Egyptian woman.

It is therefore left to the Christian missionary to know—and to know with an ever widening knowledge—what are the disabilities and what the capabilities as well as possibilities of these daughters of Hagar.

A woman's life may truly be said to have its commencement in betrothal. Before then she is a child, and the days of her childhood are usually spent without any form of restraint whatever. Most of her time, even if she be the daughter of quite well-to-do people, is often spent playing in the streets, where she learns much that is evil and little that is good. The one great reason which many parents give who wish to put their children to school is, "to keep her out of the street, where she plays in the dirt and learns bad language." But whether she goes to school or not the life of a little girl except in school hours is a perfectly free, untrained life in which she learns no morality, not even obedience to her parents. If she does obey them it is from abject fear of punishment, when disobedience would inevitably mean a severe beating. Between the ages of ten to fifteen, usually about twelve and often earlier, the little girl is betrothed and then confinement to the house begins. In one hour her life is changed, no more playing about in the street and acting upon the impulse of her own sweet will, no more for her the child's delight of spending her milliÈme or two at the costermonger's cart and then sitting in the gutter to eat her purchase with face and hands begrimed with dirt; no more for her the joy of paddling in the mud by the street pump, and climbing and clambering about wherever she can with difficulty get. No, she is betrothed now, and her childhood and girlhood are over. Instead of freedom and liberty, come confinement and restraint. She is not now allowed out of doors except on rare occasions and then in company with older women, and her movements are hampered by her being enveloped in "habarah" and "veil."

Still she has for a time some little comfort in being the important person of the community. She is the bride-elect and there is some excitement in seeing the new "galibeeyahs"[C] and articles of furniture which are to become her own special property. But then, after a few short months, sometimes weeks, the fatal wedding day arrives, when the child-bride is taken away from her mother and becomes the absolute possession of a man she has often never seen, and knows nothing about. Her woman's life is begun in earnest, and in very stern reality she learns what it is to be in subjection, she learns by bitter experience that she has no power now to do what she likes, and that she is subservient to another.

Her husband may be kind to her, and in many cases is; but in any case she is his slave and utterly dependent on the caprice of his nature. If she herself is fortunate enough to have a man who treats her humanely there are dozens of others living in her quarter who come to see her, who are objects of cruelty and malevolence; and so her mind is fed with histories of intrigue and divorce, of injustice and retaliation, and of unwritten scandal and sin; until she too, alas! becomes contaminated, and often brings down upon herself the just wrath and harshness of one who might have been good to her. History repeats itself: in nine cases out of ten, she can add her tale of woe to the rest.

She bears her children and nurses them, thankful if they chance to be boys; she has no heart nor ability to teach or train them; or joy in keeping them clean and pretty;—she loses two, three, or more in infancy; those who are strong survive and until they are two or three years old, take her place in the streets, where the open-air life and exercise become their physical salvation.

When she is over twenty, she in her turn becomes an elder woman and is to be seen, usually with a young baby in her arms, walking in the streets as she goes the round of seeing her friends, wailing with the mourners at the house of death, weekly visiting the graves of her own or her husband's relatives, and joining in the wedding festivities of those who are going to follow in her train.

What wonder that the Moslem man often cries despairingly: "Our women are all brutish," and has not an atom of respect for her in his heart. In the few cases where a Moslem man speaks well of his wife, and calls her "a good woman," he almost invariably attributes her being so to his own foresight, and diligent insistence in keeping her wholly under his control, limiting those who come to the house, and not letting her go out of the house even after she has become an elder woman. Between thirty-five and forty she is an old woman with grandchildren, and her life quietly goes down to the grave with all the light and joy long since gone out of it, and with a dark and hopeless future before it. A few illustrations from the writer's personal knowledge will not perhaps be out of place here.

Fatimah had been a day pupil in a mission school for four years. She could read and write well, and sew, and do fancy work. Her father was dead, her brother, for some business expedient, arranged a marriage for her, when she was thirteen, with an old man who had already sons and daughters much older than herself.

He was a head man in his village and lived some distance from Fatimah's home. "Do you think it will be a good thing for Fatimah?" said I to the mother. "What are we to do?" was the reply; "they say he is kind; and far better to marry her to him than to a young man who will only ill-treat and beat her; we are very poor and cannot afford to get a really respectable young man."

The marriage took place, within two months Fatimah had returned home but was induced to go back again, this was repeated twice and on returning home the third time, she made up her mind to get her husband to permanently divorce her. Her mother of course abetted her, and a woman (as payment for a piece of fancy work she had asked Fatimah to do for her) promised to bring about the divorce by some plan of intrigue which she would arrange.

Fatimah's life is blighted; the best that one can hope for is re-marriage to a poor but respectable man, and to go through her life with him; but the probabilities are she will be married and divorced time after time, and each time sink lower in the social scale. She is not yet fifteen years old.

Aneesah was a little girl of nine, frail and delicate-looking, and an only child and much petted, but often she seemed possessed by the devil so naughty was her conduct. At such times her mother would take her and tie her up, then beat her unmercifully, until the neighbors, hearing the child's screams, would come to the rescue and force the mother to desist. The mother has herself shown me the marks of her own teeth in the flesh of her child's arms, where she has bitten her in order to drive the devil out of her. What is likely to be the future of that child? One shudders to think of it.

Many a time in visiting among the very poor I have sat with the women in an open court, which is like a small yard in the middle of several houses, in which several families own one, two, or three rooms. In the court there may be a dozen or more women, unwashed, uncombed, untidy to a degree; some bread-making, some washing, others seated nursing their babies:—babies who are as sick and unhealthy as they can possibly be, their bodies ingrained with dirt, their heads encrusted with sores and filth, their eyes inflamed and uncleansed, their garments smelling, and one and all looking thoroughly ill and wretched. It is the rarest thing to see a healthy-looking baby.

As I have sat amongst them and talked with them, I have tried to reason with them and point out the advantages of cleanliness and industry; all admit that I am right and that our habits are better than theirs, yet none have the heart or the energy or the character to break away from their customs and their innate laziness and to rise up and be women.

Yet one can hardly wonder at their condition, what chances have they had? Married at ten or eleven, untrained and untaught, many of them not knowing how to hold a needle, or make the simplest garment; still in their teens with two or three children to burden them, whom they long to see big enough to turn out into the streets and play as they did before them. Their only interest in life, each other's family brawls and scandals; their health undermined by close confinement and want of exercise, is it a wonder that they sink into a state of callousness and indifference about everything?

I have seen a bright-spirited, energetic, laughing, romping girl of eleven, turned in one year into a miserable, lazy, dull, inert woman with her beauty and health gone, and looking nearer thirty than thirteen. One often does not wonder at such a condition of things, rather does one wonder when the reverse prevails, and one is able to realize their possibilities in spite of all their drawbacks. I know of women, though they are but very few, equally poor and unfavored as those I have described, who can be found sitting in their own little rooms, their younger children with them, holding themselves aloof from the usual gossip, their rooms swept, themselves clean and tidy, their babies, though not ideal, comparing favorably with the others; their one apparent trouble, the elder children whom they do not know how to train and whom they cannot keep out of the streets; unless indeed there chance to be a mission school in the near neighborhood.

The same state of things pervades all classes of society, though in the middle and upper classes the Moslems are usually very cleanly both in their persons and in their homes, but the majority of the women are in the same low degraded moral state. Life in the harems is spent in smoking and idle gossip, and things far worse; the wife and mother there, no less than among the poorer classes, has no idea of responsibility. She is frequently unable either to sew, read, or write, and leaves her children to the care of dependents. Her life is merely an animal life; she is but a necessary article for use in her husband's household.

A wealthy merchant who has had several wives keeps one in a beautiful house with every comfort, another wife of the same man is left to live where she can with the pittance of something like three pence per day. This is what the Moslem faith allows.

It has been well said "a nation cannot rise above the level of its women," and this is painfully illustrated in Egypt and in all other lands where the faith of Islam holds sway. Much is being done to improve the social conditions of the people of Egypt, but the real sore remains untouched so long as the teaching of the Koran with regard to the position of women remains in vogue.

There are many Mohammedan gentlemen who would fain see a better state of things, and who, like the late Mr. Justice Budrudin Tyabji, of Madras, devote their efforts to the amelioration of the backward position of their brethren in the faith, and desire especially the "mitigation and ultimate removal of paralyzing social customs, such as the seclusion of women." But their efforts are unavailing so long as they remain adherents of the Moslem faith, for in obedience to the Koran they can adopt no other course than the present one.

Let them substitute for the Koran the teaching of the Christian faith, the faith which alone gives woman her rightful position, and they will find that she can be a mighty influence for good in the social life of the nation. Let her take the place ordained for her by the Great Creator as the "helpmeet" to man, let her fulfil her mission in the world, laid down in the teaching of the New Testament, to love and influence, to cheer and strengthen, to pour out her life in the devotion of love and self-sacrifice, whether as daughter and sister, or wife and mother; then will the women of Egypt be clothed with "strength and honor" and then will the daughters of Hagar put on the robe of chastity and the "adornment of a meek and quiet spirit."

Her price will be "far above rubies," the heart of her husband will "safely trust in her," her children shall "arise up, and call her blessed."