Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/238

232 == LIFE IN A DRUSE VILLAGE. – PART II. ==

my house was completed, and I moved up from Haifa to take possession of it, the whole village of Dahlieh turned out en masse to receive me. As we wound up the pretty valley, at the head of which it is situated, the scene was both novel and picturesque. The female part of the population, clad in bright array of many colours, lined the highest terrace; while the men, some on foot and some on horseback, came down the winding path to meet us, – the latter, in spite of the rugged nature of the country, forcing their horses to attempt impossible equestrian evolutions, and dashing here and there over the rocky ground, with right arm thrown back and extended, after the manner of jereed-players; and the former drawn up in line, and making profound salutations as we passed: while the women set up the shrill ululating scream which is usual with them when they desire to give vent to their feelings of pleasure and satisfaction, or to celebrate any great event.

My first days were pretty well taken up holding levees, and giving and receiving hospitality. Having had some experience of the curiosity and unintentionally obtrusive habits of the people, I had taken the precaution, in order to secure privacy, to have a liwan or reception-room partially detached from the house; and on the simple divan which was its sole furniture, I passed the greater part of the first few mornings, dispensing syrup-and-water and coffee, making acquaintance individually with nearly all the inhabitants, and finding out as much as possible about the condition of local affairs generally. The accepting of hospitality was a more arduous undertaking, for it consisted in partaking with one's fingers of elaborate repasts, first at the houses of the two sheikhs, and then with one or two of the notables, and which consisted generally of an immense pyramid of rice, boiled mutton, stewed chicken, sour milk, honey, eggs fried in oil, and other dainties.

There are always two sheikhs in a Druse village – one who looks after its secular affairs, while the other manages its spiritual matters; and I very soon discovered that they regarded each other with feelings of some jealousy, as the heads of rival factions, and that it would require the exercise of some diplomacy to maintain such a strict impartiality in my intercourse with them as should preserve the friendship of both. The whole village may indeed be said to consist of two huge families, of which the two sheikhs are the respective heads; and though they have intermarried to any extent, this has served rather to complicate than to conciliate the family differences which were likely to arise under such a state of things. The great facility of divorce among the Druses increases this liability to discordant domestic relations. A Druse, when he wants to change his wife, has only to tell her to go back to her parents; and she is obliged on the spot to decamp, enlisting naturally the sympathy of her own mother and the rest of her family against the heartless husband who has turned her out. I must say, however, that upon these occasions there is a stronger instinct than that of family – one which manifests itself under another form in more advanced countries under the name