Page:Domestic Life in Palestine.pdf/389

382 I found that the senior wife, who had evidently once been very handsome, formerly belonged to a wealthy Turk, and had been presented to Saleh Bek, in her youth, as a reward for some special service. She had been brought up in great privacy, in a harem in Constantinople, and was thence conveyed to her new home at Arrabeh, where she was at first very unhappy, for she was a complete stranger there, and spoke only Turkish. Fortunately for her, Saleh Bek understood it, and she, by degrees, acquired the Arabic language. Though she had come from a great city, she had seen so little of it, that she knew no more of the world and its history than her new companions in Arrabeh, and hardly so much perhaps as the wives, concubines, and servants which Saleh Bek afterward took from the little villages in the neighborhood. The seclusion in which Moslem girls are kept is more or less strict, in accordance with their rank or position—the poor having unavoidably more liberty than the wealthy.

Helweh, who came from the little village of Kefr Kâra, seemed to possess more natural quickness of comprehension than any of the other women.

They had long before heard Christians spoken of, but in terms so vague that they hardly regarded them as fellow creatures; but now that they lived in the little sea-coast town of Hâifa, where there was a mixed population, including Moslems, Jews, and Christians of distinctly various sects, and people of many nations, they were by degrees receiving new impressions, and ideas which probably would not have entered their minds if they had continued to live in the interior, and in such an exclusively Moslem district as the Jebel Nablûs.

They had already become acquainted with a few of their neighbors, and were constantly hearing of something which was to them new and strange. Whenever I visited them, I found that they had some wonder to relate to me, or some story to tell, which had reached them either through female servants, or Christian or Jewish guests, or the professional