Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/130

 sanding. The ceremony that bears this name is one at which the bride and bridegroom are brought together for the first time. They are officially supposed never to have seen one another before, though few self-respecting Malays allow their fiancées to be finally selected for them until they have had more than one good look at them. To effect this, a Malay, accompanied usually by one or two trusty friends, crceps one evening under the raised floor of the lady's house, and peeps at her through the bamboo laths or through the chinks of the wattled walls. At the sanding, however, stealth is no longer necessary. The bride and bridegroom are led forth by their respective relatives, and are placed side by side upon the dais prepared for the purpose, where they remain seated for hours, while the assembled male guests eat a hearty meal, and thereafter chant interminable verses from the Kurân. During the whole of this lime they must sit motionless, no matter how painfully their cramped legs may ache and throb, and their eyes must be downcast and fixed upon their hands which, scarlet with henna, lic motionless one on each knee. Malays who have endured the sanding assure me that the experience is trying in the extreme, and that the publicity of it is highly embarrassing, the more so since it is a point of honour for the man to try to catch an occasional glimpse of his bride out of the corner of his eyes, without turning his head a hair's breadth, and without being detected by the onlookers in the appalling solecism of moving so much as an eyelash.