WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
divorced from culture, and knows nothing of the great movements in modern thought. The dressing of her hair, the polishing of her nails, and such preservation of her external charms are her chief and constant care. She speaks to no man but the pasha and her emasculated attendants. Certain privileges are vouchsafed to her when she becomes a mother, and there is then more occupation for her energies. But so long as she is childless, the days are idle, vapid, and productive of ennui.
The odalisque amuses herself with childish games and diversions. She smokes the Eastern pipe, with its glass bowl and long tube, as she squats on the langorous divan. Enervated by laziness, and bored from lack of employment for brain or hands, she seeks the solace of hashish, opium, and strong liquors. The bath, massage, and dressing occupy only a small part of the day. For the rest, she merely lounges, smoking or eating sweetmeats.[1]
Hashish, or fakir's plant, produces dreaminess with-
- ↑ Thackeray refers to the alleged indecency of the women of the Cairo harems, in his "Eastern Sketches": "All their humour, my Dragoman tells me, is of the questionable sort, and a young Egyptian gentleman, son of a Pasha, whom I subsequently met at Malta, confirmed the statement, and gave a detail of the practices of private life which was anything but edifying. … He could give us no idea, he said, of the wit of the Egyptian women and their skill in double entendre; nor I presume, did we lose much by our ignorance."
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