This Custom Is Peculiar To The Place, And
Unknown To The Bedouins.
The people of Kerek, intermarry with the Bedouins; and the Aeneze even
give the Kerekein their girls in marriage.
The sum paid to the father of
the bride is generally between six and eighthundred piastres; young men
without property are obliged to serve the father five or six years, as
menial servants, in compensation for the price of the girl. The Kerekein
do not treat their wives so affectionately as the Bedouins; if one of
them falls sick, and her sickness is likely to prevent her for some time
from taking care of the family affairs, the husband sends her back to
her father’s house, with a message that “he must cure her;” for, as he
says, “I bought a healthy wife of you, and it is not just that I should
be at the trouble and expense of curing her.” This is a rule with both
Mohammedans and Christians. It is not the custom for the
[p.386] husband to buy clothes or articles of dress for his wife; she
is, in consequence, obliged to apply to her own family, in order to
appear decently in public, or to rob her husband of his wheal and
barley, and sell it clandestinely in small quantities; nor does she
inherit the smallest trifle of her husband’s property. The Kerekein
never sleep under the same blanket with their wives; and to be accused
of doing so, is considered as great an insult as to be called a coward.
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