As A General Rule, The Western Arabs
Avoid Cold Water, From A Belief That It Causes Fever.
When Mr. C. Cole,
H.B.M.'s Vice-Consul, arrived at Jeddah, the people of the place,
seeing that he kept up his Indian habits, advised him strongly to drop
them.
He refused; but unhappily he soon caught a fever, which confirmed
them all in their belief. When Arabs wish to cool the skin after a
journey, they wash with a kind of fuller's earth called "Tafl," or with
a thin paste of henna, and then anoint the body with oil or butter.
[FN#18] An incrementative form of the name "Fatimah," very common in
Egypt. Fatimah would mean a "weaner"-Fattumah, a "great weaner." By the
same barbarism Khadijah becomes "Khaddugah"; Aminah, "Ammunah"; and
Nafisah, "Naffusah," on the banks of the Nile.
[FN#19] The palmy days of the Egyptian husband, when he might use the
stick, the sword, or the sack with impunity, are, in civilised places
at least, now gone by. The wife has only to complain to the Kazi, or to
the governor, and she is certain of redress. This is right in the
abstract, but in practice it acts badly. The fair sex is so unruly in
this country, that strong measures are necessary to coerce it, and in
the arts of deceit men have here little or no chance against women.
[FN#20] The amount of settlement being, among Moslems as among
Christians, the test of a bride's value,-moral and physical,-it will
readily be understood that our demand was more facetious than
complimentary.
[FN#21] The term Misriyah (an Egyptian woman) means in Al-Hijaz and the
countries about it, a depraved character.
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