Her Daily Life, Indeed, Is Not Calculated To
Improve The Health Of Either Mind Or Body.
Most of the time is spent
in dressing and undressing, trying on clothes, painting her face,
sucking sweetmeats, and smoking cigarettes till her complexion is as
yellow as a guinea.
Intellectual occupation or amusement of any kind
is unknown in the anderoon, and the obscene conversation and habits of
its inmates worse even than those of the harems of Constantinople and
Cairo, which, according to all accounts, is saying a good deal. A love
of cruelty, too, is shown in the Persian woman; when an execution or
brutal spectacle of any kind takes place, one-third at least of the
spectators is sure to consist of women. But this is, perhaps, not
peculiar to Persia; witness a recent criminal trial at the Old Bailey.
It will thus be seen that sensuality is the prevalent vice of the
female sex in Persia. An English-speaking Persian at Bushire told me
that, with the exception of the women of the wandering Eeliaut tribes,
there were few chaste wives in Persia. Although the nominal punishment
for adultery is death, the law, as it stands at present, is little
else than a dead letter, and, as in some more civilized countries,
husbands who are fond of intrigue, do not scruple to allow their wives
a similar liberty. Not half an hour's walk from the Tomb of Hafiz, at
the summit of the mountain, is a deep well, so deep that no one has
ever yet succeeded in sounding it.
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