When you get to the other side your troubles are not over, for on starting to put up the tent you find one of the poles has been left behind on the other side; so there is nothing to do but to sit still and continue the waiting process. Or perhaps you think a cup of tea would help while away the time, only to find that the charcoal has not yet arrived! So there is only one thing to do, and that is to wait till everything is safely landed; then you can begin to prepare for the long-delayed rest.
Spoiling process--Despair of the parents--The "god" of the hareem--Death by burning--Festivities at birth of boy--Cradles and cradle songs--School life--Feast in honour of a boy having read the Koran through--"Only a girl"--Girl life--Girl victims of Naseeb--Marriage.
"The household must weep for forty days on the birth of a girl."
"Is it all forgot? All schooldays' friendship, Childhood's innocence?"
The children of Mosul have on the whole a very good time. From their earliest days they are allowed to do pretty much as they like, and only when the process of spoiling is completed, and the child has become a terror to all, do the parents realise that it is far easier to spoil a child than to "unspoil" him, once the deed is done. This method, or rather lack of method, of bringing up the children, is a great cause of trouble and sorrow in after years both to the parents and to the children themselves, but yet they never seem to profit by their experiences, for they still continue to say that it is a great "aib" or shame to deny a child anything he may want. Although this spoiling process is carried on with both boys and girls in the earlier years of their lives, it is brought to perfection in their treatment of the boys.
I remember a pretty little child called Jamila (beautiful); she was so fair and pretty that she was known by many as "the English child." When she was about three years old she became very ill, and the mother brought her to my husband, who prescribed for her, but said that the chief part of the treatment lay in the diet. On no account was solid food to be given for at least three or four days. The mother looked in despair when she heard this, as she said, "Jamila will cry if she cannot have her meat and bread and pillau!" A day or two later I was calling at the house, and saw that Jamila was looking very ill, and asked the mother what the child had been eating. "Oh," she said, "poor little child, I had to give her meat and bread, for she tore her hair and clothes in her anger, on my refusing to give them to her, and so, how could I deny them to her?" And sure enough, while I was there, Jamila began to cry for bread, and on her mother refusing, threw herself on the ground in a paroxysm of anger, beating her head and face with her clenched fist, till she was quite blue and black in the face. The mother ran at once and brought bread and meat, and gave to the child, who immediately recovered her equanimity of mind and temper.