How surprised and shocked the Persian mothers are to see the English babies kicking and throwing their arms about. “O Khanum, aren’t you afraid its limbs will grow crooked? Why don’t you bind them straight? Aren’t you afraid its legs will get broken if you leave them loose like that?”
So at its very start on life’s journey the poor little Persian baby is checked and prevented from growing up properly; for how can its little legs grow strong without kicking? It is no wonder that Persian babies as a rule learn to walk much later than English babies.
But perhaps the Persians are not quite so foolish as they seem when they roll their babies up in these stiff little bundles. Very likely the little arms and legs _would_ be broken or bent if they were left loose, for many of the Persian mothers are very young--much too young to know how to look after babies. They often treat them like dolls and would very likely break them just as English girls break their dolls.
Even the grown-up mothers are often very careless. One woman I knew laid her baby, not quite a year old, on a chair, and left it there. Of course it fell off--it was sure to; and yet she did this over and over again, and a few days later dropped it into a stream of water. She was very much surprised that it began to have fits at this time, and she said she could think of nothing to account for them.
A new missionary, who did not know the ways of Persians, went one day to see another woman and found her in bed, that is, lying on a mattress on the floor under a large quilt. Her friends invited the missionary to sit on the quilt beside her, for they do not use chairs in most Persian houses. After she had sat for some time she enquired for the baby. They pointed to a little lump in the quilt, and there, close beside her, entirely covered up and invisible, was the baby, and it gave the poor missionary a terrible shock to see how near she had been to sitting down upon it. After that, she always asked to see the baby before she sat down.
A baby less than a week old was brought one day to the Julfa hospital with its face badly torn by a cat. A few days later the doctor went into the ward and found the mother smoking and gossiping with the other women, but the baby was nowhere to be seen. “Where is the baby?” “It is all right,” said the mother; “I put it _under the bed_.” And sure enough, a little way off, under a bed (this time an English bed) lay the poor little bundle, its arms bound to its sides, only its little face exposed, or rather half-exposed, for the torn half was covered with a dressing, while close at hand there prowled in search of food a large half-wild cat, which frequented the hospital and had slipped in at an open door.[A]