Labrador looks at the Orient : notes of travel in the Near and the Far East / by Sir Wilfred Thomas Grenfell.

  • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Labrador looks at the Orient : notes of travel in the Near and the Far East / by Sir Wilfred Thomas Grenfell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    22/328 (page 16)
    it is inculcated that a child should not be washed until it is forty days old, a teaching which often results in trachoma, loss of eyesight, and even of life itself. In Egypt infant mortality is terrible, twenty-five per cent dying before one year of age. Only six women in every thousand and six men in every hundred even now get any real education. How can such a nation be ready to direct wisely the growth of the new baby of Self-Government? Fortunately, King Fuad, before he was King, was actually on the Council of the New American Llniversity in Cairo, and still maintains his interest in an institution whose untold value to his people he is well able to understand. The bazaars of Cairo are fascinating. They are a great collection of shops carrying every conceivable variety of handicraft work of every queer Eastern design and material. Gold jewelry shops are so especially numerous, one would at first suppose that the people were almost indecently wealthy, especially as one sees so many veiled women, and always unaccompanied, haggling over purchases. The fact is a husband has only to say to his wife, ‘ You are divorced,’ and the marriage is annulled. He need show no reason unless her relatives are powerful enough to make him. The law, in order to protect these poor women a little, allows them to take with them their personal jewelry. The Govern¬ ment guarantees the value of the gold, so into that go all a wife’s little savings. Of course, money so hoarded is idle and produces nothing for those who so sorely need every piastre, but the custom is old and seems still to act as a soporific on their needed courage to fight for better justice. Mohammed forbade usury, and many of his followers still take no interest in their bank accounts and cannot risk shares in companies however important the object. The beaten brass and copper work, the beautiful gold, silver, and copper inlaid work, the wood and ivory inlay are marvels of meticulous craftsmanship. We saw tiny boys of seven and eight years producing exquisite results, while