My Bedouin Neighbor "Umm Rashed" — How Does She Live? How Does She Rear Her Children?

Readers will remember what we wrote about a year ago on the delightful modern life that Mrs. Nahla Marwa lives with her husband, the engineer Hassan Shouman, on her farm at Jezzin (the Bekaa). From those plains flourishing with greenery and water, Nahla writes to us of one side of her absorbing experience!!

In the summer and autumn seasons, and in the various parts of the Lebanese countryside, there spread tents of hair, inhabited by the wandering Bedouins.

These Bedouins have their particular ways of living, which I had occasion this summer to come to know at close hand, when some of these tribes came down to the plains stretching near our house.

How often I would watch "Umm Rashed" the Bedouin woman from my kitchen window, and I went to visit her from time to time.

Umm Rashed is the fourth wife of Abu Rashed... Before her he married three women. The first bore him no children, so he divorced her; the second bore two daughters, so he divorced her to marry another, hoping for "the boy"; and the third died a year after her marriage; so he married Umm Rashed, who bore six daughters before God blessed her with the boy!

But let us return to the tent of hair in which Abu Rashed's family lives. It is a large tent made of goat's hair, divided inside into two parts: one part for sleeping and one part for receiving guests. As for cooking, washing, and the rest, Umm Rashed does it on the wide ground behind the tent.

The ways of living among all the Bedouins are primitive to a degree the mind cannot conceive. Civilization has not managed to seep in to them even through a hole in the tent! And the sun of the twentieth century has not yet risen upon them. Yet with all that, they are happy, and would take no substitute for the tent of hair. I once asked Abu Rashed whether he would accept to live in one of the villages, in a house of stone, if it were offered to him. He answered me with all assurance that the Bedouin prefers his freedom to everything: he is free; every country is his country; he is bound by no government and no law.

Abu Rashed trades in camels and sheep — those animals that accompany the Bedouin wherever he lives, and that are his only way of earning some money. Two days before the date of their departure for Syria, Abu Rashed went to the market of Baalbek and sold a camel for a hundred and fifty liras, with which to buy provisions for the winter — sugar, dibs, tea, and coffee — and some clothing for himself and his family.

Umm Rashed spends her day like any mother with that number of children. She cooks and bakes and washes and sews and spins, and helps her daughters gather firewood and fetch water from a spring or a river near the tent.

The Bedouins' food is very simple: it consists of bread, burghul, kishk, milk, laban, and dibs, and sometimes beans and lentils. And if vegetables grow cheap in the summer season, they buy tomatoes; as for meat, they eat it on occasions, such as feasts and weddings.

Umm Rashed was surprised one day by my visit while she was worn out with cooking, her children gathered around her. I observed that the children were hungry, waiting for the food to be done — but my observation was mistaken. Umm Rashed was cooking sweets for her children, and they, like all children, love sweets. She described this kind of sweet to me, saying:

"I put a little dibs (carob dibs) in the vessel and stir it with some water, and when it boils I put the flour over it and boil it a little until it is done; then I take it off the fire, and when it has cooled I make little twists of it with my hand, and the children devour them with appetite."

My luck was great, for Umm Rashed was with child, and in her ninth month, and I was watching for the day her time of delivery should come, to see with my own eyes how these Bedouin women manage without doctor or helper. Like other city dwellers, I had heard the many stories of the Bedouin woman who gave birth in the field while she was gathering firewood, then picked up her child and rose without helper or aid.

And the awaited day came, and nature had no pity on poor Umm Rashed: it sent her rain and wind and cold. It was a harsh night.

I entered the tent of hair, and there I stood before two Bedouin women, and between them Umm Rashed, covered by a thick quilt. One of the Bedouin women had taken hold of her arms, and the second sat by her feet, awaiting the newborn. And I wondered greatly, for I heard no sound or sigh from her who lay under the quilt!

The hearth burned near them to give a little warmth and light, and there was a small oil lamp lit specially for the occasion.

It was nearly seven o'clock in the evening, and the children had not yet gone to sleep; they sat up waiting for the newborn, gathered around their mother in all solemnity. All this while Abu Rashed was away: he had set off in the morning with his camels, to return after two or three days.

Only a few hours passed before Umm Rashed was delivered of a new daughter — all without a cry or a moan rising from her! And the two Bedouin women did all that had to be done, helping each other in this "Bedouin midwifery." The girl was swaddled after her body had been rubbed with water and salt.

Umm Rashed kept to her bed for three days, and on the fourth day she rose as usual to do her duties by the family.

The custom among the Bedouins is that the newborn is given no name until the mother has risen from her bed; and so the girl remained without a name until the fourth day, and was named "Roza," to match the names of her two sisters, "Foza" and "Loz."

And Umm Rashed told me that some Bedouin women give birth while on the road: a few hours after the delivery they mount the camel and continue the journey.

And so these Bedouin tribes move from one spot to another, without restraints or law. When the winter season draws near, they journey to northern Syria, where pasture abounds for their camels and their sheep, and where the weather is warm and the rain moderate. And they are happy, caring nothing for our civilization and knowing little of it.