IN A TURK’S HAREM.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 11, 14 January 1916, Page 7

IN A TURK’S HAREM.

When a Turkish girl reaches her ■ ’teens the laws of her land compel h : er to “take the veil.” Her girlhood days are ended, almost before they have well begun; henceforth she is rgarded as a woman, on whose face, however fair, the outside world of men •may never look; and she exchanges unfettered freedom for the closelyguarded seclusion of the harem, for the life of a prisoner, however sumptuous her prison and however gilded her chains.

How she dreads this prospect we know from the confession of a Turkish princess who says: “The future had for me an indescribable terror. I was well clothed, well fed, incarcerated amidst surroundings of silk, satin and jewels, and waited on day and night by slaves whose position in life only differed from my own in a small degree; for while the slaves were recognised as such, I became a slave in all but the name.”

When in process of time the girl becomes a wife ,her lot is no more enviable. Probably she stores the capricious affection of her lord with three other wives, who are her unscrupulous rivals; and with whom she is condemned to live on at least outw r ard terms of amiability.