Veiled Women by Marmaduke Pickthall — Read

It was strange how, with her broken spirit, she regained a kindly interest in all around her. She had found the keynote of harem existence -- resignation; not merely passive, but exultant as an act of worship. The gross, full-blooded speech, the something cruel in these women, which in the day of sentimental pride had seemed intolerable, was but the natural outcome of relentless vision. In the first fervour of her self-abasement she stood beside the deathbed of Murjânah Khânum, watched her last struggle, and endured the death-room orgies without flinching. Thenceforth she took up the old Muslim standpoint, denouncing all the fallacies of Europe. Having won from Yûsuf the confession that he kept three other women, she had them brought to the old Pasha's palace, where she lived thenceforward, to rid his dealings of the surreptitiousness which smacks of vice. She received them sometimes in her rooms, and took benignant notice of their children, but remained aloof. They called her "the great lady," and deferred to her.

When the festivals of visitation of the dead came round, she would withdraw into the tomb for days together, but showed no mournfulness at other seasons. When Englishwomen called on her (as sometimes happened, for Yûsuf held a high position in the Government), she spoke in stilted French, and never hinted that she knew their language, or was other than the thing she seemed -- a Turkish lady. She felt assured that, had she carried out her plan and fled to Europe after her son's death, she would have gone mad in that sentimental atmosphere with all her memories. More than the English, she disliked some French and German ladies who, without renouncing their religion or their nationality, had married Muslims. These, in their visits, showed a curiosity, and used a tone of patronage, which was offensive. Of races less exclusive than the English, they kept their European friends, maintained their liberty. They had no real conception of the harem life.