As
soon as I had given consent by my silence, accompanied with a blush,
the young lady clapped her hands, and immediately a curtain was
withdrawn, from behind which came a young man of so majestic an air,
and so graceful a countenance, that I thought myself happy to have
made such a choice. He sat down by me, and I found from his
conversation that his merits far exceeded the account of him given by
his sister.
When she perceived that we were satisfied with one another, she
clapped her hands a second time, and a cadi[35] with four witnesses,
entered, who wrote and signed our contract of marriage.
[Footnote 35: Marriage among the Mohammedans is an exclusively civil
ceremony; and therefore the cadi, a civil judge, and not an imaun, or
minister of religion, was summoned.]
There was only one condition that my new husband imposed upon me, that
I should not be seen by nor speak to any other man but himself; and he
vowed to me that, if I complied in this respect, I should have no
reason to complain of him. Our marriage was concluded and finished
after this manner; so I became the principal actress in a wedding to
which I had only been invited as a guest.
About a month after our marriage, having occasion for some stuffs, I
asked my husband's permission to go out to buy them, which he granted;
and I took with me the old woman of whom I spoke before, she being one
of the family, and two of my own female slaves.
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