http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HI26Ak01.html Sep 26, 2006
KEBABBLE The pluses of polygamy By Fazile Zahir FETHIYE, Turkey - A recent poll in a Turkish newspaper included an eye-catching statistic. A substantial majority of the population, 63%, thought it perfectly acceptable for a man to have more than one wife. Although polygamy itself is relatively scarce in the modern population, it still exists, primarily in the ethnically Kurdish section of the population and among some older Turkish couples. My neighbors at the first house I occupied on moving here were polygamous; Ali Osman Kaya was living with Hadiye and Bedriye and had been since 1956. Their story was moving, but I am sure not unique. Ali Osman Kaya, now 82, was born in the year that Turkey became a republic and two years before founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk outlawed multiple marriages. A good citizen of the new country, he completed his military service on the Greek border during World War II and returned honorably to his village ready to marry his sweetheart Hadiye. He was 24, she was 22, and she had waited for his homecoming for four years. Ali Osman sold most of the flocks he had been given by his father and together they moved from Ekincik to the village of Candir, where he bought a piece of overgrown uncultivated land. The young couple set about the backbreaking work of clearing the land, uprooting scrubs and trees, using donkeys to till the earth and planting the citrus and olive trees that were to ensure their economic survival. Hadiye tended to the sheep and goats with a passion; livestock are still among her greatest pleasures today when, at the age of 80, she is still herds their small flock up and down the mountain. The farm prospered. They got chickens, ducks, a few cows, and a couple of dogs, and Ali Osman rode a horse when he had to travel to and from the village. Their home was not luxurious, but it was comfortable and they had won the friendship and admiration of their fellow villagers with their hard work and cheerful manners. The only thing that was missing was a child. No matter how often they tried, despite the endless folk remedies suggested to Hadiye, she never fell pregnant. They appealed to Ali Osman's brother to give him one of his sons to rear as their own but he refused. For 15 years they stayed together in their childless marriage until at the age of 37 Hadiye accepted that she was now too old ever to have children. Unable to deny Ali Osman the sons he coveted, she suggested that he divorce her and take another wife. She said goodbye to the farm and moved alone to a smaller house in the village. Ali Osman married again and the marriage swiftly failed. He divorced Wife Two and took 16-year-old Bedriye as his third wife. Within months she was settled in on the farm and was pregnant with their first child. When the baby girl was born, everyone was overjoyed except Bedriye. She was unable to shrug off a nagging sense of guilt she had had since moving in with Ali Osman. With a child successfully delivered, she was now secure as his wife and able to make an audacious move that no one expected of a 17-year-old girl with a new baby. Bedriye went into the village and found 39-year-old Hadiye in her pitiful small house and confessed to her the feelings she had kept bottled up inside. Hadiye listened in disbelief as the teenager explained that she felt it was not fair that after 15 years working on the farm and being wife to Ali Osman that Hadiye should be living alone in straitened circumstances. She almost dropped her knitting when Bedriye asked her to return and live with her and Ali Osman. Bedriye's only proviso was that there was to be no jealousy but peaceful family relations, and to this day Bedriye respectfully calls Hadiye aba, the word used to indicate respect for an older sister or female relative. To my knowledge the situation among the three of them has always been calm. Bedriye went on to have four more children, two girls and two boys, and all five children refer to both women as "mom". They shared the chores and field work between them: Bedriye tended to the home, washing and cooking and looking after guests, and Hadiye looked after the animals, shearing them, milking them and herding them. Bedriye had her own bedroom; always a light sleeper, she was unable to tolerate Ali Osman's snoring every night. Hadiye and Ali Osman shared a room but not a bed. In the winter the three of them often share the heat of one room together. They are living proof that women can share a marriage and that polygamy is not always the male-dominated enterprise it is made out to be. Polygamy is thus encouraged in certain situations where there is a problem within an existing marriage. The problem must be perceived to be legitimate, such as if the first wife isn't able to provide children. She may not necessarily want to be divorced from her husband, and she would like to remain part of a family. In cases like these, first wives may actually encourage their husbands to get married again and find a wife for him who she thinks would be suitable. The first wife has an important say in the matter as she is considered to understand the husband best and know his personality, and she also chooses somebody she feels personally she will get along with. The second wife has the children but both wives take turns looking after them. In the United Kingdom's Muslim community, arrangements such as these exist and allow second wives to maintain a career or a profession, and the arrangement can work out very nicely if it has been carefully discussed and structured. Proponents of polygamy point to other pluses of the system. They argue that it recognizes the different biological drives of men and women. Women are genetically predispositioned to seek a stable environment with a strong provider to ensure the best chance of survival for their children. For men, the best chance to ensure the survival of their genetic material is to inseminate as many women as possible. Many intellectuals and feminists have put forward the hypothesis that human beings are more than their biological urges, but to subscribe completely to such theories is to ignore the evidence that as many as 30-40% of men worldwide exhibit polygamous behavior through extramarital affairs and that women engage in consanguineous marriages in the search for better partners. Islam didn't invent polygamy. It is a fairly universal institution that was known in many ancient religions, including Judaism, Christianity and Hinduism. Polygamy is still practiced today in West Africa, throughout the Middle East and by some fundamentalist Mormons in the US (though it is officially banned there). It was present in Arabia before the Koran was revealed to Mohammed, but the Koran regulated the extent and nature of polygamy with strict guidelines that all wives have to be treated absolutely equally. In the Kurdish areas of Turkey it is estimated that between 10% and 25% of relationships are polygamous and about 58% of the women in polygamous marriages live together in one house with the other wife/wives. While these relationships are not always stress-free and many women complain about serious problems with the other wives, it is also true that in more than 50% of such marriages the women either arranged the second marriage themselves or entered the arrangement of their own will. Angry Harry's website (www.angryharry.com - not a serious study and openly misogynist) unwittingly but accurately lists some of the pros for women of polygamy. Harry says: "Think of all the time that this polygamy idea would save for each of the wives. Instead of doing three chores each, they would each only have to do just one! ... The vacuuming, the dusting and the window cleaning could all be divided equally into three separate parts ... and isn't this what women actually say that they want ... equality, and a reduction in the housework?" Certainly in the labor-intensive agricultural societies of southeastern Turkey, this must hold some appeal. Problem pages all over the world regularly feature letters from "sex-starved" husbands and badgered wives. Sexual research done in Europe suggests that a woman's sex drive kicks in every 10 days and a man's at least every five days, leading to the disparity in expectations. Again polygamy provides a practical solution. Not every aspect of polygamy is about practicality or men demonstrating their status, though. Some of the marriages serve political purposes whereby to avert a skirmish or a feud with another tribe or group, a key male marries into that tribe or group. Cupid also has a role. Remzi Oto, a sociologist at Dicle University in Diyarbakir, conducted a study of 50 polygamous men and showed that nearly a third took a second wife after "falling in love". Most were forced into marriage in their early teens or promised to a family while still children. For these men, "Choosing their own wife is a form of self-assertion, a way of exploring their manhood and of experiencing true love," said Oto. Resat Yagdi, a Kurdish electrician and onion farmer, has a wife and three children and is preparing to take his second wife. The process will enhance his status in the area where he lives but is not easy or cheap. He must build his second wife her own house and pay her bride price and wedding costs. He thinks the total cost will be high but believes it's worth it. His first marriage is an unhappy one and he says, "Ayse is so feminine. She is everything I've ever dreamed of. She's my perfect type." What his first wife thinks of his "perfect" new wife is not mentioned, and though there can undoubtedly be benefits to women as a result of polygamy, there is a darker side too that is often the reality for many women. Loyal wives are pensioned off into an artificial state of early menopause as they are replaced in their husband's affections by younger models. Next: Where polygamy fails the family Fazile Zahir is of Turkish descent, born and brought up in London. She moved to live in Turkey in 2005 and has been writing full-time since then. (Copyright 2006 Fazile Zahir.) [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Post message: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] List owner : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/ Yahoo! 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