Soups

Traditionally, a new mother spent forty days in bed and her mother-in-law, living under the same roof and dictating procedures, made sure that she was fed rich soups throughout. There was no question of her stepping out of the house before the forty days were over because her bones were still considered unsettled or ‘open’: ‘damha m’fattaha; another term was ‘lessaha nafas’, meaning she was still fragile. This was a far cry from the peasant woman who often delivered her child by herself, interrupting her work in the field, and walked home at the end of the day with the baby swaddled in a rag.