continued. “Father Vitus referred to a girl called Beth. I will tell you about her. She is a thirteen-year-old Muslim maiden, raised very strictly by her father, who owned a fruit shop near the southern gate. She claims she had never left the inside of her father’s house except to go to Friday prayers and visit her uncles’ houses—all within a couple of blocks.
How in the hell could the owner of one measly fruit shop afford to keep his female relatives in a harem? Was his fruit actually the secret of eternal youth or something?
Yes, seclusion of women has been common throughout Asia from antiquity, but it was confined to the upper class and some of the very wealthy middle class, because most families couldn’t have plausibly afforded it.
