Chapter 2

Under the arch is the open fireplace where the big coffee-pots and water-kettles simmer all day on a charcoal fire. The old man looks quite cheerful seated on his uncomfortable stool made of date-sticks. You will read later about our old friend the date-palm and how the tree is used for nearly every purpose. I wish I could show you how they take the thin branches and punch holes in them and then deftly, before you can count ninety, build together a chair or a bedstead. I have often slept soundly and safely on bedsteads made of these thin leaf-sticks no bigger around than a child's finger. The sticks are full of "spring" so one does not need a wire mattress, nor have I ever known one of them, if made honestly, to become a _folding bed_ under a restless sleeper as they say happens sometimes in New York hotels!

Although the old man in our picture is waited on by the younger Arab (who is perhaps the keeper of the café), yet I know he is not rich. Do you notice his toil-worn hands and the patch on the shoulder of his long overcoat? I fancy too his pretty vest, so carefully buttoned by more than a dozen cloth buttons, is a little torn on one side; nor has he a fine girdle like the rich shopkeepers.

Extremes meet in the picture and three countries widely apart on the map are brought close together. Of course, you know the coffee is the real Yemen article, which coming first from Mocha on the Red Sea, is still called by that Arabian name. The curious pipe with its round bottom, carved head-piece and long stem, is used everywhere in Arabia and is generally called _"nargeelie,"_ which is the Indian name for cocoanut. The bowl of the pipe is in fact an empty cocoanut shell; the stem once grew in the jungle and perhaps tigers brushed past it; now it is pierced to draw smoke.

The curious pipe is from India, the tobacco first came from America but the coffee is Arabian. Let us listen to the story of the cup of coffee: In a book published in 1566 by an Arab scholar on the virtues of coffee it is stated that a knowledge of coffee was first brought to Arabia from Abyssinia about the year 1400 by a pious man whose tomb is still venerated in Yemen. The knowledge of coffee spread from Yemen in south Arabia over the whole world. In 1690 Van Hoorne, a general of the Dutch East India company, received a few coffee seeds from the Arabs at Mocha and planted them in Batavia on the island of Java. In this way Mocha coffee has become the mother of Java and of all other kinds of coffee sold at your grocers'. Nothing can be more beautiful than the green hills and fertile gardens in the Arabian coffee country. The coffee berry grows on an evergreen tree of about eighteen feet high; its leaves are a beautiful dark, shining green and the blossom of the tree is pure white with a most delicate and fragrant odour. Each tree bears an enormous number of coffee-berries; a single tree is said to have yielded sixteen pounds! Arabia not only produces the finest coffee in the world, but I think the Arabs know how to prepare a good cup of coffee better than other peoples. The raw bean is roasted just before it is used and so keeps all its strength; it is _pounded_ fine, much finer than you can grind it, in a mortar, with an iron pestle; lastly two smelling herbs, _heyl_ and saffron are added when it is boiled just enough to give a flavour. Some fibres of palm bark are stuck into the spout of the coffee-pot to act as a strainer and then the clear brown liquid is poured into a tiny cup and handed to you in the coffee-shop. No wonder the Arab dervishes smack their lips over this, their only luxury.

But how did the tobacco get into our picture? You can hunt up the story for yourselves in your school histories. Had not Sir Walter Raleigh in 1586 introduced the weed to the court of Queen Elizabeth from Virginia, our picture and social life in Arabia would be very different. The custom of puffing tobacco has spread like a prairie fire and it is now so common in the East that very few realise it was not always found there. There they are all together, an Indian pipe, Arabian coffee and American tobacco! How much faster and further tobacco has travelled than the Bible; how many people had begun to drink Mocha before Arabia had a missionary!

But, of course, nothing can travel for nothing; and somebody must pay the travelling expenses. America pays many millions more for tobacco in a year than it pays for missionaries. It is not surprising, therefore, that all Arabians smoke and only a very few have ever heard of the Son of God, the Saviour of the world. As Jesus Himself said, "the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light." When people learn to love missions as much and as often as they do a good cigar and a cup of coffee there will be no need of mite boxes. God hasten the day.

V

AT THE CORNER GROCERY

It is not a very long distance from the Arab coffee-shop where we left our friend smoking, to the grocer. The streets are very narrow and unless we are very careful that camel will crowd us to the wall or those water-skins on the white donkey wet our clothes--see how they drip! Well, one turn more and here we are. The grocer in the picture on the next page is leaning on his elbow waiting for a customer. And if he keeps his groceries as free from flies and ants as he does his spotless white turban we will buy our day's supplies here. The shops in Arabia are not very large and they have no place for customers except outside. Sometimes there is a sort of raised seat or bench on which the purchaser sits when he bargains for something; but generally you have to stand up outside while the crowds push and the traffic goes on. One curious custom is that all the shops of one kind cluster close together in one street or section of the town. You will see for example in one street a long row of shops where they sell drugs and perfumery; in another place there are only hardware merchants; again a whole street of nothing but grocers. I think the reason is that Arabs love to bargain and to beat down prices and so it is easier to have all the merchants of one kind close together. At any rate this arrangement makes it quite convenient for the purchaser. Indeed it is becoming somewhat customary to group the shops in this way in some of your Western cities. Occidental civilisation can learn some things from the Orient!

Our shopkeeper has a mixed lot of groceries in his shop; many things which you would find at your grocers' he has never heard of. Everything is topsy-turvy. Just fancy how strange to hang up the sugar in a row of cones on strings like sausages! Do you see them on the ceiling of the shop in our picture? That is the way white sugar comes wrapped from France and is sold in Arabia. A sugar _barrel_ would soon be full of ants in this country; but when it hangs up on a string the ants have a hard time getting it away. Maybe there is a suggestion here for your homes if you are troubled with ants.

In those big Arab baskets the grocer keeps his carrots and other vegetables; carrots are white in Arabia and there are curious vegetables of which you have never heard.

Do you see the bottles and tin boxes on his shelves? Those are for spices; pepper, cinnamon, nutmegs, curry-powder and such things of which Arab housewives are very fond.

The big bowl on the left probably has olives in it or other kind of pickled vegetables. On the right you can see the big pair of old fashioned scales on which he weighs his wares. I hope he is an honest man, although I do not think he looks very honest, do you? The scale hangs true I have no doubt; but it is in the weights that deception lurks. In Arabia we can every day see illustrations of the words of Solomon in the book of Proverbs about "divers weights" and "false balances." The most of the shopkeepers do not have proper weights of iron or brass, but use ordinary cobblestones and pebbles. Only a few days ago I bought some walnuts and the grocer weighed them so many stones' weight! Do you know what a "stone" weight is. Maybe you had better look it up in your dictionary. That covered kettle near the scale-pans on top of the little box contains _semn_, which is the Arabic name for sheep's fat. You would hardly believe me if I told you what a lot of this greasy yellow stuff the boys and girls eat on their rice, and how much is used in an Arab kitchen. It is sold by weight, just as well as all other things, even _milk_ in Arabia. If we wait long enough you will see Fatimah and Mirjam and the other girls come with empty bowls to buy so many pennies' worth of grease.

Do you notice that the shop has queer little doors on the lower part of the front opening? The other part of the shop is closed by a flap-door that does not show on the picture. This is hinged from the top and is used when the shop is open as a sort of blind to keep off the sun or the rain.

When the shopkeeper leaves his shop for a half hour or so he hangs a sort of fish-net over the opening of his shop and never needs to lock it. This is a curious custom, and I have often wondered how the shops were safe from stealing boys or robbers in such cases. It is one more instance of how different the East is from the West.

The shopkeepers generally close their shops at sunset, and only in a very few places are there people who buy and sell or go about to do shopping by lamplight. Our grocer on the corner has provided for emergencies, and the large Arabian lantern ought to light up all his little shop.

Across the street is the place where they sell crockery. The salesman is out, but his boy, as you see, has taken the opportunity to eat some apples. I wonder whether he got them at the grocer's?

His father sells water-jugs and jars made of porous earth. Oh what a blessing those jars are to all the people of this hot and dry country. We have no ice in Arabia and so no refrigerators; the wells are never very deep and the water comes a long distance. So if it were not for the crockery man and his water-jugs we could never drink _cold_ water. But just pour the water in one of these earthen pots and hang it in the wind and then in a few minutes the water gets cold. We missionaries always have such water-jars hanging or standing in our windows to catch the breeze. Perhaps this kind of water-cooler is very old, and Solomon himself looked at one when he wrote the words: "As cold waters to a thirsty soul so is good news from a far country."

VI

BLIND FATIMAH

It was on a Sunday afternoon that I first met Blind Fatimah and greeted her with _Salaam aleikum_ and she answered _aleikum es salaam!_ "Peace be to you and on you be peace." I asked if she could read. She said she could "read by heart," but could not see anything. She at that time could repeat twenty-six chapters of the Koran, the sacred book of the Mohammedans. Now I think she can repeat it nearly all; it contains one hundred and fourteen chapters. Some are very short and others are very long; some parts of the book are very good, but most of it is a jumble of events and of things that never happened--all mixed up topsy-turvy.

A slave woman was Fatimah's teacher and now she is helper in the school of this teacher. She is the prompter, and always begins each sentence of the recitation, and the other children follow on. If any mistakes are made, she will instantly correct them.

She is a peculiar looking girl and she is not pretty. Her clothes consist of cast off garments given her by others. Her head is generally covered and wrapped up in a black muslin veil; then she has an _abba_ or Arabian cloak of very green-black cashmere; then under that a many coloured garment called a _thobe_; it is square in pattern with armholes and sleeves nearly a yard wide. The ends of these wide sleeves are deftly taken and thrown over the head to form a sort of tight-fitting cap. Underneath this garment is a kind of dressing gown with tight-fitting sleeves. Such is Fatimah's wardrobe. She wears no shoes, not even sandals. Would you like to walk in the hot sand with no covering for your feet?

Sometimes I visit the school where Fatimah teaches the smaller girls A, B, C. It is a topsy-turvy school indeed. The object seems to be to make as much noise as possible; the pupils sit on the floor with a small stand or trestle (like a saw-buck!) in front of each one to hold their Korans out of which they read. The first pupil begins a sentence at the top of his, or her, voice and then in a sort of refrain it is taken up by all the others. The teacher sits outside the school very often sewing or preparing a meal or entertaining visitors; for the schoolhouse is an ordinary mat hut dwelling. If however a pupil makes a mistake in reading she hears instantly and corrects it.

When the hours of prayer come around (the Moslems you know pray five times a day) lessons are dropped. One day I called at the school at the time of afternoon prayer. All the children had run down to the sea, to wash their faces and hands and feet, so as to be quite pure outwardly, when repeating Mohammed's prayers.

In the accompanying picture of a Moslem boy praying you will see what those forms are and how much _form_ there is to go through. Blind Fatimah stood with her hands clasped, looking upward with those sightless eyes, her lips moving. Then she fell on her knees, with the little, thin hands spread out; then she bowed down until her forehead touched the earth, continuing in that position for a little time; then she got up, and with another upward look and motion of the lips, the devotions were ended.

I prayed there, too, that her eyes might be opened to see Jesus as her own Saviour, and that she might know Him as the _Son of God_, and not merely as one of the many prophets mentioned in the Koran. It seemed such a sad sight to see this blind child, doubly blind because her religion is false, and she is resting on a false hope.

She always listens when I tell her, or read to her about God, and Jesus Christ the Saviour. And if you would help together by your daily prayers, perhaps soon God will give the answer. Would it not be blessed for you and me if some day blind Fatimah should have opened eyes; not to see the date groves, and the sea, and the beautiful sunsets of Bahrein, but far more--to see Jesus' face and to follow Him by leading others to Him?

"For thousands and thousands who wander and fall, Never heard of that heavenly home; I should like them to know there is room for them all, And that Jesus has bid them to come. I long for the joy of that glorious time, The sweetest and brightest and best, When the dear little children of every clime Shall crowd to His arms and be blest."

VII

DATES AND SUGAR-CANE

This is the sweetest chapter in the book. The pictures are enough to make one's mouth water and give one an appetite for Arabian dates. I do not suppose there is a boy or girl in England or America that has not eaten the fruit of the Arabian palm tree; but how many of you know the taste of sugar-cane?

In many parts of Arabia, especially at Busrah and along the river Tigris, you can see the sugar-cane sellers sit by the wayside and dispose of this Arabian stick-candy to the boys and girls in exchange for coppers. The woman in the picture has chosen the shelter of a date tree and beside the tall bundles of cane she has oranges for sale as well. The sugar-cane is cut into pieces and sold "by the knot"; that is, by the length of the stick from one knot to the next. It is not expensive and I have seen even the very poorest children suck their cane on the way home as happy as sugar can make them. The sugar-cane is a kind of grass but it grows to twice the height of a boy and is over two inches in circumference. The stems are smooth, shining and hard on the outside, but inside they are porous and the pores are full of sugar sap. The sugar-cane first came from India, but the Arabs spread its cultivation as far as Morocco and Sicily; so that it is no wonder that the word "sugar" itself comes from the Arabic. Yet it shows how ignorant the Arabs are to-day because, although they have sugar-cane, _their_ sugar nearly all comes from Europe. They do not know how to manufacture it and therefore eat the sugar-cane raw.

Sweeter than sugar-cane and much more plentiful is the date. There is no place in all Arabia where you do not see the date palm growing, and seldom can you eat a meal in any part of the country but dates are part of the bill-of-fare. In fact thousands of people in Arabia have nothing but dates to eat from January to December! So plentiful are they that even donkeys and camels are fed on dates in some districts.

Many of the dates you buy in your own country come from Arabia. On the best kind of dates which come in wooden boxes you will find Muscat or Busrah stamped to show from what place they were shipped. There are very many kinds of dates in Arabia, and only a very few sorts are sent abroad. Some of them are too delicate to stand the long voyage and others are found only in small quantities. I do not think any of the dates that reach America equal those we pick from the palm tree ourselves here in Arabia--no more than dried apple rings taste as good as ripe juicy sweet apples from the orchard. When the dates ripen in September they are picked, sorted, and then packed in layers by the Arab women and boys who get paid for this work. Large steamships are loaded down with these boxes and many of them leave Busrah every year with no other cargo than dates.

The date tree is very beautiful. I think it is the most beautiful of all the palms. It is no wonder that a palm branch is the symbol of victory in the Bible and that the psalmist compares the life of a righteous man to a palm-tree! How straight and beautifully proportioned is the tall trunk of the tree. It is an evergreen and is always flourishing winter and summer. It is a lovely sight to see the huge clusters of ripening fruit, golden-yellow or reddish-brown, amid the bright green branches. Along the rivers in the north of Arabia, at Hassa and in Oman, date orchards stretch for miles and miles as far as you can see. Some of the Arabs have such large date gardens that they do not know the number of their trees. How do you suppose they climb the tree? The Arabs have no ladders and indeed it would be hard to make a ladder long enough to reach to the top of a tall palm tree. So they use a rope band which goes around the trunk of the tree and around their waist; it is shoved up little by little and the Arab puts his bare feet on the rough bark of the tree and so climbs up as easily as a monkey. The palm tree is perhaps the most useful tree in the world. Every part of it is used for something or other, and I do not see how Arabia could get along without palm trees. The fruit is prepared in many different ways for food. The date stones are used by the Arab children in playing checkers and other games on the smooth sand. They are also ground up into a coarse kind of meal and this is good cattle-food. The branches of the date tree are long and strong and thin just like a piece of rattan. From them the carpenters make beds, tables, chairs, cradles, bird-cages, reading-stands, boats, crates, kites and a dozen other useful things. The leaves are woven into baskets, mats, fans and string. From the bark excellent fibre makes rope of all sizes. Not a bit of the tree is wasted. Even the blossoms are used to make a kind of drink and the old musty fruit that cannot be eaten is made into date syrup or date vinegar.

In one of the pictures you see the fire wood market at Busrah. The long branches you see are sold for kindling wood and they make a splendid fire. The heavier parts of the tree are also used for fuel and the donkeys are loaded with these date knots and date sticks in baskets. It is a busy scene and, what with braying of donkeys and shouting of the wood-merchants, there is enough noise too.

There is one more blessing that comes from the palm tree and which we have forgotten. That is shade. Arabia is a hot and dry country. The summer sun is much more piercing than in America and the summer is much longer. When you travel a long camel journey across the desert, oh how good it is to come to a grove of palm trees and rest! Such a place is called an _oasis_ and underneath the palms there are always springs of water. I can well understand how happy the children of Israel were after their journey in the desert, when they came to Elim where "there were twelve wells of water and threescore and ten palm trees." In summer time many of the town Arabs leave their houses in the city and go to camp out in the date-gardens to enjoy the cool shades. The Arab poets have written many poems in praise of their favourite tree and fruit, but none of them are so funny as these lines which Campbell wrote from Algiers where the date tree also flourishes and with which we will end this chapter:

"Though my letter bears date as you view From the land of the date-bearing palm I will palm no more puns upon you."

VIII

THE SHEPHERD OF THE SEWING MACHINE

In the blue waters of the Persian Gulf there lies a coral island called Bahrein. At a few hundred yards to the northeast of it is a still smaller island shaped like a pack-saddle, where palm trees and white coral rock houses are reflected in the salt water at high tide. The little island town is called Moharrek, that is, the "Burning Place," because it is very hot there in summer. After sailing across in a boat one day, and wending our way through a dirty bazar full of flies and Arabs, we were directed to the house of the man called "The Shepherd of the Sewing Machine." His real name is Mohammed bin Sooltaan, but nobody knows him by any other name or title than _Räee el karkhan_, which literally means shepherd of the sewing machine. Let me tell you his story and how he got that queer name.

Years ago, as pilot on the native boats that sail from Bahrein to Bombay, Calcutta, Zanzibar and Jiddah, he had experience of a wider world than the little island where he was born. But the life was a hard one and his wages were small. Moreover, the coming of steamships up the Gulf took away the profit of the sailing craft, and so Mohammed fared from bad to worse. He loved an Arab lass with plaited, well-greased locks of hair and a pleasant face, but her father asked a larger dowry than he could ever pay.

An Arab young man must always pay a good price to the father of his sweetheart before he is allowed to marry her. But this Mohammed was too poor to pay the price asked. What a queer topsy-turvy custom it is for a man to buy his wife just as he buys a horse or a camel! The Arabs often ask how much a wife costs in America and wonder that we are not allowed by the Christian laws to send away our wives and marry others.