Chapter 3

Mohammed could not stay at home so he once more went in a ship to Jiddah, the port to Mecca, where pilgrims from all the Moslem world exchange thought and money for bad bread and fanaticism. And yet even here the civilisation of the West tries to enter. Wandering through the bazars Mohammed for the first time saw a sewing machine, in the hands of an Indian tailor. A marvel to the sailor fisherman, indeed! Almost as great a miracle to him as the Koran. The more he looked the more he coveted, and he could not pass the place without reckoning up the possible profits of such an investment should he return with it to his native island. The result was that he forswore the sea and preferred another kind of wheel to that of the pilot. With many mutual _wallahs_ the bargain was concluded and the machine reached Bahrein. It was the first on the islands, and all the sheikhs came to see its marvellous build and wonderful work. Mohammed has a Western head on Eastern shoulders, and there was not a screw or tension from treadle to shuttle, which he did not learn the use of. It is unnecessary to state at the cost of how many broken needles he became proficient. Amid cries of _ajeeb, ajeeb_, the first Arab shirt was stitched together, and even the youngsters on the street imitated the whirrr-clic-whirrr of the machine. As for Mohammed, he sewed on, and while his sandalled feet worked the treadle his mind worked out a problem something like this: Three long-shirts a day and an _abba_, at one _kran_ per shirt and two for the abba, thirty-five krans per week, how long will it take to pay the dowry? An _abba_ is a large over-garment worn by both men and women in Arabia. It is like a cape or overcoat but has no sleeves nor buttons. The Arabs in Bahrein put a great deal of pretty embroidery work on these garments and some of them are worth twenty or thirty dollars. But the sewing is done very cheaply. A kran is a Persian coin worth about ten cents; can you figure out how much Mohammed earned in a month?

The Shepherd of the Machine kept working away and when his hopes grew strong he sang at his work. In a few months he paid a visit to the Mullah (the Moslem priest or teacher), and that same night the Arab fiddles and drums rang out merry music around the palm-leaf hut of his beloved bride. But the music of the machine sounded still sweeter next morning. Daily bread, with rice, fish and dates, and on rare occasions even mutton, all came out of the machine. He loved the very iron of it and, as he told us, read a prayer over it every morning: _Bismillahi er rahman er raheem._ His was the only machine, and a small monopoly soon makes a capitalist. His palm branch hut was exchanged for a house of stone; and Allah blessed him greatly. No shepherd was ever more tender to his little lambs than Mohammed to the old machine.

When we entered the house on our first visit, there stood the machine! Not much the worse for wear, and with "_Pfaff_. C. Theodosius, Constantinople," still legible on the nickel-plate. But the old machine had found a rival. By its side stood another make of machine which looked strangely familiar to American eyes. It was while comparing the machines and drinking Arab coffee that we learned from Mohammed why he prized the old one as better. "Wallah," he said, "I would not sell it for many times its original price. There is blessing in it, and all I have comes from that machine, praise be to Allah." And so we sipped his cups and heard his story and ceased to wonder why he was called the Shepherd of the Sewing machine. The shepherd has a brother who wants to learn English and goes to Bombay every year--but that is another story.

There are many other sewing machines in Bahrein now, but Mohammed's was the first, and he introduced the others. Do you not think that he should be called the Christopher Columbus of Bahrein tailors?

IX

THE CHILDREN OF THE DESERT

About one-third of Topsy-turvy Land is desert and is the home of those Arabs that wander about from place to place and are called nomads or _Bedouin_. The word Bedouin means a desert-dweller. But you must not think that a desert is a flat country covered with a deep layer of sand without trees or shrubs. Oh no! There are such deserts in Arabia too, but the greater part of what is called desert is much more attractive and is only _desert_ because it has no settled population and no villages. The soil is often very good and in springtime after the rains the whole of northern Arabia (where most of the nomads pitch their tents) is one vast prairie of wild flowers and green grass. The Arabs of the North are rich in flocks and herds. I am sure you can still find some who, like Job, have seven thousand sheep and three thousand camels and a very great household. They all live in tents and the tents of Arabia are not white and round like circus tents but jet black and square or oblong. You remember the Bible always speaks of the _black_ tents of Kedar. They are black because they are woven from goat's hair which is used also for their garments and is almost as good a waterproof covering as india rubber. But when you have to spend a long hot day under such a roof as I have done you feel sorry for the Arabs that they have no better protection against the blazing sun. Everything is home-made and clumsy, but shall I tell you what I have found? There is no warmer hospitality in all the wide world than in these tents of Kedar. A few weeks ago I spent a Sabbath day resting by the way in one of these tents. The women brought water to cool my head; a great bowl of camel's milk was our drink even before they asked our errand; and at night they killed a fat kid and made a guest meal fit for an epicure.

The Arabs of the desert are more ignorant than those of the towns, but they are much kinder to strangers and treat their wives and children better. Their life is rather monotonous, but they enjoy it. Like the American Indians they prefer a tent to a house, and would rather change their home every day than settle down as farmers. When pasture fails for their flocks of sheep the chief gives notice and on the morrow the whole camp has moved away. Some tribes move every month and go for a long distance to find fresh pastures.

The Bedouin are divided into many tribes and clans. Some of them are friendly to each other but nearly all are at war with one another all the year round. Robbery and murder are very frequent. Every one goes armed with a long spear or with a gun, and many carry a war club and a sword as well. The largest Arab tribes and the wealthiest are the _Anaeze_ and the _Shommar_. They have many fine horses. In the picture you see a group of them armed with their long spears. The spear of the leader is ornamented with a tuft of ostrich feathers; these spears are often over twelve feet long and have a sharp steel lance at the end. The Arabs are fond of games, especially galloping their horses and playing at war. They are very skillful riders and kind to their steeds; they do not spend much time in grooming them and they never use a whip and seldom a bit. Their bridle is like our halter strap, and the horse is so well trained that he needs no iron bit in his mouth.

One of the most interesting of all the Arab tribes is called _the Suleibi_. They are despised by all the other Arabs and seem to be of a different race. The women of this tribe are remarkable for their beauty and the men for their skill as blacksmiths and tinkers. They are always sought after to do the tinkering for the Arabs of all other tribes. They have no camels or horses but ride little donkeys and dress in gazelle skins. Some people think that this tribe is a remnant of the Christian population of Arabia; they have many curious beliefs and their name means, "Those-of-the-Cross." Perhaps some day a missionary will bring them back to a true knowledge of the Crucified One.

The nomads of Arabia are happy in springtime when there is enough grass for their flocks and the wells of the desert are full of water. But after the long summer drought there is often a great scarcity of food and even famine in many parts of Arabia. Then the nomads eat anything and drink the brackish water from the bottom of a mud pool with relish. In no country in the world is water so costly as in Arabia; nowhere is it so carefully used; an Arab never wastes a drop of water and looks surprised and pained when an European traveller rinses out a cup before drinking! The nomad Arabs eat locusts and wild honey as did John the Baptist. But I have also seen them eat the big lizards of the desert and the jerboas--a sort of desert rat. An Arab once stood amidst a circle of jewellers at Busrah and said: "On one occasion I had missed my way in the desert, and having no road-provision left, I had given myself up for lost, when all at once I found a bag of pearls. Never shall I forget that relish and delight so long as I mistook them for parched wheat; nor that bitterness and disappointment when I discovered that they were real pearls!" This story is told by a Persian poet and although it may not be true yet it teaches a lesson. To a hungry man a handful of wheat is better than all the pearls of the ocean.

In his tent the Arab is very lazy. His only occupation is feeding his horses or milking his camels. The Arab girls go out to take care of the flocks while the wife performs all the domestic duties. She grinds wheat in the hand-mill; kneads and bakes bread; makes butter by shaking the milk in a leather bag; fetches water in a skin; works at the loom and is busy all the time. The Arab smokes his pipe, drinks coffee and talks to his friends; unless he is on the march or on a robbery excursion his life seems very lazy.

Scarcely any of the Bedouin can read, and they have neither schools nor mosques. The Bedouin sometimes say, "Mohammed's religion cannot have been intended for us; it demands washings, but we have no water; alms, but we have no money; pilgrimage to Mecca, but we are always wandering and God is everywhere." Yet outwardly they observe the Moslem religion of which they know so little. In our next chapter you will read how earnestly even the nomad children pray in the desert. And I believe God loves these sons of Ishmael and will yet bring them back to Abraham's faith. Don't you think so too?

X

NOORAH'S PRAYER

For many days the sailing craft from Bahrein had been unloading Indian wares at the port of Ojeir on the Hassa coast, and for many hours the busy throng of Bedouin drivers and merchants and onlookers were loading the caravan, emphasising their task or their impatience with great oaths, almost as guttural and angry as the noise of the camels. At length, with the pious cry of _Tawakalna_, "we have trusted in God," they are off.

A caravan is composed of companies, and while the whole host numbered seven hundred camels, with merchants and travellers and drivers, _our_ company from Ojeir to Hofhoof counted only six. There was Salih and Nasir, a second son of the desert, both from Riad; a poor unfortunate lad with stumpy hands and feet, who limped about on rag shoes and seemed quite happy; there was Noorah and her sister, and lastly, the missionary.

But for the shuffling of the desert sand and the whack of a driving stick the caravan marched in silence. The sun shone full in our faces as it slowly sank in the west, its last rays coloured the clouds hanging over the lowlands of Hassa a bright red, and when it disappeared we heard the sheikhs of the companies, one after the other, call to prayer. Only a part of the caravan responded. The Turkish soldiers on horseback kept on their way; the most pious of the merchants had already urged their beasts ahead of the rest and had finished a duty that interfered with a speedy journey and the first choice of location at the night encampment; some excused themselves by quoting a Koran text, and others took no notice of the call. Not so the Bedouin child Noorah and her younger sister. They had trudged on foot four long hours, armed with sticks to urge on that lazy white camel, always loitering to snatch a bite of desert-thorn with his giant jaws. A short time before sunset I saw the two children mount the animal by climbing up its neck, as only Arabs can, but now, at call to prayer they devoutly slipped down. Hand in hand they ran ahead a short distance, shuffled aside some sand with their bare feet, rubbed some on their hands, (as do all pious Moslems in the absence of water), faced Mecca, and prayed.

As they did then, so at sunrise and at noon and at four o'clock and sunset and when the evening star disappeared--five times a day--they prayed. It is not true, as is generally supposed, that women in Moslem lands do not pray. Only at Mecca, as far as I know, of all Arabia, are they allowed a place in the _public mosques_, but at home a larger per cent. observe the times of prayer than do the men.

When Noorah had ended her prayer and resumed the task of belabouring the white camel, she turned to me with a question, _"Laish ma tesully anta?"_ which with Bedouin bluntness means, "_You_, why don't you pray?" The question set me musing half the night; not, I confess, about my own prayers, but about hers. Why did Noorah pray? What did Noorah pray? Did she understand that

Prayer is the burden of a sigh, the falling of a tear, The upward glancing of the eye when only God is near,

as well as the dead formalism of the mosque? How could I answer her question in a way that she might well understand? And if hers, too, was a sincere prayer, as I believe,--the prayer of an ignorant child of the desert,--did she pray words or thoughts? What do Noorah and her more than two million Bedouin sisters ask of God five times daily? Leaving out vain repetitions, this is what they say:

"In the name of God the Merciful, the Compassionate; Praise be to God who the two worlds made; Thee do we entreat and Thee do we supplicate; Lead us in the way the straight, The way of those whom Thou dost compassionate, Not of those on whom is hate Nor those that deviate. Amen."

It is the first chapter of the Koran and is used by Moslems as we use the Lord's Prayer. The words are very beautiful I think, don't you?

Whether Noorah understood what she asked I know not; but to me who saw and heard in the desert twilight, (as under like conditions to you), the prayer was full of pathos. The desert! where God is, and where but for His mercy and compassion death and solitude would reign alone; the desert, a world of its own kind, a sea of sand, with no life in it except the Living One, and over it only His canopy of stars--God of the two worlds! And to that God, than whom there is no other, and whom they ignorantly worship, these sons and daughters of outcast Ishmael bow their faces in the dust and five times daily entreat and supplicate to be led aright in the way of truth.

They ask to be directed into the _straight_ way, but oh how crooked is the way of God which Mohammed taught in his book! Sadder still, what a crooked way it is that the Moslems walk! Impure words, lying lips, hands that steal and feet that run after cruelty--these are what children in Arabia possess. But I dare say that some of them are really sorry for their sins and when they pray like Noorah in the desert they want to have peace and pardon. Are they looking unconsciously perhaps for the footprints in the desert of One who said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life"?

Alas, Noorah and her many sisters (your sisters, too) have never seen His beauty nor heard of His love! They do not know that the "way of those whom Thou dost compassionate" is the new and living way through Christ's cross and death. They are ignorant of the awful word, "He that believeth not on the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." Has God the Merciful then not heard Noorah's prayer? Will He not answer it? Is His mercy to these children of Abraham clean gone forever? How long they have waited and how many of the desert children are now sleeping in little desert graves! Do you not think God wants _you_ to carry the gospel to them and send them teachers to learn the way of Jesus?

Think of Noorah's question, "_You_, why don't you pray?" Think of Christ's words, _"Go tell quickly."_

"ARABIA THE LOVED."

There's a land since long neglected, There's a people still rejected, But of truth and grace elected, In His love for them.

Softer than their night wind's fleeting, Richer than their starry tenting, Stronger than their sands protecting, Is His love for them.

To the host of Islam's leading, To the slave in bondage bleeding, To the desert dweller pleading, Bring His love to them.

Through the promise on God's pages, Through His work in history's stages, Through the cross that crowns the ages, Show His love to them.

With the prayer that still availeth With the power that prevaileth, With the love that never faileth, Tell His love to them.

Till the desert's sons now aliens, Till its tribes and their dominions, Till Arabia's raptured millions, Praise His love of them.

--J.G.L.

XI

PICTURES WITH WORDS ONLY

You already know many curious facts about the people of Topsy-turvy Land. Would you like to hear something about their language and their writing? The language of this land is very old, almost as old as its camels or its desert sands. The Moslems even go so far as to say that Adam and Eve spoke Arabic in Paradise and they say it is called the language of the angels. It is written from right to left just in the opposite way of this page of English writing. The Arabic alphabet has twenty-eight letters, all of which are considered consonants. There are marks put above and below the line to show the sounds of the vowels; just as we wrote the word _potato_ in our first chapter.

Arabic grammar is much more difficult than English grammar, and even the boys who attend the big Arabic college of El Azhar in Cairo, Egypt, must find its study a bugbear. Just think of learning _fifteen_ conjugations instead of the much smaller number in Latin or Greek! The books used in Moslem schools would look very crude and dull to you who learnt your A, B, C, from an illustrated primer perhaps with coloured pictures.

Strict Mohammedans do not allow their boys and girls to have pictures in their books, because they say all pictures are idols. And yet the love for beauty and the desire for ornament on the written or printed page was so strong with the Arabs that they began from the earliest times to use their alphabet to make arabesques. Arabesque is a big word and it really means an Arab picture. But these pictures of the Arabs (which you find on the arches of old mosques, in books and on tombstones) are ornaments or designs made out of the beautifully curved letters of the alphabet. The old Arab copyists and their sculptors wrote and carved the words of the Koran, or the names of God, etc., in all sorts of ways to make pictures _out of words only_, lest they break the law of their prophet. Here are two examples of how pictures can be made out of letters. You have all doubtless heard of a "wordless book"; and some of you have books without words and full of pictures. Here is a picture made out of the Arabic alphabet, and every curve and dot belongs to the words so curiously written. I copied them out of an Arabic treatise on penmanship, for you. The face is not at all pretty, and yet Moslem lads think it is very clever to bring this likeness of man out of the four names, _Allah, Mohammed, Ali_ and _Hassan_. These words you notice are written twice, both to the left and to the right. What a disgrace to the holy name of God to put that of three Arabs with it in a monograph! It is very sad to hear some Moslems say that they trust in _these_ people to intercede for them with God. If you have read what sinful lives these people led when they were the chief rulers in Arabia, you will almost agree with me in calling this first picture a Moslem idol.

There are many Moslems in Bahrein who have hanging up in their rooms these monograms or designs. One favourite I have often seen contains only five names: _Allah, Mohammed, Ali, Hassan and Hussein_. The people who make so much of these descendants of Mohammed are called _Shiahs_; the other Moslems who think they are more orthodox are called _Sunnites_.

What do you think of our second picture? Is not the design very pretty for an embroidery pattern? The motto is written twice; once from the right and once _backward_ from the left, the same as in the other picture. The words are taken from the Koran and are as true as they are beautiful. _Man yattawakil ala Allah fa hooa hasbahoo_; which means, "Whoever trusts in God will find Him sufficient." That surely contradicts the other picture, does it not? And yet they are both from the same copy-book. There are many contradictions in the religion of Mohammed. I only hope that when Christ's gospel has conquered Arabia, the name of Jesus will be written on every mosque and in every heart; then contradiction will give way to the truth, and whoever trusts in Christ will find Him sufficient.

Would it not be nice to make something pretty for use in the home or in the Sunday-school, and embroider the Arabic words on it? It would be a constant reminder of Arabia and of the beautiful motto--only an Arabic version of Paul's words, _Our sufficiency is of God._

Our last illustration to close this chapter is an example of Arabic every-day penmanship. It was written in the mountains of Oman, and is a letter from a poor cripple asking for a copy of the Psalms and other books. It was sent to our brother Peter J. Zwemer a year before he died, when he was on a missionary journey in Oman.

XII

THE QUEER PENNIES OF OMAN AND OF HASSA

If Jesus Himself, on one occasion, said, "Show me a penny," and preached a sermon from it, surely we may follow his example and learn something from these strange coins which you see in the pictures at the beginning and end of this chapter. The coin on this page comes from Oman, the home of the Arabian camel and one of its most fertile provinces. Perhaps some of the boys and girls can tell where Oman is and give its boundaries without looking in the geography, but I am sure none of you can read the inscription on the penny, and tell what it all means. Who is Fessul bin Turkee? What is an Imam? How much is one-quarter of an Anna? And when did this queer coin come fresh from the mint?