The Syrian Christ Part 11

A large baking is a source of pride as well as a means of security. A Syrian housewife is proud to have the oven all to herself for a whole day. It is a disgrace--nay, a curse--to have a small baking, or to buy bread in small quant.i.ty, "one weight" at a time. One of the terrible threats to Israel, recorded in the twenty-sixth chapter of the Book of Leviticus, the twenty-sixth verse, is this: "When I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall {203} bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight: and ye shall eat and not be satisfied." My mother often admonished us to be thankful that we were not like those who had to buy their bread by weight--that is, in small quant.i.ties.

But this saying, "and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight," may mean also the weighing of the portions delivered to the various members of the family, in order that no one may receive more than any other, and that the scanty supply of food may be more carefully doled out. However, probably because no real famine ever occurred in Syria within my memory, I never knew of the actual resorting, within the family circle, to such severe restrictions in the distribution of the daily food. A similar practice, however, prevails among the Arab tribes in sharing their meager supply of water, while traveling in the desert. In order to insure equality, a pebble is placed in the bottom of a small wooden cup into which the water is poured. The draught {204} which each traveler receives at long intervals is "the covering of the pebble," that is, only the quant.i.ty of water needed just to cover the pebble in the cup.

[1] Mal. iv: 1.

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CHAPTER III

"COMPEL THEM TO COME IN"

The hospitality of Orientals is proverbial the world over. And while some Westerners have an exaggerated idea of Oriental generosity, the son of the East is not unjustly famous for his readiness to offer to wayfarers the shelter of his roof and his bread and salt. The person who fails to extend such hospitality brings reproach, not only upon himself, but upon his whole clan and town.

But whether hospitality is extended to strangers or to friends, it is the man who entertains, and not the woman. The invitation is extended in the name of the husband alone, or, if the husband is not living, in the name of the eldest son. In the case of a widow who has no male children, a man relative is asked to act as host. The man of the house should not allow a wayfarer to pa.s.s him without offering him a "morsel of bread to sustain his heart." So did {206} Abraham of old extend hospitality to the three mysterious strangers who came upon him "in the plains of Mamre," as stated in the eighteenth chapter of Genesis, the second and following verses, "And he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground, and said, My Lord, if now I have found favor in thy sight, pa.s.s not away, I pray thee, from thy servant; ... and I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts: after that ye shall pa.s.s on."

How natural and how truly Syrian all this sounds! Sarah was not at all slighted because Abraham did not say, "Sarah and I will be glad to have you stop for lunch with us, if you can." On the contrary, she was greatly honored by not being mentioned in the invitation.

We have another striking ill.u.s.tration of this Syrian custom in the parable of the prodigal son, in the fifteenth chapter of St. Luke's Gospel. Here we are told that, when the wayward {207} boy returned to his father's house, desolate but penitent, it was the father who ran out to meet the son and "fell on his neck, and kissed him." It was the father who said to his servants, "Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry." I know well that the mother of the prodigal could not have been less affectionate nor less effusive in her welcome to her poor son than his father was. But in harmony with the best traditions of the East, and without the least intention of slighting the good mother, the record takes no notice of her.

It should be stated here that the prominent mention in the Gospels of Mary and Martha as Jesus' friends and entertainers is due to the fact that to those women the Master was not merely a _guest_, but a _saint_, nay, the "promised One of Israel." As such Jesus was a privileged personage. Yet--and it is not at all strange in view of Oriental customs--Jesus took with him none of his women friends and disciples on such {208} great occasions as the Transfiguration and the Last Supper.

To extend hospitality in genuine Syrian fashion is no small undertaking. Brevity on such occasions is the soul of stinginess.

Oriental effusiveness and intensity of speech are never more strenuously exercised than at such times. The brief form of the American invitation, "I should be pleased to have you dine with us, if you can," however sincere, would seem to an Oriental like an excuse to escape the obligation of hospitality. Again, the ready acceptance of an invitation in the West would seem to the son of the East utterly undignified. Although the would-be guest could accept, he must be as insistent in saying, "No, I can't," as the would-be host in saying, "Yes, you must."

Approaching his hoped-for guest, a Syrian engages him in something like the following dialogue, characterized by a glow of feeling which the translation can only faintly reveal:--

"Enn.o.ble us [_sherrifna_] by your presence."

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"I would be enn.o.bled [_nitsherref_] but I cannot accept."

"That cannot be."

"Yea, yea, it must be."

"No, I swear against you [_aksim 'aleik_] by our friendship and by the life of G.o.d. I love just to acquaint you with my bread and salt."

"I swear also that I find it impossible [_gheir mimkin_] to accept.

Your bread and salt are known to all."

"Yea, do it just for our own good. By coming to us you come to your own home. Let us repay your bounty to us [_fadhlek_]."

"_Astaghfero Allah_ [by the mercy of G.o.d] I have not bestowed any bounty upon you worth mentioning."

Here the host seizes his guest by the arm and with an emphatic, "I _will not_ let you go," pulls at him and would drag him bodily into his house. Then the guest, happy in being vanquished "with honor,"

consents to the invitation.

Do you now understand fully the meaning {210} of the pa.s.sage in the fourteenth chapter of Luke's Gospel? "A certain man made a great supper, and bade many ... and they all with one consent began to make excuse.... And the Lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and _compel_ them to come in, that my house may be filled."[1] So also did Lydia, "a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira," invite the apostles, who had converted her to the new faith.

In the sixteenth chapter of the Book of Acts, the fifteenth verse, Paul says, "And when she was baptized, and her household, she besought us, saying, If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there. _And she constrained us_."

In the interior towns and villages of Syria the ancient custom still prevails that, when a stranger arrives in a town late in the day, he goes and sits in the "open s.p.a.ce" (_saha_). While not designed to be so, this open s.p.a.ce corresponds to the village common. In the English Bible it is called "the street." Streets, however, {211} are unknown to Syrian towns. Sitting in the _saha_, the stranger is the guest of the whole village. The citizen who first sees such a wayfarer must invite him to his home in real Syrian fashion. Failing in this, he brings disgrace, not only upon himself, but upon the whole town. It is needless to say that no people ever rise to the height of their ideals, and that failure to be "given to hospitality" occurs, even in the East.

In the nineteenth chapter of the Book of Judges we have the record of a stranger who sat in the _saha_ of a certain village, but was not offered the usual hospitality very readily. This man was a Levite, and, with his wife, servant, and a couple of a.s.ses, was on his way from Bethlehem "toward the side of Mount Ephraim." "And the sun went down upon them when they were by Gibeah, which belongeth to Benjamin. And they turned aside thither, to go in and to lodge in Gibeah: and when he went in, he sat him down in a street of the city; for there was no man that took them into his house to lodging. And, behold, there came an old man from {212} his work out of the field at even.... And when he had lifted up his eyes, he saw a wayfaring man in the street of the city: and the old man said, Whither goest thou? and whence comest thou? And he said unto him, We are pa.s.sing from Bethlehem-Judah toward the side of Mount Ephraim ... but I am now going to the house of the Lord; and there is no man that receiveth me to house."

And in order to add to the shame of the inhospitable village the stranger adds, "Yet there is both straw and provender for our a.s.ses; and there is bread and wine also for me, and for thy handmaid [the wife], and for the young man which is with thy servants: there is no want of any thing." What a rebuke to that community!

"And the old man said, Peace be with thee; howsoever let all thy wants lie upon me; _only lodge not in the street_. So he brought him into his house, and gave provender unto the a.s.ses: and they washed their feet, and did eat and drink."

The old man saved the name of the town.

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One of the n.o.blest and most tender utterances of Job is the thirty-second verse of the thirty-first chapter. Here the afflicted patriarch, in pleading his own cause before the Most High, says, "The stranger did not lodge in the street, but I opened my doors to the traveller."

Syrian rules of hospitality make it improper for a householder to ask a guest who has suddenly come to him such a question as "Have you had your lunch?" before putting food before him. The guest, even though he has not had the meal asked about by the host, considers it below his dignity to make the fact known. Upon the arrival of such a visitor, the householder greets him with the almost untranslatable words, "_Ahlan wa sahlan_." Literally translated, these words are "kindred and smooth ground"; which, elucidated further, mean, "You have come not to strangers but to those who would be to you as your kindred are, and among us you tread smooth and easy ground." And even while the guest is being yet saluted by the man of the house in the {214} protracted manner of Oriental greeting, the good wife proceeds to prepare "a morsel" for the wayfarer, whatever hour of the day or night it may happen to be. The food then is placed before the guest and he is "compelled" to eat.

There is in the eleventh chapter of St. Luke's Gospel a parabolic saying which is uncommonly rich in allusions to Syrian home life.

Beginning with the fifth verse we read: "And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him; and he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee?"

Here we have a man to whom a guest comes at midnight; he must set something before him, whether the wayfarer is really hungry or not.

The host happens to be short of bread, and he sets out to borrow a few loaves. Owing to the h.o.m.ogeneous character of life in the East, {215} borrowing has been developed there into a fine art. The man at the door asks for three loaves. Three of those thin Syrian loaves is the average number for one individual's meal. It was for this reason that the Master used this number in the parable, and not because that was all the bread the occasion required. For obvious reasons, the host needed to put before his guest more than the exact number of loaves necessary for one adult's meal. Perhaps because he is very sleepy, the man "within" runs counter to the best Syrian traditions in his answer.

His excuse--that because the door is shut he cannot open it and accommodate his friend--has been a puzzle to a host of Western readers of the Bible. Could he not have opened the door? Or, as a certain preacher asked in my hearing, "Could it be possible that the man, because of fear of robbers in that country, had a sort of combination lock on his door which could not be easily opened?" The simple fact is that in Syria as a rule the door of a house is never shut, summer or winter, until bedtime. The words of my {216} father and mother to me whenever they thought that I had "remained wakeful"--that is, "stayed up"--longer than I should after they had gone to bed,--"Shut the door and go to sleep,"--still ring in my ears. What the man "within" meant was, not that he could not open the door, but that at such a late hour, _after the door had been shut_, it was no time to call for such favors as the neighbor asked for.

"And my children are with me in bed." From this it may be inferred easily that individual beds and individual rooms are well-nigh unknown to the common people of Syria. The cushion-mattresses are spread side by side in the living room, in a line as long as the members of the family, sleeping close together, require. The father sleeps at one end of the line, and the mother at the other end, "to keep the children from rolling from under the cover." So the man was absolutely truthful when he said by way of an excuse, "My children are with me in bed."

In the remaining portion of this parable, as in that of the unrighteous judge, Jesus {217} emphasizes, by commending to his disciples, the Syrian habit of importuning. "I say unto you, though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth." Again, the Master gives dignity and elevation to the common customs of his people by using them as means of approach to high spiritual ideals, when he says, "And I say unto you, ask and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."

[1] Verses 16-23.

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CHAPTER IV

DELAYING THE DEPARTING GUEST

The best rules of Syrian hospitality require that when a guest from a distant town makes it known what day he expects to take his leave, the host should do his best to trick his visitor into forgetfulness of the time set, or devise some other means to delay his departure as much as possible. On the day he wishes to depart, the wayfarer says to his host, "Your exceeding bounty has covered me, far above my head; may G.o.d perpetuate your house and prolong the lives of your dear ones. May He enable me some day to reward you for your boundless generosity. And now I who have been so immersed in the sea of your hospitality [_baher karamek_] beg you to permit me to depart." Then the host, confessing his unworthiness of such praise and manifesting great surprise at the sudden announcement, begs his guest to "take no thought of departing."

The {219} guest insists that he "must go," even though he could stay.

The host says, "Stay, I pray you [_betrajjak_], until you partake of our noon meal; then you may depart." After the noon meal the host says, "I beg you to consider that the day is already far spent, and your journey is long, and the road is dangerous for night travel.