The Women of the Arabs Part 17

But his wife, Im Isbir, was not willing to give up. She rebuked her husband and took hold of his arm, and actually dragged him back to his house, to save him the shame of having denied the Gospel. He stood firm, and afterwards united with the Church.

Here comes Im Isbir. Poor woman, she is a widow now. Her husband died and left her with these little children, and last night her valuable cow died, and she is in great distress. Yusef, the preacher, says she is the most needy person in Safita. You would think so from the ragged appearance of the children. They are like the children in Eastern Turkey, whom Mr. Williams of Mardin used to describe, whose garments were so ragged and tattered that there was hardly cloth enough to _make borders for the holes_! They dig up roots in the fields for food, and now and then the neighbors give them a little of their coa.r.s.e corn bread. The Greeks tell her to turn back to them and they will help her, but she says, "when one has found the light, can she turn back into the darkness again?" Yusef wishes us to walk in and sit down, as the people are anxious to see us. He lives in the church from necessity. He cannot get a house in the village, excepting these dark cavern-like rooms with damp floors, and so the missionaries told him to occupy one half of the church room. A curtain divides it into two rooms and on Sunday the curtain is drawn, his things are piled up on one side, and the women and girls sit in that part, while the men and boys sit on the other side.

All sit on mats on the floor. Is that cradle hanging from the ring in the arch between the two rooms, kept there on Sunday? Yes, and when I preached here last June, Yusef's baby was swinging there during the whole service. One of the women kept it swinging gently, by pulling a cord, which hung down from it. It did not disturb the meeting at all. No one noticed it. They have calves and cows, donkeys and goats in their own houses at night, and sleep sweetly enough, so that the swinging of a hanging cradle in the inside of the church is not thought to be at all improper.

Do you see that shelf on the wall? It reminds me of a little girl named Miriam who once came to your Aunt Annie in Deir Mimas to ask about the Sidon school, whither she was going in a few weeks. She told Miriam that she would have to be thoroughly washed and combed every day, and would sleep on a _bedstead_. Then Miriam asked permission to see a bedstead, as she did not know what it could be. The next night, about midnight, Miriam's mother heard something drop heavily on the floor, and then a child crying. She went across the room, and there was Miriam sitting on the mat. "What is the matter, Miriam?" she asked. Miriam said, "mother, the Sit told me I was to sleep on a bedstead in Sidon school, and I thought I would practice beforehand, so I tried to sleep on the shelf, and tumbled off in my sleep!"

Abu Asaad says the Nusairy Sheikh who was arrested some months ago has been poisoned. Poisoning used to be very common in Syria. If we should call at the house of a Nusairy, and he brought coffee for us to drink, he would take a sip himself out of the cup before giving it to us, to show that it was not poisoned. Once Uncle S. and Aunt A. were invited out to dine in Hums at the house of the deacon of the church. His mother is an ignorant woman, and had often threatened to kill him. When they had eaten, they suddenly were taken ill, and suffered much from the effects of it. It was found that the mother had put poison into the food, intending to kill her son, the missionaries, and the other invited guests, but through the mercy of G.o.d none of them were seriously injured.

Michaiel says that they have only half a crop of corn this year, as the _locusts_ devoured the other half in the spring. You remember I sent you some locusts' wings once, in a letter. When they appear in the land, the Pashas and Mudirs and Kaimakams give orders to the people to go out and gather the eggs of the locusts as soon as they begin to settle down to bury themselves in the earth. The body of the female locust is like the sp.a.w.n of a fish, filled with one ma.s.s of eggs. Each man is obliged to bring so many ounces of these eggs to the Pasha and have them weighed and then burned. A tailor of Beirut brought a bag of them, and as it was late, put them in his shop for the night and went home. He was unwell for a few days and when he went to his shop again, opened the door, and thousands of little black hopping creatures, like imps, came like a cloud into his face. They had hatched out in his absence.

This is a fearful land for lying; in these mountains around us, you cannot depend on a word you hear. The people say that in the beginning of the world, Satan came down to the earth with seven bags of lies, which he intended to distribute in the seven kingdoms of the earth. The first night after he reached the earth he slept in Syria, and opened one of the bags, letting the lies loose in the land. But while he was asleep, some one came and opened all the other bags! so that Syria got more than her share!

An old man in Beirut once said, "Sir, you must be careful what you believe, and whom you trust in this country. If there are twenty-four inches of hypocrisy in the world, twenty-three are in Syria." This man was a native of great experience. I think he was rather severe on his countrymen. Yet the people have had a hard training. The Nusairiyeh all lie. They do not even pretend to tell the truth. The Druze religion teaches the people that it is right to lie to all except Druzes. The Moslems are better than either of these two cla.s.ses, but they lie without a blush, and you must be very careful how you believe them.

Among the Maronite and Greek sects, their priests tell the people that they can forgive sins. When a man lies or steals or does anything else that is wicked, he pays a few piastres to the priest, who gives him what they call absolution or forgiveness. So the people can do what they please without fear, as the priest is ready to forgive them for money.

These sects call themselves Christian, but there is very little of Christianity among them. A Greek in Tripoli once told me that there was not a man in the Greek church in Tripoli who would not lie, excepting _one_ of the priests.

Leaving Safita, we will go back on a different road, crossing directly to the sea-sh.o.r.e, and then along the coast to Tripoli. Here is a little abject village, and the people look as abject as the village. Their neighbors laugh at them for their stupidity, and tell the following story: They have no wells in the village, and the little fountain is not sufficient for their cattle, so they water them from the Ramet or pool, which is filled by the rains and lasts nearly all summer. One year the water in the Ramet began to fail, and there was a quarrel between the two quarters of the village, as to which part should have the first right to the water. Finally they decided to divide the pool into two parts, by making a fence of poles across the middle of it. This worked very well. One part watered their cattle on one side and the other part on the other side. But one night there was a great riot in the village.

Some of the men from the north side saw a south-sider dipping up water from the north side and pouring it over the fence into the other part of the pool. Of course this made no difference, as the fence was nothing but open lattice work, but the people were too stupid to see that, so they fought and bruised one another for a long time.

In another village, _Aaleih_, near Beirut, the people were formerly so stupid that the Arabs say that once when the clouds came up the mountains and settled like a bank of fog under the cliff on which their village is built, they thought it was the sea, and went to fish in the clouds!

So you see the Syrians are as fond of humorous stories as other people.

PART IV.

But here we are coming upon a gypsy camp. The Arabs call them Nowar, and you will find that the Arab women of the villages are careful to keep an eye on their little children when the gypsies are around. They often steal children in the towns and cities, when they can find them straying away from home at dusk, and then sell them as servants in Moslem families. Last year we were all greatly interested in a story of this kind, which I know you will be glad to hear.

After the terrible ma.s.sacre in Damascus in 1860, thousands of the Greek and Greek Catholic families migrated to Beirut, and among them was a man named Khalil Ferah, who escaped the fire and sword with his wife and his little daughter Zahidy. I remember well how we were startled one evening in 1862, by hearing a crier going through the streets, "child lost! girl lost!" The next day he came around again, "child lost!" There was great excitement about it. The poor father and mother went almost frantic. Little Zahidy, who was then about six years old, was coming home from school with other girls in the afternoon, and they said a man came along with a sack on his back, and told Zahidy that her mother had sent him to buy her some sugar plums and then take her home, and she went away with him. It is supposed that he decoyed her away to some by-road and then put her into the great sack, and carried her off to the Arabs or the gypsies.

The poor father left no means untried to find her. He wrote to Damascus, Alexandria, and Aleppo, describing the child and begged his friends everywhere to watch for her, and send him word if they found her. There was one mark on the child, which, he said, would be certain to distinguish her. When she was a baby, and nursing at her mother's breast, her mother upset a little cup of scalding hot coffee upon the child's breast, which burned it to a blister, leaving a scar which could not be removed. This sign the father described, and his friends aided him in trying to find the little girl. They went to the encampments of the gypsies and looked at all the children, but all in vain. The father journeyed by land and by sea. Hearing of a little girl in Aleppo who could not give an account of herself, he went there, but it was not his child. Then he went to Damascus and Alexandria, and at length hearing that a French Countess in Ma.r.s.eilles had a little Syrian orphan girl whose parents were not known, he sent to Ma.r.s.eilles and examined the girl, but she was _not his child_. Months and years pa.s.sed on, but the father never ceased to speak and think of that little lost girl. The mother too was almost distracted.

At length light came. Nine years had pa.s.sed away, and the Beirut people had almost forgotten the story of the lost Damascene girl. Your uncle S.

and your Aunt A. were sitting in their house one day, in Tripoli, when Tannoos, the boy, brought word that a man and woman from Beirut wished to see them. They came in and introduced themselves. They were Khalil, the father of the little lost girl, and his sister, who had heard that Zahidy was in Tripoli, and had come to search for her. The mother was not able to leave home.

It seems that a native physician in Tripoli, named Sheikh Aiub el Hashim, was an old friend of the father and had known the family and all the circ.u.mstances of the little girl's disappearance, and for years he had been looking for her. At length he was called one day to attend a sick servant girl in the family of a Moslem named Syed Abdullah. The poor girl was ill from having been beaten in a cruel manner by the Moslem. Her face and arms were tattooed in the Bedawin style, and she told him that she was a Bedawin girl, and had been living here for some years, and her name was Khodra. While examining the bruises on her body, he observed a peculiar scar on her breast. He was startled. He looked again. It was precisely the scar that his friend had so often described to him. From her age, her features, her complexion and all, he felt sure that she was the lost child. He said nothing, but went home and wrote all about it to the father in Beirut. He hastened to Tripoli bringing his sister, as he being a man, could not be admitted to a Moslem hareem.

Then the question arose, how should the sister see the girl! They came and talked with your uncle, and went to Yanni and the other Vice Consuls, and at length they found out that the women of that Moslem family were skillful in making silk and gold embroidery which they sold.

So his sister determined to go and order some embroidered work, and see the girl. She talked with the Moslem women, and with their Bedawy servant girl, and made errands for the women to bring her specimens of their work, improving the opportunity to talk with the servant. She saw the scar, and satisfied herself from the striking resemblance of the girl to her mother, that she was the long-lost Zahidy.

The father now took measures to secure his daughter. The American, Prussian, English and French Vice Consuls sent a united demand to the Turkish Pasha, that the girl be brought to court to meet her father, and that the case be tried in the Mejlis, or City Council. The Moslems were now greatly excited. They knew that there were not less than twenty girls in their families who had been stolen in this way, and if one could be reclaimed, perhaps the rest might, so they resolved to resist.

They brought Bedawin Arabs to be present at the trial, and hired them to swear falsely. When the girl was brought in, the father was quite overcome. He could see the features of his dear child, but she was so disfigured with the Bedawin tattooing and the brutal treatment of the Moslems, that his heart sank within him. Yet he examined her, and took his oath that this was his daughter, and demanded that she be given up to him. The Bedawin men and women were now brought in. One swore that he was the father of the girl, and a woman swore that she was her mother.

Then several swore that they were her uncles, but it was proved that they were in no way related to the one who said he was her father. Other witnesses were called, but they contradicted one another. Then they asked the girl. Poor thing, she had been so long neglected and abused, that she _had forgotten her father_, and the Moslem women had threatened to kill her if she said she was his daughter, so she declared she was born among the Bedawin, and was a Moslem in religion. Money had been given to certain of the Mejlis, and they finally decided that the girl should go to the Moslem house of Derwish Effendi to await the final decision.

The poor father now went to the Consuls. They made out a statement of the case and sent it to the Consuls General in Beirut, who sent a joint dispatch to the Waly of all Syria, who lives in Damascus, demanding that as the case could not be fairly tried in Tripoli, the girl be brought to Beirut to be examined by a Special Commission. The Waly telegraphed at once to Tripoli, to have the girl sent on by the first steamer to Beirut. The Moslem women now told the girl that orders had come to have her killed, and that she was to be taken on a steamer as if to go to Beirut, but that really they were going to throw her into the sea, and that if she reached Beirut alive they would cut her up and burn her! So the poor child went on the steamer in perfect terror, and she reached Beirut in a state of exhaustion. When she was rested, a Commission was formed consisting of the Moslem Kadi of Beirut who was acting Governor, the political Agent, Delenda Effendi, the Greek Catholic Bishop Agabius, the Maronite Priest Yusef, and the agent of the Greek Bishop, together with all the members of the Executive Council.

Her father, mother and aunt were now brought in and sat near her. She refused to recognize them, and was in constant fear of being injured.

The Kadi then turned to her and said, "do not fear, my child. You are among friends. Do not be afraid of people who have threatened you. No one shall harm you." The Moslem Kadi, the Greek Catholic priests, and others having thus spoken kindly to her, the father and mother stated the history of how the little girl was lost nine years ago, and that she had a scar on her breast. The scar was examined, and all began to feel that she was really their own daughter. The girl began to feel more calm, and the Kadi told her that her own mother wanted to ask her a few questions.

Her mother now went up to her and said, "My child, don't you remember me?" She said "no I do not." "Don't you remember that _your name was once Zahidy_, and I used to call you, and you lived in a house with a little yard, and flowers before the door, and that you went with the little girls to school, and came home at night, and that one day a man came and offered you sugar plums and led you away and carried you off to the Arabs? Don't you know _me_, my _own daughter_?" The poor girl trembled; her lips quivered, and she said, "Yes, I _did_ have another name. I _was_ Zahidy. I did go with little girls. Oh, ya imme! My mother! you _are_ my mother," and she sprang into her arms and wept, and the mother wept and laughed, and the Moslem Kadi and the Mufti, and the priests and the Bishops and the Effendis and the great crowd of spectators wiped their eyes, and bowed their heads, and there was a great silence.

After a little the Kadi said, "it is enough. This girl _is_ the daughter of Kahlil Ferah. Sir, take your child, and Allah be with you!"

The father wiped away the tears and said, "Your Excellency, you see this poor girl all tattooed and disfigured. You see how ignorant and feeble she is. If she were not my child, there is nothing about her to make me wish to take her. But she is my own darling child, and with all her faults and infirmities, I love her." The whole Council then arose and congratulated the father and mother, and a great crowd accompanied them home. Throngs of people came to see her and congratulate the family, and after a little the girl was sent to a boarding school.

I can hardly think over this story even now without tears, for I think how glad I should have been to get back again a child of mine if it had been lost. And I have another thought too about that little lost girl.

If that father loved his daughter so as to search and seek for her, and expend money, and travel by land and sea for years, in trying to find her, and when at length he found her, so forlorn and wretched and degraded, yet loved her still because she was _his daughter_, do you not think that Jesus loves us even more? We were lost and wretched and forlorn. A worse being than Bedawin gypsies has put his mark on our hearts and our natures. We have wandered far, far away. We have served the world, and forgotten our dear Heavenly Father. We have even refused to receive Him when he has come near us. Yet Jesus came to seek and to save us. And when he found us so degraded and sinful and disfigured, He loved us still, because we are His own children. Don't you think that the little lost Damascene girl was thankful when she reached her home, and was loved and kindly treated by father and mother and relatives and friends? And ought we not to be very thankful when Jesus brings us home, and calls us "dear children" and opens the gate of heaven to us?

This story of the lost Damascene child calls to my mind a little song which the Maronite women in Lebanon sing to their babies as a lullaby.

The story is that a Prince's daughter was stolen by the Bedawin Arabs, and carried to their camp. She grew up and was married to a Bedawin Sheikh and had a little son. One day a party of muleteers came to the camp selling grapes, and she recognized them as from her own village.

She did not dare speak to them, so she began to sing a lullaby to her baby, and motioned to the grape-sellers to come near, and when the Bedawin were not listening, she would sing them her story in the same tone as the lullaby.

THE LULLABY.

Sleep, baby sleep! a sleep so sweet and mild, Sleep, my Arab boy, my little Bedawin child!

_Aside to the } Once I was a happy girl, grape-sellers_ } The Prince Abdullah's daughter.

Playing with the village maids, Bringing wood and water.

Suddenly the Bedawin Carried me away; Clothed me in the Aba robe And here they make me stay.

Sleep, baby sleep! a sleep so sweet and mild, Sleep, my Arab boy, my little Bedawin child!

_Aside_ Ye sellers of grapes hear what I say.

I had dressed in satin rich and gay.

They took my costly robes away, And dressed me in Aba coa.r.s.e and grey.

I had lived on viands costly and rare, And now raw camel's flesh is my fare.

Sleep, baby sleep! a sleep so sweet and mild, Sleep, my Arab boy, my little Bedawin child!

_Aside_ Oh seller of grapes, I beg you hear, Go tell my mother and father dear, That you have seen me here to-day.

Just by the Church my parents live, The Bedawin stole me on Thursday eve.

Let the people come and their sister save, Let them come with warriors bold and brave, Lest I die of grief and go to my grave.

The grape-sellers then go home, and the warriors come and rescue her, and take her home.

We will stop here a moment and make a pencil sketch of this Arab camp, but we must be very careful not to let them see us writing. They have a great fear of the art of writing, a superst.i.tious idea that a person who writes or sketches in their camp, is writing some charm or incantation to bring mischief upon them. I once heard of a missionary who went to an Arab village to spend the night. The people were all Maronites, and grossly ignorant. He pitched his tent and sat down to rest. Presently a crowd of rough young men came in and began to insult him. They demanded bakhshish, and handled his bedding and cooking utensils in a very brutal manner, and asked him if he had any weapons. He bethought himself of one weapon and began to use it. He took out a pencil and paper, and began to make a sketch of the ringleader. He looked him steadily in the eye, and then wrote rapidly with his pencil. The man began to tremble and slowly retreated and finally shouted to his companions, and off they all went.

Shortly after, they sent a man to beg Mr. L. not to cut off their heads!

Their priests teach them that the Protestants have the power of working magic, and that they draw a man's portrait and take it with them, and if the man does anything to displease them, they cut off the head of the picture and the man's head drops off! Mr. L. sent them word that they had better be very careful how they behaved. They did not molest him again.

Here we are near Tripoli, at the Convent of the _Sacred Fish_. What a beautiful spot! This large high building with its snow-white dome, and the great sycamore tree standing by this circular pool of crystal water, make a beautiful scene. What a crowd of Moslem boys! They have come all the way from Tripoli, about two miles, to feed the Sacred Fish. They are a gay looking company, with their red, green, blue, yellow, white and purple clothes, and their bright red caps and shoes, and some of them with white turbans. They come out on feast days and holidays to play on this green lawn and feed the fish. The old sheikh who keeps this holy place, has great faith in these fish. He says they are all good Moslems, and are inhabited by the souls of Moslem saints, and there is one black fish, the Sheikh of the saints, who does not often show himself to spectators. There are hundreds if not thousands of fish, resembling the dace or chubs of America. He says that during the Crimean war, many of the older ones went off under the sea to Sevastopol and fought the Russian infidels, and some of them came back wounded. The people think that if any one eats these fish he will die immediately. That I _know_ to be false, for I have tried it. When the American Consul was here in 1856, his Moslem Kawa.s.ses caught several of the fish, and brought them to Mr. Lyons' house. We had them cooked and ate them, but found them coa.r.s.e and unpalatable. That was sixteen years ago and we have not felt the evil effects yet.

This poor woman has a sick child, and has come to get the Sheikh to read the Koran over it and cure it. The most of the Syrian doctors are ignorant quacks, and the people have so many superst.i.tions that they prefer going to saints' tombs rather than call a good physician. There is a Medical College in Beirut now, and before long Syria will have some skilful doctors. I knew an old Egyptian doctor in Duma named Haj Ibrahim, who was a conceited fellow. He used to bleed for every kind of disease. An old man eighty years of age was dying of consumption, and the Haj opened a vein and let him bleed to death. When the man died, he said if he had only taken a little more blood, the old man would have recovered. I was surprised by his coming to me one day and asking for some American newspapers. I supposed he wished them to wrap medicines in and gave him several New York Tribunes. A few days after he invited us to eat figs and grapes in his vineyard and we stopped at his house. He said he was very thankful for the papers. They had been very useful. I wondered what he meant, and asked him. He showed me a jar in the corner in which he had dissolved the papers into a pulp in oil and water, and had given the pulp as medicine to the people! He said it was a powerful medicine. He supposed that the English printed letters would have some magic influence on diseases.

One of the Moslem lads carries a short iron spear as a sign that he is going to be a derwish. Dr. De Forest once found himself surrounded in a Moslem village by a troop of little Moslems, each of them with an iron-headed spear in his hand. A Moorish Sheikh, or Chief, had been for some two years teaching the Moslems of the place the customs of their holy devotees, and in consequence all the boys had become derwishes, or Moslem monks. He was a shrewd old Sheikh. He knew that the true way to perpetuate his religion was to _teach the children_. He had taught them the Moslem prayers and prostrations, and to keep certain moral precepts.

How glad we should be if these boys would come and sit down by us while we talk to them of Jesus! There they come. See how their eyes sparkle, as I speak to them. They have never heard about the gospel before. But I must speak in a low tone, as the old Sheikh is coming and he looks down upon us as infidel dogs! Perhaps some of them will think of these words some day, and put their trust in our Divine Saviour.

Many of the people seem to think that the missionary's house is like the Cave of Adullam, where David lived, (1 Sam. xxii:2) when "every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him." It makes it very hard to deal with the people, to have so many of them come to us with improper motives. They come and say they love the gospel and want instruction, and have endured persecution, when suddenly you find that they want money, or to be protected from punishment, or to get office, or to get married to some improper person, or something else that is wrong.

Once a sheikh from Dunniyeh in Lebanon came to Tripoli, and declared himself a Protestant. He was very zealous, and wanted us to feel that he was too good a man to be turned away, as he was wealthy and of a high family. He was armed with a small a.r.s.enal of weapons. He had a servant to carry his gun and pipe, and came day after day to read books, and talk on religion. He said that all he needed was the protection of the American Consul, and then he would make his whole village Protestants.

We told him we could have nothing to do with politics. If he wanted to become a Christian, he must take up his cross and follow Christ. He said that was just what he wanted to do, only he wished to benefit the cause by bringing others to follow Him. He seemed very earnest, but there was something dark and mysterious in his ways, and we were afraid of him.