The native Christian is a shrewd business man. He is courteous even to self-effacement. He can work hard, bargain shrewdly, save much, take disappointment and persist. He loves his family dearly. He is humorous, philosophic, a voluble fellow, non-secretive. He respects the Western style of education, largely perhaps because it seems to lift people into an easy life. Ease and grace are Eastern ideals of superiority.
If the Moslem and the Christian could be put on the same political footing and justice done to each impartially in court practise and taxation, I firmly believe that they would draw together, that Palestine would in time be a country with a people and that it would be well equipped from among its own with men of ability, competent to do its political and social work.
In general it may be said that where the Palestine peasant has not come into relationship with the tourist business in any form, and where he is some little distance from any city, he is naturally simple in his tastes and requirements, interested in novelty, sociable, hospitable, fun-loving, hard-working, though not steady in effort.
A lone walker on the road will often sing. Whistling is almost unknown. Peasants make a twenty-mile journey on foot with considerable ease, and half that distance is done very commonly. Distances are always reckoned by them in hours or days, never in miles. They often walk behind their laden animals. Sometimes it is a donkey, bearing the plow and seed-bag or loaded with fagots, grain, sheaves, dried figs or grapes, according to the season. Or it may be a camel similarly laded or carrying stone; or a mule. Seldom are horses used, except by a village shaykh or a city official on the highway. When groups of peasants are on the road there is much talk, often laughter, horse-play, joking, chaffing; sometimes bickering and quarreling.
The peasant stands in awe of learning, especially of learning in the Arabic language. He is sensitive to ridicule, and therefore loath to make such a change in customs as would bring it on him. He is eager in discussion, inquisitive, strong in memory and at imitating, but slow to adopt strange ways not tested by the conditions of life to which he is accustomed. You seldom or never find him nervous, fretful or discontented. He never questions the wisdom of Providence. He seldom mentions weather probabilities. He, like his Old Testament countryman, refers all things to a First Cause. Divine cause or permission is prominent in his explanation of any phenomena.
The personal appearance of the villagers and the look of their houses vary with the country level at which they live. In the plains and lowlands, where thatch and earth are more commonly used in building, there is a population noticeably different from the dwellers in the stone villages in the highlands. The inhabitants lower down are darker and smaller than the hill villagers. These latter are often of good size and development and, especially among the Christians, are frequently of lighter color. It is not very uncommon to see sandy complexions among them.[[51]] The women and girls in the best villages are often handsome. The men are lithe of body and finely formed. Both men and women are usually supple, slow-motioned, strong. They have dark, expressive eyes, neutral mouths, medium foreheads, heavy features with curving lines, browned skins and black hair. Fair complexions are admired, especially the so-called wheat-colored complexion (ḳumḥeh). Eyes are distinguished by the epithets ‛asaliyeh (honey-colored), koḥli (kohl-colored), ghuz-laniyeh (gazel-like) and so on.
Different villages and their inhabitants get reputations for doing one or another kind of work especially well. Or they are distinguished according to disposition, as harsh and fanatical, or as courteous and reasonable. Some villages get a name for dulness and others for sharpness. The villagers are known about the country by slight variation in dress, by differing casts of countenance and peculiarities of speech.[[52]]
We must not magnify too much the differences between civilizations and peoples, or between this people of whom we speak and our own people. The difference is often but quantitative. They emphasize some qualities which we possess, though in quieter color or in less distinctive marking. Oftentimes the differences would not be apparent except that, as we have passed rapidly from place to place, our eyes have synchronized phenomena of different stages of culture. We see really among these strangers many practises and notions of our own distant forebears.
WOMAN’S WORK
1. At the Cistern. 2. In the Market. 3. Bringing Brush.