The Women of the Arabs

by Henry Harris Jessup

Now you can imagine yourself going to sleep in the state-room of this great steamer, and away we go. The anchor comes up clank, clank, as the great chain cable is wound up by the donkey engine, and now we move off silently and smoothly. In about five hours we have made the fifty miles, and down goes the anchor again in Tripoli harbor. At sunrise the Tripoli boatmen come around the steamer. We are two miles off from the shore and a rough north wind is blowing. Let us hurry up and get ashore before the wind increases to a gale, as these North winds are very fierce on the Syrian coast. Here comes Mustafa, an old boatman, and begs us to take his felûca. We look over the side of the steamer and see that his boat is large and clean and agree to take it for twelve piastres or fifty cents for all of us and our baggage. Then the other boatmen rush up and scream and curse and try to get us to take their boats, but we say nothing and push through them and climb down the steps to the boat. The white caps are rolling and the boat dances finely. Mustafa puts up a large three-cornered sail, Ali sits at the rudder, and with a stroke or two of the oars we turn around into the wind and away we dash towards the shore. The Meena (port) is before us, that white row of houses on the point; and back among the gardens is the city of Tripoli. In less than half an hour we reach the shore, but the surf is so high that we cannot go near the pier, so they make for the sand beach, and before we reach it, the boat strikes on a little bar and we stop. Out jump the boatmen, and porters come running half naked from the shore and each shouts to us to ride ashore on his shoulders. They can carry you and Harry with ease, but I am always careful how I sit on the shoulders of these rough fellows. There is Ibrahim on the shore with our animals, and two mules for the baggage. We shall take beds and bedsteads and cooking apparatus and provisions and a tent. Ibrahim has bought bread and potatoes and rice and semin (Arab butter) and smead (farina) and candles, and a little sugar and salt, and other necessaries. We will accept Aunt Annie's invitation to breakfast, and then everything will be ready for a start.

What is the matter with those boys in that dark room? Are they on rockers? They keep swinging back and forth and screaming at the top of their voices all at once, and an old blind man sits on one side holding a long stick. They all sit on the floor and hold books or tin cards in their hands. This is a Moslem school, and the boys are learning to read and write. They all study aloud, and the old blind Sheikh knows their voices so well that when one stops studying, he perceives it, and reaches his long stick over that way until the boy begins again. When a boy comes up to him to recite, he has to shout louder than the rest, so that the Sheikh can distinguish his voice. There, two boys are fighting. The Sheikh cannot and will not have fighting in his school, and he calls them up to him. They begin to scream and kick and call for their mothers, but it is of no use. Sheikh Mohammed will have order. Lie down there you Mahmoud! Mahmoud lies down, and the Sheikh takes a stick like a bow with a cord to it, and winds the cord around his ankles. After twisting the cord as tight as possible, he takes his rod and beats Mahmoud on the soles of his feet, until the poor boy is almost black in the face with screaming and pain. Then he serves Saleh in the same way. This is the bastinado of which you have heard and read. When the Missionaries started common schools in Syria, the teachers used the bastinado without their knowledge, though we never allow anything of the kind. But the boys behave so badly and use such bad language to each other, that the teacher's patience is often quite exhausted. I heard of one school where the teacher invited a visitor to hear the boys recite, and then offered to whip the school all around from the biggest boy to the smallest, in order to show how well he governed the school! They do not use the alphabet in the Moslem schools. The boys begin with the Koran and learn the words by sight, without knowing the letters of which they are composed.

Here come two young men to meet us. Fine lads they are too. One is named Giurgius, and the other Leopold. When they were small boys, they once amused me very much. Mr. Yanni, who drew up his flag on the birth of Barbara, sent Giurgius his son, and Leopold his nephew to the school of an old man named Hanna Tooma. This old man always slept in the afternoon, and the boys did not study very well when he was asleep. I was once at Yanni's house when the boys came home from school. They were in high glee. One of them said to his father, our teacher slept all the afternoon, and we appointed a committee of boys to fan him and keep the flies off while the rest went down into the court to play, and when he moved we all hushed up until he was sound asleep again. But when he did wake up, he took the big "Asa" and struck out right and left, and gave every boy in the school a flogging. The father asked, but why did he flog them all? Because he said he knew some of us had done wrong and he was determined to hit the right one, so he flogged us all!

See the piles of fruit in the streets! Grapes and figs, watermelons and pomegranates, peaches, pears, lemons and bananas. At other seasons of the year you have oranges, sweet lemons, plums, and apricots. There is fresh fruit on the trees here every week in the year. Now we are passing a lemonade stand, where iced lemonade is sold for a cent a glass, cooled with snow from the summit of Mount Lebanon 9000 feet high. Grapes are about a cent a pound and figs the same, and in March you can buy five oranges or ten sweet lemons for a cent. Huge watermelons are about eight or ten cents a piece. We buy so many pounds of milk and oil and potatoes and charcoal. The prickly pear, or subire, is a delicious fruit, although covered with sharp barbed spines and thorns. It is full of hard large woody seeds, but the people are very fond of the fruit. Sheikh Nasif el Yazijy was a famous Arab poet and scholar, and a young man once brought him a poem to be corrected. He told him to call in a few days and get it. He came again and the Sheikh said to him. "Your poem is like the Missionary's prickly pear!" "The Missionary's prickly pear?" said the young poet. "What do you mean?" "Why," said the Sheikh, "Dr. —— a missionary, when he first came to Syria, had a dish of prickly pears set before him to eat. Not liking to eat the seeds, he began to pick them out, and when he had picked out all the seeds, there was nothing left! So your poem. You asked me to remove the errors, and I found that when I had taken out all the errors, there was nothing left."

It is about time for us to start. We will ride through the orange gardens and see the rich fruit bending the trees almost down to the ground. Steer your way carefully through the crowd of mules, pack horses, camels and asses loaded with boxes of fruit hastening down to the Meena for the steamer which goes North to-night.

Here is Yanni, with his happy smiling face coming out to meet us. We will dismount and greet him. He will kiss us on both cheeks and insist on our calling at his house. The children are glad to see you, and the Sitt Karîmeh asks, how are "the preserved of God?" that is, the children. Then the little tots come up to kiss my hand, and Im Antonius, the old grandmother, comes and greets us most kindly. It was not always so. She was once very hostile to the Missionaries. She thought that her son had done a dreadful deed when he became a Protestant. Although she once loved him, she hated him and hated us. She used to fast, and make vows, and pray to the Virgin and the saints, and beat her breast in agony over her son. She had a brother and another son, who were like her, and they all persecuted Yanni. But he bore it patiently without an unkind word in return for all their abuse. At length the brother Ishoc was taken ill. Im Antonius brought the pictures and put them over his head and called the priests. He said, "Mother, take away these idols. Send away these priests. Tell my brother Antonius to come here, I want to ask his forgiveness." Yanni came. Ishoc said to him, "Brother, your kindness and patience have broken me down. You are right and I am wrong. I am going to die. Will you forgive me?" "Yes, and may God forgive and bless you too." "Then bring your Bible and read to me. Read about some great sinner who was saved." Yanni read about the dying thief on the cross. "Read it again! Ah, that is my case! I am the chief of sinners." Every day he kept Yanni reading and praying with him. He loved to talk about Jesus and at length died trusting in the Saviour! The uncle Michaiel, was also taken ill, and on his death-bed would have neither priest nor pictures, and declared to all the people that he trusted only in the Saviour whom Yanni had loved and served so well. After that Im Antonius was softened and now she loves to hear Yanni read the Bible and pray.

The servant is coming with sherbet and sweetmeats and Arabic coffee in little cups as large as an egg-shell. Did you notice how the marble floors shine! They are scrubbed and polished, and kept clean by the industrious women whom you see so gorgeously dressed now. These good ladies belong to the Akabir, or aristocracy of Tripoli, but they work most faithfully in their housekeeping duties. But alas, they can neither read nor write! And there is hardly a woman in this whole city of 16,000 people that can read or write! I once attended a company of invited guests at one of the wealthy houses in Tripoli, and there were thirty Tripolitan ladies in the large room, dressed in the most elegant style. I think you never saw such magnificence. They were dressed in silks and satins and velvets, embroidered with gold thread and pearls, and their arms and necks were loaded with gold bracelets and necklaces set with precious stones, and on their heads were wreaths of gold and silver work sparkling with diamonds, and fragrant with fresh orange blossoms and jessamine. Many of them were beautiful. But not one of them could read. The little boys and girls too are dressed in the same rich style among the wealthier classes, and they are now beginning to learn. Many of the little girls who were taught in Sadi's school here thirteen years ago, are now heads of families, and know how to read the gospel.

Ibrahim comes in to say that we must hurry off if we would reach Halba to sleep to-night. So we bid Yanni's family good-bye. We tell them "Be Khaterkum." "By your pleasure," and they say "Ma es Salameh," "with peace."—Then they say "God smooth your way," and we answer, "Peace to your lives." Saieed the muleteer now says "Dih, Ooah," to his mules, and away we ride over the stony pavements and under the dark arches of the city, towards the East. We cross the bridge over the River Kadisha, go through the wheat and barley market, and out of the gate Tibbaneh, among the Moslems, Maronites, Bedawin, Nusairîyeh, Gypsies, and Greeks, who are buying and selling among the Hamath and Hums caravans.

Do you see those boys playing by the stone wall? They are catching scorpions. They put a little wax on a stick and thrust it into the holes in the wall, and the scorpions run their claws into the wax when they are easily drawn out, and the boys like to play with them. The sting of the scorpion is not deadly, but it is very painful, something like being stung by half a dozen hornets.

Here come a company of Greek priests, with the Greek bishop of Akkar. The priests are all Syrians but the bishop is from Greece, and knows but little Arabic. The priests are very ignorant, for they are generally chosen from among the lowest of the people.