The Women of the Arabs

by Henry Harris Jessup

When the former Greek Bishop died in Tripoli, in 1858, his dead body was dressed in cloth of gold, with a golden crown on his head, and then the corpse was set up in a chair in the midst of the Greek Church, with the face and hands uncovered so that all the people could see him. The fingers were all black and bloated, but the men, women and children crowded up to kiss them. When the body was taken from the city to Deir Keftin, three miles distant the Greek mountaineers came down in a rabble to get the blessing from the corpse. And how do you think they got the blessing? They attacked the bearers and knocked off pieces of the coffin, and then carried off the pall and tore it in pieces, fighting for it like hungry wolves. A number of people were wounded. After the burial they dug up the earth for some distance around the tomb, and carried it off to be used as medicine. A little girl brought a piece of the bishop's handkerchief to my house, hearing that some one was ill, saying that if we would burn it and drink the ashes in water, we would be instantly cured.

The Syrians have a good many stories about their priests, which they laugh about, and yet they obey them, no matter how ignorant they are. Abû Selim in the Meena used to tell me this story: Once there was a priest who did not know how to count. This was a great trial to him, as the Greeks have so many fasts and feasts that it is necessary to count all the time or get into trouble. They have a long fast called Soum el kebîr, and it is sometimes nearly sixty days long. One year the fast commenced, and the priest had blundered so often that he went to the bishop and asked him to teach him some way to count the days to the Easter feast. The bishop told him it would be forty days, and gave him forty kernels of "hummus," or peas, telling him to put them into his pocket and throw one out every day, and when they were all gone, to proclaim the feast! This was a happy plan for the poor priest, and he went on faithfully throwing away one pea every day, until one day he went to a neighboring village. In crossing the stream he fell from his donkey into the mud, and his black robe was grievously soiled. The good woman of the house where he slept, told him to take off his robe and she would clean it in the night. So after he was asleep she arose and washed it clean, but found to her sorrow that she had destroyed the peas in the priest's pocket. Poor priest, said she, he has lost all his peas which he had for lunch on the road! But I will make it up to him. So she went to her earthen jar and took a big double handful of hummus and put them into the priest's pocket, and said no more. He went on his way and threw out a pea every morning for weeks and weeks. At length, some of his fellaheen heard that the feast had begun in another village, and told the Priest. Impossible, said he. My pocket is half full yet. Others came and said, will you keep us fasting all the year? He only replied, look into my pocket. Are you wiser than the Bishop? At length some one went and told the Bishop that the priest was keeping his people fasting for twenty days after the time. And then the story leaked out, and the poor woman told how she had filled up the pocket, and the bishop saw that there was no use in trying to teach the man to count.

See the reapers in the field, and the women gleaning after them, just as Ruth did so many thousand years ago! On this side is a "lodge in a garden of cucumbers."

Now we come down upon the sea-shore again, and on our right is the great plain of Akkar, level as a floor, and covered with fields of Indian corn and cotton. Flocks and herds and Arab camps of black tents are scattered over it. Here is a shepherd-boy playing on his "zimmara" or pipe, made of two reeds tied together and perforated. He plays on it hour after hour and day after day, as he leads his sheep and goats or cattle along the plain or over the mountains. You do not like it much, any more than he would like a melodeon or a piano. When King David was a shepherd-boy he played on such a pipe as this as he wandered over the mountains of Judea.

Now we turn away from the sea and go eastward to Halba. Before long we cross the river Arka on a narrow stone bridge, and pass a high hill called "Tel Arka." Here the Arkites lived, who are mentioned in Genesis x:17. That was four thousand two hundred years ago. What a chain of villages skirt this plain! The people build their villages on the hills for protection and health, but go down to plough and sow and feed their flocks to the rich level plain. Now we cross a little stream of water, and look up the ravine, and there is Ishoc's house perched on the side of the hill opposite Halba. Ishoc and his wife Im Hanna, come out to meet us, and he helps us pitch the tent by the great fig tree near his house. We unroll the tent, splice the tent pole, open the bag of tent pins, get the mallet, and although the wind is blowing hard, we will drive the pegs so deep that there will be no danger of its blowing over.

Abû Hanna, or Ishoc, is a noble Christian man, one of the best men in Syria. He has suffered very much for Christ's sake. The Greeks in the village on the hill have tried to poison him. They hired Nusairy Mughlajees to shoot him. They cut down his trees at night, and pulled up his plantations of vegetables. They came at night and tore up the roof of his house, and shot through at him but did not hit him. But the Mohammedan Begs over there always help him, because he is an honest man, and aids them in their business and accounts. When the Greeks began to persecute him, they told him to fire a gun whenever they came about his house, and they would come over and fight for him. They even offered to go up and burn the Greek village and put an end to these persecutions. But Ishoc would not let them. He said, "Mohammed Beg, you know I am a Christian, not like these Greeks who lie and steal and kill, but I follow the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, who said, 'Love your enemies,' and I do not wish to injure one of them." The Begs were astonished at this, and went away, urging him if there were any more trouble at night to fire his gun and they would come over from Halba at once.

I love this good man Ishoc. His pure life, his patience and gentleness have preached to these wild people in Akkar, more than all the sermons of the missionaries.

Would you like to see Im Hanna make bread for our supper? That hole in the ground, lined with plaster, is the oven, and the flames are pouring out. They heat it with thorns and thistles. She sits by the oven with a flat stone at her side, patting the lumps of dough into thin cakes like wafers as large as the brim of your straw hat. Now the fire is burning out and the coals are left at the bottom of the oven, as if they were in the bottom of a barrel. She takes one thin wafer on her hand and sticks it on the smooth side of the oven, and as it bakes it curls up, but before it drops off into the coals, she pulls it out quickly and puts another in its place. How sweet and fresh the bread is! It is made of Indian corn. She calls it "khubs dura." Abû Hanna says that we must eat supper with them to-night. They are plain fellaheen, and have neither tables, chairs, knives nor forks. They have a few wooden spoons, and a few plates. But hungry travellers and warm-hearted friendship will make the plainest food sweet and pleasant.

Supper is ready now, and we will go around to Abû Hanna's house for he has come to tell us that "all things are ready." The house is one low room, about sixteen by twenty feet. The ceiling you see is of logs smoked black and shining as if they had been varnished. Above the logs are flat stones and thorns, on which earth is piled a foot deep. In the winter this earth is rolled down with a heavy stone roller to keep out the rain. In many of the houses the family, cattle, sheep, calves and horses sleep in the same room. The family sleep in the elevated part of the room along the edge of which is a trough into which they put the barley for the animals. This is the "medhwad" or manger, such as the infant Jesus was laid in. We will now accept Im Hanna's kind invitation to supper. The plates are all on a small tray on a mat in the middle of the floor, and there are four piles of bread around the edge. There is one cup of water for us all to drink from, and each one has a wooden spoon. But Abû Hanna, you will see, prefers to eat without a spoon. After the blessing is asked in Arabic, Abû Hanna says, "tefudduloo," which means help yourselves. Here is kibby, and camel stew, and Esau's pottage, and olives, and rice, and figs cooked in dibbs, and chicken boiled to pieces, and white fresh cheese, and curdled milk, and fried eggs.

Kibby is the Arab plum pudding and mince pie and roast beef all in one. It is made by pounding meat in a mortar with wheat, until both are mixed into a soft pulp and then dressed with nuts and onions and butter, and baked or roasted in cakes over the fire. Dr. Thomson thinks that this dish is alluded to in Prov. 27:22, "Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him." That is, put the fool into Im Hanna's stone mortar with wheat and pound him into kibby, and he would still remain a fool! It takes something besides pounding to get the folly out of foolish men.