Missionaries at Tetuan—Poisoning in Morocco—Fatima's Reception—Divorce—An Expedition into the Anjeras—An Emerald Oasis.
CHAPTER VIII
"The friendship of man is like the shade of the acacia. Yet while the friendship lives, it lives. When God wills it to die, it dies!" mused Dicky, with a significant smile. "Friendship walks on thin ice in the East."
Three times a week, from ten o'clock to twelve o'clock in the morning, the lady missionaries opened their dispensary, which, as there was no man missionary in Tetuan, was in women's hands alone, Miss Banks at the head. Though, unfortunately, she was not an M.D. nor a qualified surgeon, the good which she and her staff did was incalculable. The first day on which the dispensary was open after Rámadhan over sixty Moors came to be doctored. The day I went, there were forty-four; and the two rooms—one for men, one for women—were as full as they would hold, while a large surplus stood waiting their turn outside. Most of them were of the lower class of Moors: the better class of women would ask Miss Banks to visit them in their own houses; the better class of men would not go to lady missionaries.
The patients sat round the rooms in a circle. Miss Banks went to each in turn, and made a note of the case in a book. This over, she retired to an inner room; and, among scales, and glass measures, and drugs, and tins, and bottles by the score, proceeded to make up all the various medicines. Meanwhile, two others of the staff took up positions in the middle of the circles of men and women, and read the Bible to them in Arabic and talked to them. They seemed to listen attentively, and one or two nodded occasionally in agreement with what was said.
Thus, though everybody was doctored and provided with medicine gratis, they had to sit and listen for a certain time to Christian views, nolens volens; and this is the chief opportunity which missionaries have of preaching to the Mohammedan world.
Many of the patients who had been before brought medicine-bottles and ointment-boxes to be refilled. If not, the bottles had to be paid for. In the first instance they were given in with the medicine; but bottles are things of great value to the labouring Moor, and it was found that the people came purely for the sake of getting them—once outside the house, the medicine was thrown away.