In the Tail of the Peacock

by Isabel Savory

Supposing that a patient dies, or a man who has once been a patient dies, the people have no hesitation in saying to the missionaries when they meet them in the street, "Oh! So-and-so's taken your medicine, and it's killed him."

It is impossible to trust Moors with medicines which could damage them; this seriously handicaps a doctor: in extreme cases the dose must be administered by the doctor personally.

Besides the dispensary, the missionaries had day schools for the children, night schools for boys, and mothers' meetings for women. Here, again, the mothers who attended the meetings were given the material of the clothes which they made for nothing; but they were obliged to sit down and listen to a Bible lesson first. It was one way, it was an opportunity, of bringing Christianity before Mohammedans.

Moors at Home.

Thus through the meetings and the schools and the dispensary the missionaries knew many of the women in Tetuan, and there were few houses into which they had not been at one time or another. Sometimes it was possible to read to the people in their homes, sometimes to talk. But with the men they seldom came in contact. Never with an educated Moor. He would despise women in general, despise Christianity past words, and decline to argue on such a point with a man.

People are apt to forget that Mohammedanism is a faith to which many millions of earnest and intelligent men and women have pinned their salvation. To talk and argue with these—it is almost a truism to say—a missionary must be "up" in that subject which they have at their finger-tips—namely, their religion. This means that he or she must have a complete knowledge of the Korān; must know the traditions relating to Mohammed and his companions; must be able to converse about the divinity and the innumerable saints of Islam; must have read various religious treatises; and, above and beyond all, must understand to the smallest point the habits of the Mohammedan himself, know his life, be able to follow his thoughts, understand his actions, and be in sympathy with his recreations as well as with his work, otherwise the missionary treads on the Mohammedan's toes fifty times a day, and provokes amusement, mingled with contempt, of which resentment is born.

Needless to say, few missionaries in Morocco, except at the end of their life's work, possess these qualifications. Only a limited number know the Arabic language: they speak it colloquially of course, but the immense difficulties, which a thorough knowledge of it entails, debar most of them from satisfactory study. After years upon years of hard work, an Arabian scholar frankly avowed to me that he had but skimmed the surface of the depths of the Arabic language.

As far as the old idea of missionary work goes—of preaching to an attentive throng of Mohammedans and baptizing converts—Morocco ranks nowhere. The missionary who comes out to El Moghreb does incalculable good in curing the hereditary disease and taint with which an Eastern nation is rife, and many influence the surrounding people by the example of a good life and contact with a civilized mind: he or she is to be profoundly admired for the determination with which one end and one aim are held in view from first to last, and to the furtherance of which the whole of life is made subservient; and yet the shadows of disappointment must darken that missionary's path sometimes, unless he or she is a philosopher. For we met with none who could point us out a single convert, openly declaring himself to be one. In Tetuan, after twelve years' work, there was not one. Two women there were, who acknowledged to the missionaries, that they preferred Christianity to Mohammedanism, and who in private make use of Christian forms of prayer, but they would not "declare" their belief.

It is said, and no doubt truly, that there would be many converts to Christianity in Morocco among the lowest class, if it were not for the persecution of the Government, and the strong anti-Christian feeling which exists amongst those in authority. The religion and the Government are one; the Sultan is the religious head, a direct descendant from Mohammed; consequently Mohammedanism is enforced. A woman who declared herself a Christian would have her children taken from her; a man would be flogged round the city and boycotted, if he was not killed. Thus the prospects of the would-be convert are not happy: all which the missionaries have to offer him is, on the one hand martyrdom, on the other a miserable line of compromise—a life, that is to say, of concealment and deceit towards those nearest him, for though Christian at heart, he must yet remain Mohammedan to the world. This latter course of compromise is the line which is followed, and it is the course which is tacitly inculcated by the missionaries. I heard of no martyrs, nor Christian Moors openly declared, living in Morocco at peace with mankind.