Children of Persia

by Mrs. Napier Malcolm

Some Persian women inquired one day what each of three missionaries living together ate for breakfast, and hearing that two had eggs, while the third had not, they nodded at each other, as much as to say, “I told you so,” and remarked, “It is a savāb. She wants to get a higher place in Heaven.”

Giving money to beggars is always considered a savāb, but it is considered a greater savāb on Thursday than on any other day. Friday is the Muhammadan holy day, and they call Thursday “the Eve of Friday,” and on Thursday the beggars all call out as you pass, “It is the Eve of Friday; give me a copper.”

The grown-up beggars generally, but not always, sit by the roadside begging, but the children run alongside of you and are often very persistent. There are nearly always beggars at the gate of any town, asking those who are starting on a journey to give them an alms, and so secure safety on their journey. If Jericho was anything like a Persian town it was most natural that our Lord should find one blind beggar as He went into the town (St Luke 18, v. 35), and one or two more as He came out by another gate (St Matt. 20, v. 30), and that they should address Him in almost exactly the same language.

Begging is often a very paying occupation, for so many people feel that they have sins to make up for, that the cry, “Give me a copper. It will be a savāb,” is a difficult one to refuse, especially if the copper is only worth a farthing.

So well does begging pay that on more than one occasion the mothers and wives of well-to-do tradesmen have been detected in old chādars begging in the streets and at houses. The difficulty of recognising a woman who is completely covered up with a black chādar makes disguise easy.

During the massacre of the Babis, a dissenting sect of Muhammadans, in 1903, it was considered a savāb to kill a Babi, but some of the kindlier people thought it also a savāb to save a life, even if it was a Babi’s. One man is said to have been seen with a prisoner, in great perplexity, saying, “I am quite sure of Hell for my sins, unless I can do a big savāb; if this man is a Babi, my chance of salvation is to kill him, but I am not sure whether he is, and if I kill a true believer I shall be worse off than ever.”

But there are savābs of a very different sort.

There was an old woman friendless and ill, and a Persian man found her in the street, too ill to get home to the one wretched room where she lived all alone. He did not know her, but he decided to undertake the savāb. He sent across the town for a medical missionary, knowing the Christians had the reputation of never refusing to help the sick poor. He stayed there till the doctor arrived, and said that if she would visit the old woman and provide the medicines he would send for them, and would provide the food and nursing, and this he did until the old woman died a few days later.

The adoption of a destitute child is not an uncommon savāb, and these children are often treated very well and given a good start in life.

A kind action, as we have seen, is always considered a savāb, whether it is helping a fallen mule to get up, giving a copper to a beggar, or tending a friendless stranger in sickness and death. We may almost say that this is the one redeeming point of a Persian’s religion. Generally speaking, Persians are not improved by their religious ideas, for the stronger their religious ideas are the worse their lives are, and what one most admires in Persian character is least in accordance with their religious beliefs.