That is to say, "Good-morning!" And the Arabs in the picture do not add,
"have you used Pears' Soap?" but, "have you had your cup of Mocha coffee?"
Soap is a luxury in most parts of Arabia and the vast majority of its
inhabitants never use it; millions would not know it if they saw it.
Perhaps the old Sheikh, however, used a bit of soap to wash his hands and
feet early before sunrise when he went to the mosque to pray. Now he has
returned and sits in the coffee-shop ready to take a sip of coffee and
"drink tobacco" from the long pipe. The Arabs always speak of _drinking_
tobacco when they mean to smoke; I suppose one reason is because they use
the peculiar water-pipes with the long stems in which the smoke passes
through the water and bubbles out to the mouth. Have you time to stop and
study the picture with me?
What a pretty window in the corner! The Arabs call a window _shibaak_,
which means network, because their windows are very much like a fish-net.
Glass is seldom used in Arabia except by Europeans and Arabs who have
become civilised; and so the carpenter or joiner fits little round bars,
one into the other, like marbles or beads on a string and the result is
often very beautiful. Light and air come in (not to speak of clouds of
dust) while no one can look through from the outside; and you know how
afraid Arab girls and women are to show their faces to strangers.
Under the arch is the open fireplace where the big coffee-pots and
water-kettles simmer all day on a charcoal fire. The old man looks quite
cheerful seated on his uncomfortable stool made of date-sticks. You will
read later about our old friend the date-palm and how the tree is used for
nearly every purpose. I wish I could show you how they take the thin
branches and punch holes in them and then deftly, before you can count
ninety, build together a chair or a bedstead. I have often slept soundly
and safely on bedsteads made of these thin leaf-sticks no bigger around
than a child's finger. The sticks are full of "spring" so one does not
need a wire mattress, nor have I ever known one of them, if made honestly,
to become a _folding bed_ under a restless sleeper as they say happens
sometimes in New York hotels!
Although the old man in our picture is waited on by the younger Arab (who
is perhaps the keeper of the café), yet I know he is not rich. Do you
notice his toil-worn hands and the patch on the shoulder of his long
overcoat? I fancy too his pretty vest, so carefully buttoned by more than
a dozen cloth buttons, is a little torn on one side; nor has he a fine
girdle like the rich shopkeepers.
[Illustration: SABBACH-KUM BIL KHEIR!]
Extremes meet in the picture and three countries widely apart on the map
are brought close together. Of course, you know the coffee is the real
Yemen article, which coming first from Mocha on the Red Sea, is still
called by that Arabian name. The curious pipe with its round bottom,
carved head-piece and long stem, is used everywhere in Arabia and is
generally called _"nargeelie,"_ which is the Indian name for cocoanut. The
bowl of the pipe is in fact an empty cocoanut shell; the stem once grew in
the jungle and perhaps tigers brushed past it; now it is pierced to draw
smoke.
The curious pipe is from India, the tobacco first came from America but
the coffee is Arabian. Let us listen to the story of the cup of coffee: In
a book published in 1566 by an Arab scholar on the virtues of coffee it is
stated that a knowledge of coffee was first brought to Arabia from
Abyssinia about the year 1400 by a pious man whose tomb is still venerated
in Yemen. The knowledge of coffee spread from Yemen in south Arabia over
the whole world. In 1690 Van Hoorne, a general of the Dutch East India
company, received a few coffee seeds from the Arabs at Mocha and planted
them in Batavia on the island of Java. In this way Mocha coffee has become
the mother of Java and of all other kinds of coffee sold at your grocers'.
Nothing can be more beautiful than the green hills and fertile gardens in
the Arabian coffee country. The coffee berry grows on an evergreen tree of
about eighteen feet high; its leaves are a beautiful dark, shining green
and the blossom of the tree is pure white with a most delicate and
fragrant odour. Each tree bears an enormous number of coffee-berries; a
single tree is said to have yielded sixteen pounds! Arabia not only
produces the finest coffee in the world, but I think the Arabs know how
to prepare a good cup of coffee better than other peoples. The raw bean is
roasted just before it is used and so keeps all its strength; it is
_pounded_ fine, much finer than you can grind it, in a mortar, with an
iron pestle; lastly two smelling herbs, _heyl_ and saffron are added when
it is boiled just enough to give a flavour. Some fibres of palm bark are
stuck into the spout of the coffee-pot to act as a strainer and then the
clear brown liquid is poured into a tiny cup and handed to you in the
coffee-shop. No wonder the Arab dervishes smack their lips over this,
their only luxury.
But how did the tobacco get into our picture? You can hunt up the story
for yourselves in your school histories. Had not Sir Walter Raleigh in
1586 introduced the weed to the court of Queen Elizabeth from Virginia,
our picture and social life in Arabia would be very different. The custom
of puffing tobacco has spread like a prairie fire and it is now so common
in the East that very few realise it was not always found there. There
they are all together, an Indian pipe, Arabian coffee and American
tobacco! How much faster and further tobacco has travelled than the Bible;
how many people had begun to drink Mocha before Arabia had a missionary!
But, of course, nothing can travel for nothing; and somebody must pay the
travelling expenses. America pays many millions more for tobacco in a year
than it pays for missionaries. It is not surprising, therefore, that all
Arabians smoke and only a very few have ever heard of the Son of God, the
Saviour of the world. As Jesus Himself said, "the children of this world
are wiser in their generation than the children of light." When people
learn to love missions as much and as often as they do a good cigar and a
cup of coffee there will be no need of mite boxes. God hasten the day.
V