For many days the sailing craft from Bahrein had been unloading Indian
wares at the port of Ojeir on the Hassa coast, and for many hours the busy
throng of Bedouin drivers and merchants and onlookers were loading the
caravan, emphasising their task or their impatience with great oaths,
almost as guttural and angry as the noise of the camels. At length, with
the pious cry of _Tawakalna_, "we have trusted in God," they are off.
A caravan is composed of companies, and while the whole host numbered
seven hundred camels, with merchants and travellers and drivers, _our_
company from Ojeir to Hofhoof counted only six. There was Salih and Nasir,
a second son of the desert, both from Riad; a poor unfortunate lad with
stumpy hands and feet, who limped about on rag shoes and seemed quite
happy; there was Noorah and her sister, and lastly, the missionary.
But for the shuffling of the desert sand and the whack of a driving stick
the caravan marched in silence. The sun shone full in our faces as it
slowly sank in the west, its last rays coloured the clouds hanging over
the lowlands of Hassa a bright red, and when it disappeared we heard the
sheikhs of the companies, one after the other, call to prayer. Only a part
of the caravan responded. The Turkish soldiers on horseback kept on their
way; the most pious of the merchants had already urged their beasts ahead
of the rest and had finished a duty that interfered with a speedy journey
and the first choice of location at the night encampment; some excused
themselves by quoting a Koran text, and others took no notice of the call.
Not so the Bedouin child Noorah and her younger sister. They had trudged
on foot four long hours, armed with sticks to urge on that lazy white
camel, always loitering to snatch a bite of desert-thorn with his giant
jaws. A short time before sunset I saw the two children mount the animal
by climbing up its neck, as only Arabs can, but now, at call to prayer
they devoutly slipped down. Hand in hand they ran ahead a short distance,
shuffled aside some sand with their bare feet, rubbed some on their hands,
(as do all pious Moslems in the absence of water), faced Mecca, and
prayed.
As they did then, so at sunrise and at noon and at four o'clock and sunset
and when the evening star disappeared--five times a day--they prayed. It
is not true, as is generally supposed, that women in Moslem lands do not
pray. Only at Mecca, as far as I know, of all Arabia, are they allowed a
place in the _public mosques_, but at home a larger per cent. observe the
times of prayer than do the men.
When Noorah had ended her prayer and resumed the task of belabouring the
white camel, she turned to me with a question, _"Laish ma tesully anta?"_
which with Bedouin bluntness means, "_You_, why don't you pray?" The
question set me musing half the night; not, I confess, about my own
prayers, but about hers. Why did Noorah pray? What did Noorah pray? Did
she understand that
Prayer is the burden of a sigh, the falling of a tear,
The upward glancing of the eye when only God is near,
as well as the dead formalism of the mosque? How could I answer her
question in a way that she might well understand? And if hers, too, was a
sincere prayer, as I believe,--the prayer of an ignorant child of the
desert,--did she pray words or thoughts? What do Noorah and her more than
two million Bedouin sisters ask of God five times daily? Leaving out vain
repetitions, this is what they say:
"In the name of God the Merciful, the Compassionate;
Praise be to God who the two worlds made;
Thee do we entreat and Thee do we supplicate;
Lead us in the way the straight,
The way of those whom Thou dost compassionate,
Not of those on whom is hate
Nor those that deviate. Amen."
It is the first chapter of the Koran and is used by Moslems as we use the
Lord's Prayer. The words are very beautiful I think, don't you?
Whether Noorah understood what she asked I know not; but to me who saw and
heard in the desert twilight, (as under like conditions to you), the
prayer was full of pathos. The desert! where God is, and where but for His
mercy and compassion death and solitude would reign alone; the desert, a
world of its own kind, a sea of sand, with no life in it except the Living
One, and over it only His canopy of stars--God of the two worlds! And to
that God, than whom there is no other, and whom they ignorantly worship,
these sons and daughters of outcast Ishmael bow their faces in the dust
and five times daily entreat and supplicate to be led aright in the way of
truth.
They ask to be directed into the _straight_ way, but oh how crooked is the
way of God which Mohammed taught in his book! Sadder still, what a crooked
way it is that the Moslems walk! Impure words, lying lips, hands that
steal and feet that run after cruelty--these are what children in Arabia
possess. But I dare say that some of them are really sorry for their sins
and when they pray like Noorah in the desert they want to have peace and
pardon. Are they looking unconsciously perhaps for the footprints in the
desert of One who said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life"?
Alas, Noorah and her many sisters (your sisters, too) have never seen His
beauty nor heard of His love! They do not know that the "way of those whom
Thou dost compassionate" is the new and living way through Christ's cross
and death. They are ignorant of the awful word, "He that believeth not on
the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." Has God
the Merciful then not heard Noorah's prayer? Will He not answer it? Is His
mercy to these children of Abraham clean gone forever? How long they have
waited and how many of the desert children are now sleeping in little
desert graves! Do you not think God wants _you_ to carry the gospel to
them and send them teachers to learn the way of Jesus?
Think of Noorah's question, "_You_, why don't you pray?" Think of Christ's
words, _"Go tell quickly."_
"ARABIA THE LOVED."
There's a land since long neglected,
There's a people still rejected,
But of truth and grace elected,
In His love for them.
Softer than their night wind's fleeting,
Richer than their starry tenting,
Stronger than their sands protecting,
Is His love for them.
To the host of Islam's leading,
To the slave in bondage bleeding,
To the desert dweller pleading,
Bring His love to them.
Through the promise on God's pages,
Through His work in history's stages,
Through the cross that crowns the ages,
Show His love to them.
With the prayer that still availeth
With the power that prevaileth,
With the love that never faileth,
Tell His love to them.
Till the desert's sons now aliens,
Till its tribes and their dominions,
Till Arabia's raptured millions,
Praise His love of them.
--J.G.L.