Part 3 (1/2)
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NOORAH'S PRAYER
For many days the sailing craft from Bahrein had been unloading Indian wares at the port of Ojeir on the Ha.s.sa 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 G.o.d,” 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 Ha.s.sa 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d five times daily? Leaving out vain repet.i.tions, this is what they say:
”In the name of G.o.d the Merciful, the Compa.s.sionate; Praise be to G.o.d 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 compa.s.sionate, 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 G.o.d is, and where but for His mercy and compa.s.sion 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--G.o.d of the two worlds! And to that G.o.d, than whom there is no other, and whom they ignorantly wors.h.i.+p, 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 G.o.d 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 compa.s.sionate” 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 G.o.d abideth on him.” Has G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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.