Page 231 - Neglected Arabia Vol 1 (3)_Neat

5?:

NEGLECTED ARABIA 5

ill charge of evangelistic work in Baghdad and Mrs. Thoms is in charge
of the Girls’ School there. Thus it is not merely the organic relation
between us of the United Mission in Mesopotamia and the Arabian Mis­
sion, as being under the direction of the same Board (or partly the same)
and the same Home Secretary, but also the strong bonds of personal
friendship and common purpose that make me feel, in writing for Nctj-
lected Arabia, like one of the family, or at least a country cousin! I
crave the understanding prayers of those who know how to pray for
the evangelization of Kurdistan, the desolate neighbor of neglected
Arubiu. •

V’

i

i
■ i

•M

j MR.’ CUMBERLAND IN THE KURDISII MOUNTAINS
> i
When I say desolate I do not refer chiefly to the physical aspects of
the country. A few weeks ago I was escorting a group of visitors from
Baghdad to the Yezidi temple of Sheikh Adi. As we rode along on
our tough little mountain ponies, the crisp morning air and the long
yista of flowers and grass and trees reaching up to the crags of the
snow-capped mountains in the distance brought out the delighted re­
mark: "This is not Iraq!” I replied, "No: this is Kurdistan.” This
part of Kurdistan is, of course, a part of Iraq politically; but topog­
raphically and climatically, it is something different—I was about to say
better. Yet the physical basis of life is not better in Kurdistan than in
the plain. Only the narrow valleys between the mountains lend them­
selves to cultivation, and that by the hard labor of building terraces above
the little streams that flash along their stony beds. The higher reaches
are used as pasturage for sheep and goats; more than once I have scaled
a cliff to an almost inaccessible cave, imaging that I was performing a
(cat of mountaineering, only to find the stones at the mouth of the cave

■A