Page 152 - Neglected Arabia Vol 2

8 NEGLECTED ARABIA
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coffee house an ideal center for work, and nearly everywhere we have been ;
welcomed. In only one colTee house among the scores we have visited
have we been refused permission to sit, and in nearly all we have been
served. Among the more fanatical of the Shiahs our cups were taken to
the river alter we drank the tea, and washed ceremoniously to tree them .
Iroiii the defilement canned by mir tine of them; 1ml even no we were
welcomed.
()nce seated and served in the colTee house, the question becomes,
"Mow can we get our literature into circulation?” Often we have found
that to sit quietly and read silently is sufficient, for curiosity is a powerful
motive with the Arab; he wants to know what the stranger in his midst
is reading. Sometimes our colporteur and I sit together and one reads t

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A MOSl'I. COKKKK SHOP
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to the other. Before long we find an audience ‘'listening in.” One man
comes to mind—a “hamal” or carrier of burdens—who could not read,
hut who liked to listen to the Gospel stories. In time he came to buy !
Scripture portions so that his friends could read them to him by night.
(>ften when he would find me in a coffee house he would drum up an -
audience and get me to read of the Feeding of the Five Thousand. He
kept the crowd in order and quizzed various ones on what we had been *
reading, being very particular about the arithmetic. Once in a neighboring
town, by the same method of reading to our colporteur, we gathered an
audience of about sixty jx;ople, who sat through the reading of some six
chapters of the Gospel, with explanations and testimony to the lxjwer
of the Savior frequently interspersed.

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