Page 23 - Neglected Arabia Vol 2

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NEGLECTED ARABIA 11

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ARAB WOMEN POUNDING RICE

Turn off the main road into the date gardens on either side and in
Svc minutes you will not know that you are within many miles of the
©odern city. Here the bridges across the small irrigation creeks are
»winging date logs—easy for the bare-foot villagers to negotiate, but
©ore difficult for the town dweller in shoes.
One of our missionaries was once on tour in the river country and
Tinted the village school in a small town on the Tigris river. T-lie
nacher, a mullah, asked him to address the boys and he told them a little
*Ujut the Panama canal, then not long opened, and a subject of inter-
Mlional interest. When he finished, the mullah arose and said piously,
-|Iuw thankful we Moslems should be that we arc not as these uni)c-
Wncih, who try to make wutcr lluw where Gud, be His name exalted,
©icmlcd dry land." Mr. D— replied politely, “I see from the window
dat you have a bridge across the river. If God had wished you to go
© the other side, would He have put this water in your way?”
We have to use many bridges to cross the gulfs between ourselves and
mt Arab friends. The first great bridge in the woman’s work was the
-©inistry of healing.” Our doctors and nurses, in hospital and dis-
f*o>ary, and in their many outcalls, first allayed the suspicions and mis­
trust of the conservative Moslem women of a generation ago. Even
oore than the ferry carried patients to the hospital, the unseen bridge of
Voting healing carried us into the inmost heart of the Arab home and
U»ily.
The next bridge was the Girls’ School. This was slower in building, i
fee while bodily ills were obvious and clamored for attention, intellectual
on the part of women seemed to the men folk of fifteen years ago
humorous and preposterous. However, little by little this bridge
u>l*cn lengthened and strengthened. Today, all of Arab Basrah recog-
the necessity of girls' education and the problem for us now is to
yvn our girls in discernment as to essentials and non-essentials. Under-
tuLh the enveloping black cloak and veil which is still the out-door