Page 111 - Neglected Arabia Vol 1 (2)

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School Experiences

Mr. George Gosselink

T HE very first time I visited uur school building1, shortly alter
my arrival in Basrah, 1 saw the exact picture of what I had
olten before imagined a mission school to be like; of course 1
knew that this picture in my imagination was not true in fact, •i
and where I got that picture 1 do not know,—perhaps (rum the pic­ I
tures that are sometimes sent home from the mission held,—the most
freakish of them always make the deepest impression. It was
during Annual Meeting time, just before the school year had
again commenced; Mr. Moerdyk was going to the school to look
over old things, as he had just returned from furlough, and l went •
with him also to see—new things they were to me. One of the
native teachers had been living in the building during the summer
and had been giving lessons an hour or so a day to two or three
little boys; in the afternoon after the sun had subsided enough
so that it no longer burned down directly in the open courtyard,
this "mu’alliin” arranged chairs and a table in the shade of the
overhead verandas of the courtyard and there gave his charges
their lessons. That was what we saw as we entered the clour of
the building—the teacher with his two small boys seated at a
table, studying from small paper-bound primers. The moment
the teacher recognized Mr. Moerdyk, as we entered, he rushed
forward to meet us, as if overjoyed at seeing one of his own kind
again. t
That was the picture that met my eyes on that first visit, almost
the picture of one alone far out on the desert, giving lessons in
the shade of a palm tree, to a group of little scamps belonging
to a desert tribe. But how vastly different the picture is in reality.
It is like comparing Sleepy Hollow in the time of Rip Van Winkle
with the metropolis of New York of today. We began the school
year with about 120 enrolled, and although several of these lirst
ones have dropped out since, others have continued to enroll so !
that our numbers have steadily increased to about 145. And it
is, well—call it a cosmopolitan group; of course, they are mostly
Arabs, but also a sprinkling of Persians, Kurds, and Turks; Jews, \
Christians, and Mohammedans; young and old, at least old for
their grade of school work; rich and poor; boys belonging to the
highest families and boys that know not what home life is. Re­
cently two sons of sheikhs were enrolled, both rich enough to buy
the whole town of Basrah, and both have the power of an autocrat
in their own sphere. Still more recently a hoy came in who had
been thrown out from his own family, and, as he said, there was
no one left who cared an atom what became of him except one
poor old darky woman who had always been a kind of adopted
;u\j^t to him. In the boarding school these two young shickhs, as

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