Page 305 - Neglected Arabia Vol 1 (2)

My Happiest Hour
Miss Ruth Jackson

D 0 YOU know what is the very happiest hour in your week?
Can you look ahead and say that at such an hour on such a day
you will be as happy as can be? 1 can. That hour is nine
o’clock Sunday morning. Long beforehand 1 am conscious of
my happiness preparing, children’s voices calling to each other, faces
pressed against the screen, two pairs of bare feet trotting up the aisle
to the children’s bench. Then, church service over and the doors
llung open they swarm in, knowing their turn has come. “Salam,
Khatun,” many little hands seizing mine, many little kisses deposited,
and the chairs overflow with the squirming little bodies who are quite
unused to chairs in their own homes. At one side sit the mothers and
toother the mothers and children sing “Jesus loves me" and "Cume to
ll was some lime before the children would sing in the common
giuup bul now their voices druwn out the others and they are getting
*ome idea of a tune.
Then the lesson hour. We go to our own room at the back of the
church for that. Can you picture it, the little Primary room all ready
(or the children, and can you see them as they tile in to take their
places? 1 doubt if you do, scholar of our American Sunday schools. 1
1 Icar you must turn your mind’s picture to the wall and draw a new
altogether. The room is bare, a few strips of rope matting on the
UilC
llour, a low bench, some big picture rolls on the wall, It is less
prepred by what it possesses than by what it lacks—the dirt and
mcasiness of their own living quarters. And they don’t file in, my
hide wild Arabs, they almost stampede into the room. They push and
juitle each other trying to squat the closest to the bench where 1 shall
>U. Then tightly packed together they look up expectantly .as I pro­
duce my note book and take the roll.
"This is a new boy, I’ll take you there.”
“My sister? Oh she’s got fever.”
•‘Did you write down my baby Subiha?”
••I’ve come four times. Will you come to my house tomorrow,
Klutun ?"
This is the side line of conversation during roll call. A little over a
jear ago it was much simpler. I started then with only four children,
*,w there are forty. Look at them. Clean dresses and suits, washed
Uco, smooth combed hair? Not a bit of it. They are all barefooted,
4,rty little urchins, one garment apiece, faded, torn and soiled, in cold
•cathcr a jacket of sorts, a shawl on the head ur unkempt, tousled hair,
ftul they are nut so very different from American children when they
,* with each other in telling the story of a picture, eager in adding
jdails, sternly correcting one another's mistakes, embarrassed when
$cy find themselves at a standstill.
How. hard it was to get them started at story telling. It was always
*1 don’t know,” or “I can’t tell it.” But little by little they began to