Our Moslem Sisters: A Cry of Need from Lands of Darkness Interpreted by Those Who Heard It
Religion
Our Moslem Sisters: A Cry of Need from Lands of Darkness Interpreted by Those Who Heard It
Women -- Orient
We know the paucity of literature of all kinds in Turkey, where
government press regulations prohibit any general output of
publications; this, combined with the very general poverty of the
people, makes many a home bookless, and the great majority of lives
barren. Sometimes in missionary tours we have seen far up on the
hillside a group of poor peasants descending. The sudden turning of the
women of that party, drawing their filthy veils closer across their
faces on hot July or August days, reveals to the passers-by that these
are Moslems. They have discovered that there are men in the approaching
party of travellers. They may have mistaken the ladies wearing hats as
gentlemen also. A command has evidently been given by their lord and
master, at which the women have sunk to the ground, with their backs to
the road, while still far from it, lest one of those infidel eyes should
peer through their veils, and look upon their faces. Yet women's
curiosity compels those hidden eyes to seek at least a surreptitious
peep at the foreign travellers, and they watch us furtively. Under such
circumstances there can be no hope of any personal touch, save if
occasion might arise which would allow a call at the hovel which
constitutes their home. On one of my last journeys in Turkey I chanced
to meet a Turkish soldier on a lonely mountain road. As I passed him,
walking in advance of my horse and driver, filled with no small
trepidation at such proximity in that lonely place, he gave me no
salutation, and I confess to a feeling of relief when I had passed him
unchallenged. But how that feeling changed to remorse when my driver
overtook me, and said that the soldier had stopped him to inquire if the
teacher who had just gone by were a doctor, for a little child of his
lay at home grievously ill. What an opportunity had been missed! If he
only had spoken, the pitiful need in that home would have been opened up
to the missionary teacher, who, although not a doctor, would have done
what she could to relieve the little sufferer, and to comfort the
sorrowing parents. There would have been a chance to bring to that poor,
ignorant mother in her miserable home, a token of love and tenderness
out of the great world of which she knew nothing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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