The announcer comes out again into the center of the field and shouts
through his megaphone, first in English and then in Arabic—
“The discus has just been thrown one hundred and ten feet, breaking the
college record!”
So the campus bursts into a new uproar of shouting and singing, and the
students make quite unnecessary inquiries as to “What’s the matter with
McLaughlan?” while somebody tries to explain what it is all about to
the Turkish governor, who understands neither English nor Arabic, and
the governor’s daughter-in-law looks as if she were thinking of Travers
Island.
It would take too long to describe all the events of the day: how Nedrah
Meshaqah wins the thousand-yard “campus race,” how Iatrou keeps the
shot-put in the Greek ranks, or how Bedr breaks the record for the high
jump. The real significance of the occasion is that it is all so like the
field-meets of our American colleges at home.
The only typically Syrian event is the jareed-throw—and the javelin has
since been included among American field-events. The jareed is a blunt
dart about four feet long and an inch in diameter, and it is always
thrown underhand. The Arabs use it in various games, somewhat as the old
Greeks employed the javelin. At the college it is thrown for distance;
and this is one of the most interesting contests, as it requires not only
strength and quickness but a peculiar knack which it is almost impossible
for a foreigner to learn. It looks very easy to one who has tossed
baseballs all his life; yet when the American first attempts to throw
the short, light stick, he sends it whirling around like a windmill. But
watch that young Druse sheikh, as he carefully balances the jareed upon
his finger, and then grasps it gently but firmly at the approved spot.
A few slow swings of the arm to get the direction, a lean backward
until the stick nearly touches the ground behind, then a jump forward
and a throw so long that his hand moves fully nine feet in a straight
line before it lets the missile go with a furious rifling motion—and the
jareed darts up and off with a queer little nervous twist like an angry
snake, and drops nearly two hundred feet away, with a force that would
have broken a man’s skull.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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