A matter of wonderment to us is the apparent immunity from harm with which children play on unprotected places, such as roofs and about empty pits and cisterns. Now and then we hear of some accident, but rarely. A neighbor’s little girl, playing on the flat housetop, fell over into the street and died.[78] ----- ----- One day I saw some little girls five or six years of age playing at carrying head bundles of grass in imitation of women. Boys make and play with slings (_miḳlâ‛_) for throwing stones. When quarreling, the first impulse is for them to reach for a stone to throw. We noticed severe burns on some of the boys, near the wrist. Some of them made huge sores which roused our pitying concern. We found out that the wounds were self-inflicted, however, the superstitious scamps having a boyish notion that burning the wrist or forearm would insure for them greater accuracy in throwing. The boys play horse vigorously. They have a game played with pegs of wood very similar to our peggy, in which one strikes a double-pointed peg on one end with a stick and tries to gain ground with an opponent. Another game is played in a soft, spongy spot of ground with longer pegs sharpened on one end only. It is something like playing stick-knife. The object is so to drive the peg by a throw into the soft space in the ground as to dislodge an opponent’s pegs, previously thrown, and made to stick in the same place. A game among the boys, called _‛alâm_, is very similar to the game of _roll to the bat_. The privileged player strikes a ball with a stick and drives it out into a field of other players. The boy who secures the ball tries to throw or roll it so as to hit a stone marker (‛alâm) set up by the first player. The one thus aiming at the stone marker warns the others to stand aside and allow him to play by saying “_Dustûr_,” signifying, “By your leave.” The boys in our school played a game called _wolf_. A circle of boys joined hands and went dancing around while one outside the moving circle, called the wolf, kept trying to snatch one from the circle of boys who represented sheep. But whenever a boy in the dancing circle came anywhere near the hovering wolf he let fly his heels to prevent capture. As boy after boy was snatched successfully by the outside boy the circle grew smaller until but one was left, who was to be the wolf in the next game. Boys play about the threshing-floor and are often in the vineyards and gardens. They play many games that are either the same or very similar to those played by boys elsewhere. Such are marbles, duck-on-the-rock, seesaw, swinging, blindman, leap-frog and hide-and-seek. In Râm Allâh there is a variation of this last game called _khurrak_, played by sides. There is a game called _ilkûrat_ which might well be considered a primitive relative of golf.