At times she has suffered
from extreme privation, and the missionaries and native Protestants
would only hear of it through others who happened to meet her. Since
uniting with the Church in 1849 she has lived a Christian life. In a
recent conversation she said, "I count all things but loss for the
excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, _for whom I have
suffered the loss of all things_ ... and I still continue, by the grace
of Him Exalted, and by the merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, awaiting
a happy death, and everlasting rest."
KHOZMA.
Her Christian experience is like that of Khozma Ata. She is the only
female member of the Protestant church in Syria from among the Druzes,
except Sitt Abla. She was born, in Beirut of the Druze family of Witwat,
and when quite a child was taken by Dr. Beadle, then by Miss Tilden,
living at one time in Aleppo, then in Jerusalem, and finally settled in
the family of Dr. De Forest, where she continued until his departure for
America in 1854. For several years she has been an invalid, and is not
often able to leave her house, even to go to church. Two of her little
girls are in the Female Seminary. In 1861 she taught a day school for
girls in Beirut, and assisted Dr. De Forest in his work in the Beirut
Seminary. I called upon her a few days since, and she handed me a roll
of Arabic manuscript, which she said she had been translating from the
English. It is a series of stories for children which she has prepared
to be printed in our monthly journal for Syrian children. The name of
the journal is "koukab es Subah," or "Morning Star." She has been
confined to her bed a part of the summer, and when she gave me the
manuscript, she apologized for the handwriting, on the ground that she
had written the most of it sitting or lying on her bed. She has not
forgotten the example and instructions of Dr. and Mrs. De Forest, and
speaks of them with enthusiastic interest. Her husband failed in
business some years ago, and she is in a constant struggle with want,
but her old friends and loving sisters, Raheel and Lulu, who are among
her nearest neighbors, are unremitting in their kind attentions to her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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