Mrs. Napier Malcolm

“ Children here who live in the country can hardly imagine any boundary to the wonderful green tangle that they can see on every side of them. And children who live in towns look out every day upon wonderful human works, which, although they are not as marvellous as God’s country, yet puzzle them very much as to how they were ever made. With a Persian child it is quite different. ”

“ As long as the Persians are Muhammadans lying and dishonesty will be the rule, cruelty and injustice will go hand in hand, the poor will be oppressed, the girls and women will be treated as inferior creatures, the children will be liable to overwork and cruelty, and religious persecution will continue. And the Persians are finding out that they are in the pit and they are struggling to get out, they are crying to us for help. Are we going to help them?
Thousands of Muhammadans in Persia are dissatisfied with their religion, and are looking for something better. ”

“ There is so much in ordinary grown-up life that is really a very good substitute for a game—the elaborate greetings to be gone through [33] with each person in turn according to their importance, the tea served in tiny cups no bigger than a child’s teaset, the sweet-eating, the pressing of roseheads into the visitor’s hand, or the more elaborate arrangement of stiff sticks closely covered with roses, the presentation of tiny unripe first-fruits, of melon seeds or nuts ornamented with fluffy bits of silk, of oranges inlaid with velvet, all these would seem a very attractive game to a child. ”

“ The people who joined Muhammad’s religion were called Muhammadans or Muslims, and they went everywhere making as many converts as they could, by fair means or foul. They had learnt that there was one God, but they knew nothing of the Bible; they only knew the Quran, the book which Muhammad was revealing, and they knew nothing of the example of Jesus Christ: their only example was Muhammad, who was a murderer.
You may wonder what all this has to do with Persian children. ”

“ All Persian women and girls love a day at the bath, and will not shorten it if they can possibly help it. It is something like a Turkish bath, and there they meet their friends and sit about in steamy rooms, talking, laughing, gossiping. No wonder they look forward to it, for a Persian girl has a much more secluded and restricted life than girls in Europe and her intercourse with her friends is much less free. ”

“ The children are taught to look out for chances of doing a kind action and so balancing their wrong-doing. But at the same time they are taught to think that if they do a certain number of kind deeds it will not matter if they do wrong at other times. Little Rajab ‘Ali, the muleteer’s boy, would run to fasten up the trailing head-rope of another man’s mule, he would lend a helping hand to some stranger whose donkey had fallen under its load, and between whiles he would treat his own mules and donkeys most cruelly. ”

“ So the boy grew up a good man of business and saw much of foreign countries and something of foreign religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Parsiism, and he grew discontented with his own country and his own religion.
All the great peoples round worshipped one God. Surely Arabia would be a better and greater country if it did the same. All the great religions had a prophet and a book. The Christians had Jesus Christ and the Gospel, the Jews had Moses and the Law, even the Parsees had Zoroaster and his book the Zend Avesta. Surely what the Arabs needed was a prophet and a book. ”

“ When we think of the want of peace, the needless pain, the sin, the sorrow, the wretchedness in Muhammadan lands, and yet see the people so ready to pray, surely it is our plain and urgent duty to teach [47] them how to pray, as our Lord has taught us, and to teach them to Whom they must pray—not to an unknowable, unloving Allah, but to a tender, pitying Father, Who so loved them that He gave His only begotten Son to die for their salvation. ”

“ When you go to visit a Persian, you have not tea and cakes, but tea and sweets. For a quiet call on quiet people, two or three plates of sweets are enough, but at a regular sweet-eating at a big house, one or two great trays will be set on the ground before the guests, each with five dishes of sweets on it, each dish holding about a pound and a half to two pounds of sweets. The Persian women are often very pressing with their sweets, even to the point of putting them into their visitors’ mouths, and in their hospitality they sometimes over-estimate the size of the mouth. ”

“ As they get to know the Christians they see that there is something in English ways and English character that the Persian lacks. And they bring their boys to the missionary, and ask him not merely to teach them English, not merely to teach them book-learning of any sort, but to teach them to be good boys. ”

“ While as for the little town children, the buildings which they see all round them made of sun-dried bricks and earth, the barrels and the thousand and one household utensils formed of exactly the same material, or perhaps of clay very roughly baked in a primitive kiln, seem to them hardly more artificial and man-made than the corn in the walled gardens outside the city, which they see watered twice a week. ”

“ There is no command in the Quran that girls should be married so young, but the mothers declare that it was the command of Muhammad, and certainly he himself set the example by marrying a girl of nine. So when a mother thinks her girl is getting old enough to marry she begins to look out for a suitable husband, and talks things over with the mother or sister of any man she thinks likely. The man’s mother is allowed to see the girl, but not the man himself, so you see even the men cannot choose their own wives. ”

“ Do not let shyness stand in the way of your undertaking direct Christian work if you are old enough. Do your lessons or your work thoroughly and well, and so make yourselves more fit to be used when the time comes. Get into good habits of healthy living and simple food. Put away all unkind words and thoughts and learn to live in charity with all men. Be regular in your prayers morning and evening, and if possible get a regular time for midday prayer, even if it is only two minutes, but speak to God too all through the day—get into the habit of turning to Him at all times. ”

“ There is a right and a wrong side of your face to wash first, there is a right and a wrong hand and a right and a wrong foot to wash first. If a Persian is very religious and careful there is even a right and a wrong side of his arm and leg to wash first, but few Persian children are as careful as that. No soap is wanted, just plain water, or, if there is no water, sand. So our our little Ghulām Husain learns his washings, and now he is ready to learn the prayers themselves, which are all in Arabic so that he does not understand them. ”

“ So at its very start on life’s journey the poor little Persian baby is checked and prevented from growing up properly; for how can its little legs grow strong without kicking? It is no wonder that Persian babies as a rule learn to walk much later than English babies. ”

“ Persian fathers and mothers are often very fond of their little girls, but there is no doubt that they very much prefer boys. The father and mother, but especially the mother, are often known by the name of their son, so much so that sometimes the neighbours know them by no other name than “the father of Hasan,” the “mother of ‘Ali.”
Perhaps one reason for preferring boys is that the girls marry so young, just as they might begin to be of some use to their mothers; and the father has to pay a sum of money to his daughter’s husband on her marriage. ”

“ There was one man who tried to atone for sins, which he made no pretence of giving up, by founding a large free school in one Persian town, but it is not a common form of benevolence. So it is only those who can spare a little money who send their boys to school, and a great many never get beyond a very early stage of reading and writing.
As for the girls very few parents care to waste their money over their girls’ education. A certain number are taught to read the Quran, a less number go on to reading such books as they have studied, but very few can read at sight, and writing is even rarer. ”

“ If the child gets no better the doctor is consulted; very often two or three doctors are called in, and sometimes the parents follow the doctor’s advice, but very often they do not. It depends partly on the beads, and a good deal on how much they have paid. If they pay much they generally make the patient take all the medicine for fear their money should be wasted. If the doctor seems unable to cure the patient a reader is called in, sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, who reads the Quran over the patient in the hope that it may effect a cure where medical treatment has failed. ”

“ It takes us a long time to find out that God answers all our prayers, but He does. And there are many in Persia who need our prayers: the missionaries; the converts, often standing alone in a Muhammadan house or even in a village or in a quarter of the town, with no Christian friend to encourage them; the inquirers, perplexed as to the truth, or struggling with their fears of confessing the Saviour in Whom they have learnt to believe; the untouched Muhammadans, oppressing or oppressed; the schools, the hospitals and dispensaries, and the services held week by week in the name of Jesus Christ. ”

“ Even when the children grow older their mothers, grown-up children themselves, do not know how to manage them. What do you think of mothers who lose their tempers with their children, and fly at them and bite them? And they are not ashamed of it, and their neighbours do not seem surprised or horrified. One woman bit her little boy’s hand, till it bled badly. He was about seven, and had cried to have his best coat on when he went to see the missionary. ”

“ Persian sweets are very soft and in the dry climate quickly get hard and lose their first freshness, and to offer a Persian stale sweets is like offering you stale cakes. They are at their best only on the day they are made, and the servant sent to buy sweets will sit down with his tray of plates at the shop-door and wait till the new sweets are ready, when they can be put quite fresh and new on the plates on which they are to be served. ”

“ There does not generally seem to be any great affection between husband and wife. The husband expects implicit obedience from his wife, and is prepared to enforce it. On the other hand she has certain privileges. She generally has the best courtyard in the house, to which no men are admitted but near relations, and the smaller courtyard is given up to her husband to receive his guests in.
Except in the highest classes Persian women go about a good deal, but always have to wear a veil in the street or draw the chādar over their faces. ”

“ So a little Persian boy or girl is not taught to try to always do right or to always try to please and serve God, but only to do enough right to outweigh the wrong he does, and if he feels he has done wrong instead of confessing his sin to God and asking His forgiveness he simply tries to balance it by a good deed. ”

“ When you are very ill, Mother keeps you very quiet and does not let you see visitors, but when a little Persian is very ill all the neighbours crowd in to see him, and the more ill he is the more people come in. And they do not tread on tiptoe and talk in a whisper, they all talk quite loud out and smoke qaliāns and drink tea, and make noise enough to give anyone in good health a headache, much more a sick child. ”

“ But as she lay alone on her bed at home she thought over all she had heard at the hospital, and one day a new thought struck her. Surely the Khānums had told her that the Lord Jesus Christ, Who used to cure people so wonderfully, was alive still and could hear when anyone spoke to Him. Why had she never asked Him to make her leg well? ”

“ In Yezd, where the best sweets are made, our servants seemed to regard the moving of sweets to a fresh plate much as we should the removal of a pie to a fresh pie-dish, and many sorts are certainly the worse for being shifted after they have got cold. All better-class Persians make their own sweets at home and consider “shop sweets” very inferior.
The fame of Persian sherbet has spread far, and nearly every visitor to Persia looks forward to a treat when he tastes it. ”

“ There is so much to be taught and there are so many to be taught, and when it has to be done orally to people whose intelligence and memory have never been developed by study of any kind, whose minds and brains have never grown up properly, and who forget so easily, it means an amount of work that would take up all the time and strength of far more missionaries than are now in the field. ”

“ They are not long kept waiting. The babies are brought out, and questioning and bargaining begin. One baby is not popular—the whisper goes round that it is an orphan—there is no father to give presents—the grandfather who is looking for a nurse will surely not do much for it. ”