WHERE ADAM AND EVE LIVED 



567 



Bagdad's ricivIGious interests 



In Bagdad there are 67 mosques, 27 

 synagogues, and 7 "native Christian" 

 (Catholic) churches. There is no Prot- 

 estant church. Sometimes on Sundays 

 the British "resident" reads a service for 

 foreigners, while outside his open win- 

 dow the sepoys are praying aloud in a 

 mosque built for them by the British gov- 

 ernment. The English do not tamper 

 with the creeds of their conquered blacks. 



HOW THE ARAB WOMEN LIVE 



Time seemed to turn back 20 centuries 

 when I stepped off the Tigris River 

 steamer at Bagdad. Old Testament men 

 in turbans, sandals, and quaint flowing 

 robes ("abbas") crowded about, calling 

 each other "Yusuf" and "Musa" — Joseph 

 and Moses. From the river's edge veiled 

 women walked away, gracefully upright, 

 carrying on their shoulders tall jars of 

 water — the same style of jars, no doubt, 

 that held the water when it turned to 

 wine. 



Sheep are slain to seal a vow, and the 

 blood covenant is common. 



With their own shapely hands, Arab 

 women still wash the feet of honored 

 quests ; upon their own heads they heap 

 handfuls of dust when they mourn for 

 their dead children ; and should a Bedouin 

 woman sin her brother may cut her 

 throat, and the tribe will applaud his 

 awful act of righteous wrath. 



Arab women live, love, slave, and die 

 knowing little of their Christian sisters 

 in the Western world. 



Few Arab women I met had ever even 

 heard of America. One or two, whose 

 husbands sold wool and dates to Bagdad 

 traders, knew there was such a place as 

 "Amerique," but they believed it merely 

 a part of that far-away land called Lon- 

 don, from whence came their bright cal- 

 ico and the cheap guns used by the sheiks 

 in tribal wars. Even the men can tell 

 the women little of the world beyond the 

 ■desert's rim. 



For all the average Arab women knows 

 •of America, she might as well live on 

 Mars. My serving-maid, "Nejibah" (the 

 Star), asked me if I came to Bagdad 

 from Amerique by railway train. Once 

 ■on this ancient plain, however, lived wise 



women — the consorts of kings — whose 

 names and fame have come down to us 

 through the centuries. 



WHERE QUEEN ESTHER LIVED 



Standing in Nebuchadnezzar's ruined 

 palace at Babylon, my mind went back 

 to the days of Queen Esther, the heroine 

 of the Book of Esther. Here, amid this 

 sand-blown heap of fallen masonry, 

 where the hand came on the wall, where 

 lean jackals now wail above the bones 

 of kings, Esther played her role in the 

 adventures of Ahasuerus, Mordecai, and 

 Haman. It was here, or maybe at Shu- 

 shan, that Esther revealed the foul plot 

 against the Jews, saved her uncle Mor- 

 decai, and secured King Ahasuerus' sen- 

 tence of death on the wicked Haman ; 

 and as Haman's face was covered before 

 they killed him, so to this day convict's 

 faces are hidden in Mesopotamia when 

 they are led out to die. And maybe be- 

 cause Esther saved the Jews in that day 

 they still flourish here. Bagdad alone 

 shelters 40,000. 



And among the Bedouins on the Eu- 

 phrates desert — the waste that once was 

 Eden — I saw Arab girls drawing water 

 from the wells, just as Rebekah was do- 

 ing when Abraham's agent found her and 

 took her as the wife of Isaac. The Bible 

 says Rebekah drew water for Eliezer's 

 camels while he rested. About all these 

 desert wells crude mud troughs for wa- 

 tering the camels are still found. 



And "lebben" — curdled camel's milk 

 like the Arab woman Jael gave Sisera to 

 drink before she slew him — is in common 

 use among the Bedouins of Mesopotamia. 

 Whenever I went out on a desert jour- 

 ney, passing by an encampment, tiny half- 

 naked Arab girls would dart out from 

 the brown goat-hair tents, bringing a 

 brimming bowl of "lebben" for the wan- 

 dering "Khartoum of the Ferengies" — 

 woman of the foreigners. 



From the first day at Bagdad I felt the 

 subtle charm of the East — that mystic 

 spell that seizes on the souls of those 

 who trespass on its ancient places — and 

 here every law of the life we know 

 seems changed. Between us — women of 

 the West — and these daughters of the 

 desert is a gulf, impassable and not of 



