IV Going to Market to Sow Seed
The Arabs are a very old-fashioned people. In fact, their customs have not changed since the time that Ishmael as a boy went with his mother Hagar on the camels and landed somewhere in Arabia. I suppose that even in those old times the Arabs and the Syrians kept a weekly market where all the people from all the villages came together to barter their wares, to shake hands and make acquaintance and go back with a larger idea of their small world. The custom of holding weekly markets on a special day of the week even in the smallest villages is still common in Arabia. In fact, there are villages that take their name from a market day, and are called “Thursday” or “Saturday” because on those days of the week the village takes on an air of importance and doubles in population. The Arabs, however, do not have the same names for the days of the week that we have. Instead of naming them after idols, Thursday after Thor and Wednesday after the old god Woden, they number the days of the week just as in the first chapter of Genesis, and have “The First Day,” “The Second Day,” etc. The only exception is Friday which is the sacred day of the week and the Mohammedan Sabbath and is named “The Day of the Congregation” because then they all go to the markets to pray and hear a sermon.
A busy market is held at “Suk el Khamis” every Thursday all the year round, rain or shine (and it generally is shine in Arabia), out in the open air near the ruins of an old mosque about three miles distant from Menama village at Bahrein where the missionaries live. The two tall minarets on the mosque can be seen from the market. It is one of the oldest mosques in East Arabia, and was built several hundred years ago and rebuilt several times. Now it is no longer used to pray in nor does the call to prayer ever ring out from the minarets. The fret is that one Moslem sect after another took possession of the building, and in the religious disputes that arose the building itself went into decay. One part of the mosque is now used for a goat pen. The gray square stones of which the mosque was once built are scattered about and serve as seats for visitors, and every traveller who visits Bahrein climbs up one of the minarets and gets a fine view of the islands. If you can read the old writing carved on the stones in Arabic script, you can see how often this mosque has changed hands between the rival parties in the Moslem world called Shiahs and Sunnis, and if you should ever visit the missionary rooms of the Reformed Church in New York, the secretary there can show you a gavel or mallet made from a beam of wood which was once in the roof of this very mosque. A piece of the old beam fell to the ground and was made into a mallet to show that the religion of Islam in Arabia is decaying and that missionaries to Moslems need not be afraid to enter the country of Mohammed.
Every Thursday morning the plain around this mosque is a busy scene. How often I have ridden down to this market on a donkey or walked in the heat of the sun and have seen a thousand or more people crowded together in all their bright coloured garments, men and women and children, busily engaged in trade, in play, or in quarrels over the price of an article! One man, perhaps, brings a load of water jars from the village of Ali. Another has a big donkey load of ropes or mats for sale, and still another brings great baskets of melons, pomegranates, dates, limes and vegetables. Women, covered over with their heavy black veils and looking very mischievously through little peep holes for their eyes, crouch on the ground before their little open-air stands where they sell cheap jewelry and trinkets or tiny bottles of perfume and black antimony powder, which the Arab girls use for their eyes.
The barber is also busy and plies his razor with a deft hand while he shaves the heads and beards of those who come, charging only a few coppers for the job. The breadmaker arrives on the scene very early, and builds his small open oven to bake his flap-cakes. He rolls the dough on a board, flattens it out with his fingers and then tosses it against the sides of the hot oven where it sticks fast and bakes into a large, light, palatable cake. Oh, how good such Arab bread is when you are hungry, or when you sit down to an Arab guest meal and have it served with fresh butter and honey!
More numerous and more loud than all the others who come are the half-naked Bedouins who come to sell a drove of sheep or barter for a couple of camels. They are all there this morning:
“Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief;
Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief;
Butcher, baker and candlestick maker.”
And if the candlestick maker, who sells more candles than candlesticks, is present, why should the missionary, who is sent to bring the Light of Life to men, be absent?
As often as possible therefore we visit this market-place, and sell books and Bibles or preach to those who will listen. It is not at all an easy place to sell or to preach, but those who come there witness fine, splendid opportunities to meet men face to face, to get acquainted and to renew old acquaintance with villagers who come from distant parts of the Bahrein Island group. Here it is that many a gospel portion has exchanged hands and many a story of the power of Christ has been sowed as good seed in the hearts of the Arabs in the hope that God would use it to make them think of Jesus Christ as their Saviour. If books are sold they are often carried from here to distant villages, and it is possible to make acquaintance here with Arabs who come from the mainland and are visiting the islands, while one is sure to meet old friends who have not been able to come to see you for a long time.
One merchant used to keep a dry-goods stand and was one of the few Moslems in the early days of our work who was always glad to welcome a missionary. When the sun was very hot the shelter of his mat-screen was a nice shady nook to sit down in and talk with wayfarers. Right near the tall minarets we sometimes discuss the Koran and its teachings, and tell the Arabs how the book of Mohammed is really a finger-post pointing them to the Gospel and to Jesus Christ, the Great Prophet Who is alive forevermore. Will you not pray that every Thursday God will bless this little acre, the market-place of Suk el Khamis, where we sow the seed of God’s Own Word, waiting for the harvest?
“Sowing the seed with an aching heart,
Sowing the seed while the tear-drops start,
Sowing the seed till the reapers come
Gladly to gather the harvest home;
Gathered in time or eternity,
Sure, ah sure, will the harvest be.”