Many of the third-class passengers, who are compelled to sleep on the open deck, performed their duties regularly. They spread their prayer rugs carefully down in the first open place they could find, and, turning their eyes toward Mecca, went through with the genuflections which are a part of the Mohammedan ritual, and cried in loud voices that there is no God but Allah. Several of the private soldiers, and we had a large number on board, said their prayers regularly, regardless of their surroundings, but the majority of them did not and probably not more than one out of five of the Moslem passengers paid any attention to the hours of prayer.
Two of the mullahs in the first-class end of the ship had handsomely bound books from which they read aloud, as is their custom. Turkish students always study aloud. When you are riding along through country villages in the East you can locate the school-houses by the murmur of the voices of the pupils learning their lessons. If you go into a mosque that is used for educational purposes you can always find groups of students squatting on the floor, rocking their bodies back and forth with a motion as regular as that of a rocking chair, and repeating the lines of their lessons in loud voices.
CRraSING IN THE BLACK SEA 7
I once asked a Mohammedan teacher in a Syrian mosque why this is done. He explained that people understand that which they learn through their ears better than that which they learn through their eyes. In the second place, he said, when a person studies aloud the mind is kept upon the subject intently and is not so apt to wander; thirdly, a person who is studying aloud is not so apt to go to sleep as when he reads to himself — and the danger of falling asleep is the reason for the rocking motion of the body which all students practise when they are at their books.
On the forward deck, where the anchor winch is, was camped a group of Persians. Some of them were merchants of Constantinople and other cities on their way to their native country to buy rugs and other goods; others were faithful Mohammedans returning from pilgrimages to Mecca. They were dignified, thoughtful persons with dreamy eyes and intensely black beards, and two or three old men had made themselves supremely ridiculous by the use of henna, which gives hair a bright scarlet hue. It reminded me of What*s-His-Name in "Alice in Wonderland," who suggested that it would be awfully funny if everybody would dye his whiskers green.
"And hide our heads behind our fans So they cannot be seen."
Others had their finger nails stained scarlet with the same stuff, which gives a startling effect.
On the other side of the deck from the Armenians was a nest of their hereditary enemies, Kurds — tall, robust, brown fellows, with snub noses, small, fierce eyes and garments that are indescribable because of the variety of cut and colour. They lay around smoking cigarettes in the most indolent manner, each having what looked like an old-fashioned quilted comfortable for a mattress and an embroidered bag for a pillow.
The most interesting of all were the Lazis, from Lazistan, short, broad-shouldered, muscular chaps, most of whom brought their wives and children with them and camped amidship on the open deck like a lot of gypsies. The women were entirely concealed in shawls of cotton or silk that cover the head as well as the body, and they squatted in groups in the same place all day long, scarcely moving a muscle except when their husbands were hungry, and then they would dig down into a bag and produce a loaf of bread, a dried fish, a few onions, and other simple forms of food.
There were several babies scattered about promiscuously in bright-coloured wrappings, and a number of children under ten years old. Some of them had dainty features and lovely eyes, and a better behaved lot of children you never saw. We did not hear one of them cry during the entire voyage. They lay in their clumsy, queer-looking cradles, made by rude carpenters, without the slightest attention, as self-satisfied as if they had been millionaires smothered in luxury.