NOORAH'S PRAYER


For many days the sailing craft from Bahrein had been unloading Indian
wares at the port of Ojeir on the Hassa coast, and for many hours the busy
throng of Bedouin drivers and merchants and onlookers were loading the
caravan, emphasising their task or their impatience with great oaths,
almost as guttural and angry as the noise of the camels. At length, with
the pious cry of _Tawakalna_, "we have trusted in God," they are off.

A caravan is composed of companies, and while the whole host numbered
seven hundred camels, with merchants and travellers and drivers, _our_
company from Ojeir to Hofhoof counted only six. There was Salih and Nasir,
a second son of the desert, both from Riad; a poor unfortunate lad with
stumpy hands and feet, who limped about on rag shoes and seemed quite
happy; there was Noorah and her sister, and lastly, the missionary.

But for the shuffling of the desert sand and the whack of a driving stick
the caravan marched in silence. The sun shone full in our faces as it
slowly sank in the west, its last rays coloured the clouds hanging over
the lowlands of Hassa a bright red, and when it disappeared we heard the
sheikhs of the companies, one after the other, call to prayer. Only a part
of the caravan responded. The Turkish soldiers on horseback kept on their
way; the most pious of the merchants had already urged their beasts ahead
of the rest and had finished a duty that interfered with a speedy journey
and the first choice of location at the night encampment; some excused
themselves by quoting a Koran text, and others took no notice of the call.
Not so the Bedouin child Noorah and her younger sister. They had trudged
on foot four long hours, armed with sticks to urge on that lazy white