The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1895-03-07
A MOsLEM MISSIONARY.
What He Did for an American
Boy in Egypt.

STOUT Is q 0eSolate, sandy tract OF land,
with desert stretching away on either
hand. Each grave is furnished with
double gravestones, placed as seats for
the two recording angels, Munkar and
Nekir. After death, say the Moham-
medans, the soul stays with the body
for four-and-twenty hours. During
this time it is questioned by the spirits
who descend, one bearing the book for
the good, the other that for the evil
deeds of the departed. When the an
swers are noted they rise, with the VOL
umes, to the throne of Allah and, &C.
cording to their contents, the soul is
rewarded or punished.
The tombstones at first stand side by
side, but in the loose sandy soil they
soon sink and lean apart at various an
giles. No flowers grow there; no wom-
an would even dream of coming to
plant any there. Such as it was, how
ever, it had a visitor in the person of
an old, blind beggar. Ibrahim had
not always been poor and forlorn. He
had once been prosperous dragoman
wearing gorgeous apparel and earning
much backsheesh by guiding English
and American tourists through his ma
tive land. Now he was dependent
upon the charity of those pious believ-
ers who daily distributed bread to the
needy from the doors of the mosque.
Ibrahim loved the graveyard. He
felt more at home there than in the
town of the living outside its walls. So
many of his old friends were here.
They were all gone into the other world,
some in battle with the Berbers or the
Sudanee, some from old age, some by
pestilence, some by famine, which ever
waits to devour the fellah when, by
chance, the Nile fails to give susten.
ance to his poor little strip of arabic
land. Only he was left of all his gen.
GRAFTON. He loved to wander from
one stone to another. Occasionally
he stopped to recall the past,
to hold an imaginary conversation
with some shade, to give some
piece of news and fancy it's effect
upon the visionary audience. He would
often go home quite cheered and re-
freshed by the companionship and feel
ing less lonely. One only, and he the
dearest, was absent. Whether he lay
beneath ocean waves, or under drifting
Libyan sands, or in far-off country,
1brahim never knew; but it was his
only son, his 1rstborn child, he whose
birth had been hailed with much re-
joicing. The ceremonies had been OBJ
served In due form-the household fes-
tival on the seventh day, when the
sweetened water was dropped in the
baby's mouth to give it pleasant fore
taste of life's gifts; the forty bowls Of
water poured upon its head upon the
fortieth day. The lad had been put
under the care of wise fakir and
carefully instructed in the faith of Ell.
Islam; but, in spite of everything, he
had proved renegade, idle and worth.
less; even, it was whispered so vile as
to learn from Christians to drink the
forbidden fiery waters which destroy
not only the body but the soul as we'll.
Yes, there was no doubt that he was q
bad son, and, when he finally ran away
with caravan of wandering Bedawin,
the bazar felt that fate had dealt
kindly with Ibrahim. But he himself
thought otherwise, for his soul yearned
after his troublesome child; and even
now, after SO many long years, his
works of fsupererogation, his observance
of extra hours of prayer besides the
ordained five, his visit to the Well, or
tombs of saints, his offerings of ostrich
eggs in the mausoleums and scraps
of cloth fastened to the surrounding
trees, were always performed with the
hope that they might somehow benefit
that son, for whose sake, when the
trump of Israfil should sound, he him
self would be content to fall from the
razor bridge of El-Sirat into the abyss
below, provided only the soul of his
boy might be borne across to rest be-
meath the shade of trees with the
houris of Paradise. To his deceased
wives, nine in all, he seldom gave q
thought, but, for Ali's sake, scourged
his poor worn back and stood for hours
in the broiling sun; for Ali ne reused
himself to pray at midnight. He al
ways made one of the blind men who
walked behind bier to chant the
creed while the boys followed to sing
the "HashriyeA," the poem of lasv
judgment, and the mourning women
walled behind. And he loved to listen
to the burial prayer: 80, Allah! for
give our living and forgive our dead.
Pardon those who are present and
those who are absent"
On the afternoon in question the old
man felt more weary than usual In
his wanderings through the bazar he
had, by chance, heard Of a certain
stranger who lay i'll at miserable
hostlery on the outskirts of the town.
He had staggered in, no one knew
from what place, late one night in
dazed and sunstruck condition and had
speedily grown too ill to make himself
Ineligible. He was young, and evil
IDENTIFY Frank of some sort; but there
were none but natives in Assiout dur
ing the hot season of September, and
no one to look after a sick stranger,
especially as there seemed probability
that he might be suffering from chol-
era. So old Ibrahim felt his way into
the mud hut one baking afternoon to
sit by the sufferer, to give him water
and keep away the torturing flies.
From that hour he tended him continu-
ally. In his long intercourse with