Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1915 — At the Tomb of Jondh [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

At the Tomb of Jondh

AS A BOY —when I read of Jonah and the whale—l never dreamed that one day I was to stand at Jonah’s tomb and see Arabs worship him as a saint, writes Frederick Slsupich in the Los Angeles Times. The famous old prophet who rode In the fish is buried at Mosul, in far-off Mesopotamia. Mosul itself, from which our word “muslin” came, stands on the foaming Tigris opposite old Nineveh. And here is a sketch of what life is like today in the town where Jonah rests. It is a dirty, crowded town, is Mosul, with 50,000 people jammed inside its medieval walls. Its narrow, warped streets are no more than crooked alleys that wander aimlessly through the town —dusty in summer and seas of mud in winter. So narrow are these passages that two loaded donkeys, if they chance to meet, cannot pass till one donkey has been backed into a doorway. Mosul’s houses are Moorish style—two stories, few windows, an open court inside and flat roofs with parar pets —so that the family may sleep on the roof in summer. The main door to each house is a huge afTair, studded with great bolts and barred at night like the gate to a fortress —suggesting the old days of Mongol invasions. To accommodate its important caravan trade, Mosul has built up many caravanserais, or “resthouses.” With Naomi, my Bagdad boy, I spent my first night at Mosul in one of these singular khans, as the natives call them. The khan is a sort of compound or stockade of mud walls, without a roof. Around the inside of the walls runs a row of little cells, to which travelers are assigned. In the middle of the inclosure is a great platform, on which are piled the bales of freight taken from the pack

animals, and around the edge of this platform runs a mud manger, from which the beasts are fed. These historic caravanserais form one of the most picturesque features of middle eastern life. No traveler, from Marco Polo down to date, has crossed Mesopotamia without recording his impression of the unspeakably filthy and noisy “khans.” Naomi and His Sister*. Next morning early Naomi and I left the pesthouse that had sheltered us, and started out afoot to do Mosul- Naomi hunted up his Telkafl relatives, whom he had not seen for many years, and of course the master then became the servant’s guest, for a few hours at least. We ate preserved sweets, pistachio nuts, manna, nought, and many such delicacies for which Mosul is noted; we drank sweetened rosewater and smoked countless cigarettes, and I to these curious, prying, but polite people all the secrets or my family for three generations back. Naomi’s numerous sisters, unveiled and good to look at, came shyly out and sat on the rug he placed for them at a proper distance from me. Being native Christians, they could show their faces without being disgraced. They®wore baggy blue trousers long Mother Hubbard gowns- erf*-some dark cql° r » y©H° w stockings and fancy slippers all coveredwith Feads. Their big brown eyes gazed steadily at me with that luster that is bought in western worlds at the price of belladonna, and their white teeth glistened in beautiful perfection —in a land where no dentifrice was ever seen. From the main bazaar I wandered on through the town, followed by the mwi crowd of curioUß Arabs and Kurds, and then continued on my walk toward the river. And here I beheld 1 had read that In. early Assyrian

days warriors used to cross the Tigris, even in heavy armor, by swimming on inflated goat skins; but I had no idea that the practice still survived. So I was astonished on arriving at the river hank to see an old man walk calmly down to the water’s edge, blow up a goat skin which had hung over his shoulder, wade out into the river waist deep and then lie down on the Inflated skin and begin to paddle leisurely across. While I fetill watched him, two women came down, carrying skins, already blown up, and followed' the old man's course across the Tigris; somehow they seemed to keep the| bobbing skins easily balanced under, their bodies, and thus supported swam ! slowly, without tiring. , Mosul Washerwomen. And all up and down the river banks | were hundreds of round-limbed Kurd-! ish women washing clothes. There, must have been half a thousand, all I shouting, plunging and wringing a mul-j titude of garments. With skirts tucked! high above their knees and no sign of! yashmak or veil, they were a noisy,, easy-going set, dispelling the illusion, that in the East all women are se-i eluded or eternally draped from head to foot. Long strings of pack donkeys, driven by noisy, swearing Kurdish muleteers, came down to the river to drink, and fusillades of jocular abuse passed between these ruffians and the washerwomen. Higher up the river bank, and all along the waterfront, ran a long row of coffee shops, dance halls and other resorts. Till late at night these places are running full blast, the din of tomtoms, native fiddles and the harsh voices of the painted women who dance and sing, making amusement for the men of Mosul. They like excitement, these Kurds and Arabs, and crude and amateurish as their methods seem to us, they have

never seen anything better and hence are pleased. Over Odd Bridge to Jonah's Tomb. A unique bridge spans the Tigris at Mosul for which a parallel cannot be found anywhere In the world. It is built partly of masonry, partly of wood, and for some distance is of the pontoon type. First comes a 100-foot stretch of masonry pier, then a bridge of boats 400 feet long and crossing the main channel; then comes another stone pier of 150 feet, leading to an 800-foot ■'Stretch of brick arches, followed at last by another stone pier nearly 200 feet long. It seems as if the builders changed their minds several times before finishing the odd structure.

It is across this bridge that one goes to explore Nineveh, where Botta and Layard made their sensational discoveries 50 years ago. The whole dry, brown plain about Mosul is a vast forest of ancient mounds, thick with signs of long-forgotten inhabitants. - Ninevah is not even a memory with the wild, ignorant tribes who roam the desert of old Assyria. At one edge of its ruins stands the little village of “Nebi Yunus," and the reputed tomb of Jonah. The identity of Jonah seems alone preserved —and he was <me of the least in his day. At night I walked back to Mosul. I looked back once, and the setting sun was reflected from the dome of Jonah’s tomb. What fame this man won, by riding in a fish! Sennacherib is forgotten, but all the natives know “Yunus’’ and the tale of the bi« fish. On the morning of the Great Day, Jonah may be put in the dock with Doctor Cook. But for the present, the people are with him and he wears his medals unchallenged.

IN A MOSUL COFFEE HOUSE