02 Christine Iverson Bennett

Chapter 2 CHRISTINE IVERSON BENNETT IN the year 1889, three students in the Theological Seminary at New Brunswick, New Jersey, moved by an irresistible conviction that definite effort should be made to meet Islam in the land which had been its cradle, and is even yet its center, organized what is now known as the Arabian Mission. These young men were James Cantine, Samuel M. Zwemer, and Philip T. Phelps.

Mr. Cantine sailed a few months after the organization was effected, and lived for a time at Beirut, on the Syrian shore of the Mediterranean, in order to study the Arabic language. In 1890, Mr. Zwemer joined Mr. Cantine, and after a time the two boarded a small steamer which sailed along the southern coast of Arabia, finding only a forbidding country all the way from Aden until they reached Muscat. Mr. Zwemer settled at Muscat, where there were no other missionaries, while Mr. Cantine traveled on to Busrah, at the head of the Persian Gulf. Later, work was opened in Bahrein, an island in the Persian Gulf, and Kuweit, a town at the head of the gulf, the plan being to make the east coast of Arabia, nine hundred miles from Muscat to Busrah, the base line from which to move westward in the occupation of the country. In a short time Mr. Zwemer joined Mr. Cantine at Busrah, where they tried to sell Bibles to the Moslems. For this offense Mr. Cantine had been imprisoned, and later Turkish soldiers were posted at his house to watch his movements. For a time it seemed as if little missionary work of any sort could be done at Busrah, among the fanatical Moslems. Later, however, Dr. and Mrs. H. R. L. Worrall, both of whom were physicians, began doing medical work, and this helped to break down the opposition to the mission. After a time it was possible for the missionaries to open a Bible shop, on condition that they would not attempt to sell books or preach in public places. Despite their intense hatred of Christians, and their belief that the murder of Christians would admit a Mohammedan into heaven, the Moslems in Busrah did not doubt the medical missionary would go to heaven. His good works would take him there although he was an " infidel." It was soon apparent that, in visiting cities or villages the first time, it was important that the missionaries should have a medical member of the party, for the doctor was usually the one who succeeded in winning friendly interest. In 1893, or about the time when medical missionary work was being opened at Busrah, a girl twelve years of age left Denmark with her mother and father and brothers and sisters, in company with other Scandinavians seeking homes in America. This girl, one among the hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the United States that year, was Christine Iverson, who, a few years later, after heroic and successful efforts to secure an education, was to sail for Arabia as a medical missionary, and to settle eventually at Busrah. In her life on the western plains, in her struggle for an education, and in her missionary career, she was to fulfil the best traditions of her Viking ancestors. This child of the Northland was to find in the United States a school of preparation for her work on the banks of the Tigris.

Mr. and Mrs. Iverson, whom their daughter Christine characterized as ’ humble, God-fearing parents," found a home for themselves and their children on the wide plains of South Dakota, not far from a Sioux Indian reservation in the southwestern section of the state. The presence of the Indians frequently frightened the children, including Christine, who was truly a big sister in her oversight of all the others. In those days there was neither church nor school which they could attend. In Denmark the family had been connected with the Lutheran church, and the children attended a good day-school. The year after the family came to the United States, Christine went to the little town of Chamberlain, South Dakota, to school, where there was a Congregational church, which accounts for her subsequent denominational connection. Concerning this period of her life she afterwards wrote:

" While there I read a book, ’The Post of Honor ’, a tale of missionary life in Madagascar. It made a great impression on me, and I became fired with the ambition to become a missionary. Of the kindness and love shown me by Christian people during those first years in a new land, I cannot speak too highly. God seemed very good, and the desire to give my life in his service grew. Two years later we moved to a small town near Yankton, South Dakota, where I went to school. I joined the church at that place and had my first experience in Christian Endeavor work."

There is a large measure of inspiration in the story of this young woman’s endeavor to make her dreams come true. Here was a Danish girl, in a new land, who read a book that changed the course of her life. Fifteen years later, when she had graduated with distinction from one of the best medical schools in America, in applying for appointment for service abroad, she said, " I do not forget that I owe my whole education largely to the purpose, formed at so early an age, to become a missionary."

Christine Iverson entered the High School at Yankton, working in a private family for her living and making all of her own clothes. Indeed, after she was thirteen years of age, she probably never possessed a dress that she did not make with her own hands, and yet it is said that the gowns which she wore at college were well made and becoming. When she had finished the academy course and one year at Yankton College, she taught school for two years to earn money, that she might begin the study of medicine at the University of Michigan. During her first and second vacations as a medical student, she worked as a nurse to pay her expenses at school. Afterwards she served on the staff of one or more members of the medical faculty at Ann Arbor, being especially proficient in pathology. Prominent teachers in the university declared that no brighter young woman had ever been graduated from the medical department. In recognition of her scholarship, she was elected to membership in the Phi Beta Kappa, whose key she wore as a missionary in Mesopotamia. For her work as assistant she was paid, besides receiving the benefit of a scholarship; but accumulated debts made it necessary for her to earn money for a time after her graduation. She accepted the appointment of woman physician at the Michigan Asylum for the Insane, where her work was so successful that her services were desired permanently; but after two years, having canceled all her indebtedness, she applied for missionary appointment to the Arabian Mission, an independent society affiliated with the Board of Foreign Missions of the Reformed Dutch Church in America. She was accepted. While a student at Yankton she had met a young woman who was a missionary in Turkey, and she had heard Dr. Samuel M. Zwemer speak at a Student Volunteer Convention. Moreover, a group of Christian people in Denmark, her native land, were much interested in missionary effort in Arabia.

It was arranged that Dr. Christine Iverson should visit Denmark on her way to the East and should attempt to quicken still more the interest of friends there in the land for which she was sailing. Her visit to that country was a notable occasion for those who were praying for Arabia. Fifteen years before she had left Denmark, a mere child in a family seeking to better its fortunes in that section of the United States where the sturdy Scandinavians were settling in such large numbers. She had gone back to Denmark an accomplished woman. Her friends say that her appearance was striking, with golden hair and a glow in her cheeks such as the daughters of the Norsemen inherit. They say, too, that she was winsome in manner, and she carried into the East what the people of our own country call " the spirit of the West." She was enthusiastically American, and she loved the West where her busy girlhood had been passed. In those Eastern lands, where woman’s estate is so deplorable, it is peculiarly important that Western women should go, as qualified physicians, to their suffering sisters. The homes of a land must be reached if the people are to be taught Christianity. Nothing is plainer in mission strategy. But in some lands the homes can be entered by women alone, so far as missionary effort is concerned. No work in non-Christian countries is fundamentally of greater importance than women’s work for women. Fortunately, Dr. Iverson was able to gain quickly the confidence of all classes. She was able, after a time, to go into the homes of the well-to-do, closely veiled Turkish women, who were more advanced educationally than the poorer classes. In such homes she read the New Testament and occasionally had a Bible woman hold a brief service. She was equally at home with the peasant classes. Many afternoons were spent in villages, treating sick women and distributing Testaments. The intelligent, unveiled, independent Bedouin women from the tent-villages of the desert, where their husbands owned herds of horses, camels, and sheep, were as friendly as the women of the city.

Dr. Iverson went first to Bahrein, expecting to do medical work there for women, where two devoted workers, Mrs. Worrall and Mrs. Thorns, had labored successfully. But " best laid plans ’ sometimes are changed, even among missionaries! While Dr. Iverson was studying the Arabic language, in which she became exceptionally proficient, and before she had begun her medical work, she became affianced to Dr. Arthur Bennett, then completing his first term of service in Arabia. She had known him during her student days at the University of Michigan. Upon Dr. Bennett’s return from furlough, in September, 1911, they were married at Simla, in the hills of India, and proceeded soon thereafter to Busrah, where the commodious and modern Lansing Memorial Hospital had just been completed. Permission for the erection of this hospital had been granted by the Turkish Government only after Dr. Bennett had made the long journey to Constantinople and had remained there for several months, seeking the favor of being allowed to minister to the blind and sick in a corner of the Sultan’s domain.

Busrah, at the head of the Persian Gulf, is a city of 60,000 or 70,000 people. Fully a million more live in the garden country outside the city, which is on the Tigris River. This river receives the current of the Euphrates a few miles farther north. It is the port where the British Army, under the command of Sir Arthur Barrett, landed in November, 1914, for the campaign in Mesopotamia, expecting to move quickly up the Tigris to Kut and Bagdad. The difficulties encountered by the British, including a temporary defeat, are now well known. During the stirring days when the Turks occupied the city, and later when the British were pouring their soldiers through Busrah, both Dr. and Mrs. Bennett rendered heroic service. The Lansing Memorial Hospital at Busrah, with accommodation for a hundred and fifty patients, was admirably adapted for the care of both men and women. Mrs. Bennett took charge of that part of the hospital reserved for women, while her husband gave his chief attention to the men; but as husband and wife, it was possible for them to give their combined attention, in many cases, to both men and women. Moslem women in the hospital would sometimes permit the husband of their own doctor to treat them in the presence of his wife, but often there was objection to the presence of any man. In turn, the wife assisted her husband in many delicate operations on the patients who crowded the men’s wards. Usually an American nurse was in residence at the hospital, while two Indian nurses, trained at Vellore, in India, gave their help almost exclusively to Mrs. Bennett. Two Arabian Christians compounded the drugs prescribed. Both doctors were well nigh overwhelmed with patients. The work for women was so successful that frequently Mrs. Bennett gave more treatments in a day than her husband; while she devoted much time to bacteriological work on which she had specialized at the University of Michigan. The hospital became self-supporting as soon as it was opened, in 1911. It was the only one within a radius of three hundred miles.

While Mrs. Bennett’s professional skill attracted many of the women, her chief power was in her singularly attractive personality. One of the missionaries at Busrah said, " Her sunny smile and bright, ready speech made her a delightful companion to all she met." Because of her wit and charm, she was in demand socially within and without the Mission circle. Yet she was an indefatigable worker, and was never satisfied with slipshod effort. Her success as a physician was due largely to her requirement that everything should be done thoroughly. This was a governing principle with her. In her study of the Arabic language she was so earnest that, when she finally acquired it, the patients sometimes said that they could detect no foreign accent. She liked the Arabs, and they in turn liked her. She was a woman among women. She could mingle with the best Turkish and Arab women and could sympathize with the most lowly. No one was ever turned away, however tired Mrs. Bennett might be. The wife of a sheikh from far away, operated on in the hospital, called her ’ sister ’ and left a bracelet as an expression of her regard. Poor women would bring eggs, a basket of fruit, or a chicken. As is true in most other Eastern lands, many persons in Arabia and Mesopotamia suffered from eye troubles. Mrs. Bennett found in this field alone large use for her surgical skill, and she would perform, unaided, several hundred eye operations in a year. Women sought advice from the beloved woman physician concerning delicate babies; others, suffering from tuberculosis, were told how to live so as to combat the disease most successfully. Patients with diseased bones, terrified at first at the suggestion of surgery, were won in time to confidence in the skill and tenderness of the woman doctor. As many as a hundred lepers would be treated by the two physicians in a year, huts being erected for their use near the hospital compound. The Arabs were always fighting, and the hospital received a stream of men from the desert suffering from gun-shot wounds. It was not uncommon to have ten or fifteen such cases at the same time.

Twice, in epidemic form, the bubonic plague visited the region. In one such epidemic at Bahrein about three thousand persons died from it. Dr. and Mrs. Bennett sent to India, at such times, for a supply of vaccine, and vaccinated all who were willing to accept the protection it offered.

Mrs. Bennett usually gave her afternoons to visiting in their homes women who were suffering from fever, tuberculosis, or other troubles. Sometimes she went to homes in whose large rooms a profusion of rich rugs and gold-embroidered pillows were a part of the Oriental luxury. Into such places it often happened that only a woman visitor would be admitted. Sometimes the afternoons were given entirely to visits among peasants of the adjacent country or to the uninviting homes of the poor people of the city. Occasionally, both doctors would spend a few days with the Bedouins, the nomads of the desert country, living in their tents of sheep or goat-skins, and traveling with their host as the Bedouins followed their herds to better grazing lands or watering-places.

Mrs. Bennett delighted in visits to the desert country in springtime, when the great herds of sheep, camels, and horses grazed on the green expanse that became brown and desolate by midsummer. ’ It reminds me of the plains of Dakota," she would say. Then there was much in the customs of the sheikhs of the desert which helped her to interpret, with clearer understanding, the Bible stories that furnish the historical background of the life of Jesus. Were not Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob great sheikhs in their time? Frequently, at the close of the day, the missionaries would see half a dozen shepherds leading large flocks to the same watering-place, where the sheep, struggling to reach the pool or stream, were soon mixed in one vast herd. But at the sound of each shepherd’s voice, his own sheep would separate themselves from the others and follow him to the proper fold. At such a sight there would come a new meaning to the words of the great Teacher:

I am the good shepherd; and I know mine own and mine own know me.... And other sheep I have which are not of this fold: Them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and they shall become one flock, one shepherd’

Many of the Bedouins were rich, but they did not care to leave the desert country for life in the cities. Wise men! One of them, unconsciously a poet, said to Dr. Arthur Bennett:

You people are creatures of circumstance. You ask why I do not go to Bombay. I have been there. It is better here in the open, with the stars, and with my herds and wives and children, free to go as I please, than to live in the crowded city. I have seen your hotels. But did you ever eat any better food than this juicy and sweet roast young lamb, stuffed with almonds, limes and rice? Besides, we have milk and butter and dates. In your cities I meet men who do not think of inviting me to eat with them. Here every one who comes is welcome to my tents, and no Arab asks a visitor to tell his business for three days. Here I see the stars come and go." And the missionary confessed to himself that he had not only learned something about hospitality, but he had learned more from the Bedouins about the heavenly bodies than he had found out from books on astronomy. The medical missionaries found some noble characters among the Bedouins. There was Sheikh Mizal Pasha, who was so generous in his impulses that he was called the " Father of Fatness "! He always responded to a cry of distress, and he found delight in making great feasts for hundreds of poor people. On one occasion he provided seven immense platters, with five roast sheep and bushels of rice on each. His appearance was like some of the modern representations of Abraham. Once he sent for Dr. Arthur Bennett to treat him for a month. At the conclusion of the visit he gave the missionary $750 for the medical work at Busrah, besides presents of sugar and sheep. Often such men are thoroughly devout Mohammedans, and hold to the doctrine of the saving efficacy of good works. Many in that region believe, too, in the equality of all men in the sight of Heaven. In the eyes of the desert Arab, all men are equal before God servants and masters, peasants and princes, poor and rich. This conception of spiritual equality, as held by these desert men, finds impressive expression at the sunset hour as the sheikh, standing side by side with his servants or slaves, cries with them in stentorian tones:

God is great! God is great!

There is no God but Allah, And Mohammed is his Prophet! In the summer of 1914, both doctors had been called far up the Tigris, to Bagdad, to operate on the daughter of Nakib, the head of Mohammedanism in that city, a city which was soon to be defended sternly by the Turkish troops against the invading British forces. Nakib gave the two medical missionaries the use of his beautiful summer home on the banks of the Tigris, in the midst of orchards of oranges, apples, figs, grapes, and apricots. It was one of the finest places in Bagdad. Horses and servants were provided, and a carriage was sent every day to take the physicians to their patient. The operation proved to be a very simple one. The morning in July when they left for Busrah, flags were flying at half-mast on the public buildings in Bagdad. The occasion was the assassination, in Serbia, of the Crown Prince of Austria, and the telegraphic reports indicated that a European war was imminent. By the time the two doctors were settled again in their hospital at Busrah, the Great War had begun, but Turkey remained neutral until late autumn. In November, Turkey entered the conflict, the Mohammedan ecclesiastics declaring a holy war. The situation at once became serious for all Christians in Moslem lands, regardless of their nationality. All British subjects left Busrah immediately, but in a few days Sir Percy Cox, British Political Agent, and Sir Arthur Barrett, commander of the British military forces, were reported as coming up the Persian Gulf. The Turks prepared for an attack. Immediately the medical missionaries offered their hospital for the care of the wounded Turkish soldiers, to be conducted under the auspices of the Red Crescent. In two or three days the wounded began to pour in from the front, and both doctors worked regularly until midnight. As yet, it was the only hospital in that region. The governor came down to witness the operations, and officers and soldiers showed genuine appreciation of what was being done for them. The more serious cases were treated at the hospital, while those with less dangerous wounds were sent to the school buildings and churches of the several missions in Busrah. Usually there were a hundred badly wounded Turkish soldiers at the hospital, and night and day both doctors and nurses were working hard. On November 18, 1914, the police ordered all patients at the hospital who could travel to prepare to leave the city, and that night the Turkish army evacuated Busrah. On November 19 and 20, when there was no government in the city, lawless forces gave themselves to looting. The Custom House was burned and vast quantities of stores were taken from the warehouses. Fortunately the hospital, with more than a hundred remaining Turks who were seriously wounded, was not molested. On November 21 the British came. On Saturday night the incessant firing in the streets by Bedouins and Arabs had stopped suddenly, at the boom of distant English cannon, and searchlights of the British navy began to brighten the sky. Sunday morning Dr. and Mrs. Bennett took a small boat and went down to the mouth of the river, where they offered Sir Arthur Barrett the services of the hospital, which was still filled with wounded Turks. The British Commander expressed his appreciation, and requested that the hospital continue to care for the wounded Turkish soldiers, who were made prisoners of war. The Red Cross flag took the place of the Red Crescent.

Throughout the year 1915 the British, who were attempting to reach Bagdad, had hard fighting. The Turks were being trained by German officers and they were not so easily defeated as in other days. Meanwhile, the hospital at Busrah was held for the care of wounded Turks whom the British took as prisoners. As many as one hundred and forty-three severely wounded men were received in one day. The British sent several doctors and nurses to assist in the care of the large number of wounded.

Until January, 1916, only the wounded were received at the hospital, the sick being cared for elsewhere. But early that year typhoid and malaria became common, and the British asked the missionaries to take care of the sick, since they knew the language of the soldiers and therefore could minister to them more intelligently. Tents were erected in the hospital compound for seventy or eighty fever patients. Both the doctors and the nurses were already taxed to the limit of their endurance, as were the British assistants also, but they all accepted the added responsibilities as long as their strength held out. The fever patients from the trenches who were sent to the hospital died in numbers. They had been sent there supposedly ill with typhoid and malaria, but the medical missionaries suspected typhus, a vermin-bred disease, which had not appeared until then in Busrah. Soon Miss Holhauser, an American nurse at the Mission hospital, and two Indian nurses were taken ill with what was diagnosed as typhus. Suddenly Dr. Arthur Bennett, weakened by his long months of service for the wounded soldiers, was taken ill. The British medical staff hastened to him and quickly removed him to a private ward in their army hospital, for it was evident that the dread disease had seized the physician. Mrs. Bennett was compelled to take complete charge of the Mission hospital, with its multitude of sick and wounded, and to care for her little son Matthew, three years of age. But every evening she made the journey to the army hospital and spent the night with her husband, who had lost consciousness. The strain was more than her body could bear, after nearly one and a half years of incessant labor for the wounded Turkish soldiers, and she too fell ill with typhus fever. The British officers, mindful of the service that had been rendered by these self-forgetting missionaries who were helping to win the war, were careful to see that they received the best attention which could be given in the army hospital. Early in April Dr. Arthur Bennett regained consciousness. In his weakness he wondered day by day why his wife did not come to him. When he was strong enough to bear the shock, he was told that, on March 21, in a tent next to his own, his wife had fallen asleep and her body had been buried in the little foreign cemetery at Busrah.

Those were turbulent days when Busrah was swept by the tides of war, and it seemed an age since the quiet times, when the woman doctor went here, there, and everywhere on errands of mercy; but when it was known that their white sister had fallen asleep, many women of all classes voiced their affection and sympathy.

Those were the days that were darkest for the British in their campaign in Mesopotamia; but the most notable persons in charge of the expedition stopped their official work long enough to join the mission body and others in a funeral service. The service was in honor of the little Danish girl who dreamed of doing work for God and man; who, without ever faltering, struggled to prepare herself for service; who gave her life and love with beautiful generosity, and who fell at " The Post of Honor."