ter dishes, but a
large piece of flat bread serves as a plate until it is all eaten. So you
see in Arabia the children not only eat their rice and meat but their
plates also. You read a book from left to right but in Arabia everybody
begins at the right-hand cover and reads backward. Even the lines read
backward and in Arabic writing there are no commas or capitals and the
vowels are written not next to the consonants but stuck up above them.
_Potato_ in Arabic would be written with English letters this way:

O A O
T T P

Can you read it?

In your country a carpenter stands at his bench to work, but here they sit
on the ground. With you he uses a vise to hold the board or stick he is
planing; here he uses his bare toes. With you he _pushes_ the saw or,
especially, the plane away from him to cut or to smooth a piece of wood,
but in Topsy-turvy Land he _pulls_ his tools towards him. Buttons are on
the button-hole side and the holes are where you put the buttons. Door
keys and door hinges are made of wood, not of iron as in the Occident. The
women wear toe-rings and nose-rings as well as earrings and bracelets.
Everything seems different from what it is in a Christian country.

One strange sight is to meet people out riding. Do you know that the men
ride donkeys side-saddle, but the women ride as men do in your country?
When a missionary lady first came to Bahrein in Eastern Arabia and the
boys saw her riding a donkey they called out: _"Come and see, come and
see! The lady has no feet!"_ Because they saw only one side of her. Then
another one called out and said: _"Yes she has, and they are both on this
side!"_

[Illustration: EUROPEAN VISITORS ON DONKEYS.]

Another odd custom is that Arabs always turn the fingers of the hand down
as we turn them up in beckoning or calling anybody. Many other gestures
seem topsy-turvy as well.

In your country boys learn the lesson of politeness--ladies first; but it
is not so over here. It is _men first_ in all grades of society; and not
only men first but men last, in the middle, and all the time. Women and
girls have a very small place given them in Topsy-turvy Land. The Arabs
say that of all animal kinds the female is the most valuable except in the
case of mankind! When a girl baby is born the parents are thought very
unfortunate. How hard the Bedouin girls have to work! They are treated
just like beasts of burden as if they had no souls. They go barefoot
carrying hea