The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 01 (of 10)
General
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 01 (of 10)
Fairy tales; Tales -- Arab countries
Then he walked on till he came to the apartment of his brother's widow,
the mother of Badr al-Din Hasan, the Egyptian. Now from the time of her
son's disappearance she had never ceased weeping and wailing through
the light hours and the dark; and, when the years grew longsome with
her, she built for him a tomb of marble in the midst of the saloon and
there used to weep for him day and night, never sleeping save thereby.
When the Wazir drew near her apartment, he heard her voice and stood
behind the door while she addressed the sepulchre in verse and said:—
"Answer, by Allah! Sepulchre, are all his beauties gone? * Hath change
the power to blight his charms, that Beauty's paragon?
Thou art not earth, O Sepulchre! nor art thou sky to me; * How comes
it, then, in thee I see conjoint the branch and moon?"
While she was bemoaning herself after this fashion, behold, the Wazir
went in to her and saluted her and informed her that he was her
husband's brother; and, telling her all that had passed between them,
laid open before her the whole story, how her son Badr al-Din Hasan had
spent a whole night with his daughter full ten years ago but had
disappeared in the morning. And he ended with saying, "My daughter
conceived by thy son and bare a male child who is now with me, and he
is thy son and thy son's son by my daughter." When she heard the
tidings that her boy, Badr al-Din, was still alive and saw her
brother-in-law, she rose up to him and threw herself at his feet and
kissed them, reciting these lines:—
"Allah be good to him that gives glad tidings of thy steps; * In very
sooth for better news mine ears would never sue:
Were he content with worn-out robe, upon his back I'd throw * A heart
to pieces rent and torn when heard the word Adieu."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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