The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 03 (of 10) — John Shaqi
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 03 (of 10)
General
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 03 (of 10)
Fairy tales; Tales -- Arab countries
"O joy of Hell and Heaven! whose tormentry *
Enquickens frame and soul with lively gree:
I marvel so delightsome house to view, *
And most when 'neath it kindled fires I see:
Sojourn of bliss to visitors, withal *
Pools on them pour down tears unceasingly."
Then his eye-sight roamed and browsed on the gardens of their beauty
and he repeated these two couplets,
"I went to the house of the keeper-man; *
He was out, but others to smile began:
I entered his Heaven[FN#23] and then his Hell;[FN#24] *
And I said 'Bless Málik[FN#25] and bless Rizwán.' "[FN#26]
When they heard these verses they were charmed, and the Over seer
invited them to his house; but they declined and returned to their own
place, to rest from the great heat of the bath. So they took their
ease there and ate and drank and passed that night in perfect solace
and satisfaction, till morning dawned, when they arose from sleep and
making their lesser ablution, prayed the dawn- prayer and drank the
morning draught.[FN#27] As soon as the sun had risen and the shops and
markets opened, they arose and going forth from their place to the
bazar opened their shop, which their servants had already furnished,
after the handsomest fashion, and had spread with prayer rugs and
silken carpets and had placed on the divans a pair of mattresses, each
worth an hundred dinars. On every mattress they had disposed a rug of
skin fit for a King and edged with a fringe of gold; and a-middlemost
the shop stood a third seat still richer, even as the place required.
Then Taj al-Muluk sat down on one divan, and Aziz on another, whilst
the Wazir seated himself on that in the centre, and the servants stood
before them. The city people soon heard of them and crowded about
them, so that they sold some of their goods and not a few of their
stuffs; for Taj al-Muluk's beauty and loveliness had become the talk of
the town. Thus they passed a trifle of time, and every day the people
flocked to them and pressed upon them more and more, till the Wazir,
after exhorting Taj al-Muluk to keep his secret, commended him to the
care of Aziz and went home, that he might commune with himself alone
and cast about for some contrivance which might profit them.
Meanwhile, the two young men sat talking and Taj al-Muluk said to Aziz,
"Haply some one will come from the Lady Dunya." So he ceased not
expecting this chance days and nights, but his heart was troubled and
he knew neither sleep nor rest; for desire had got the mastery of him,
and love and longing were sore upon him, so that he renounced the
solace of sleep and abstained from meat and drink; yet ceased he not to
be like the moon on the night of fullness. Now one day as he sat in
the shop, behold, there came up an ancient woman.—And Shahrazad
perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.
When it was the One Hundred and Thirty-third Night,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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