Allah, he is a pretty fellow!" and at the cry Badr al-Din awoke and
found himself lying at a city gate with a crowd gathered around him.
At this he greatly
marveled and asked: "Where am I, O good folk, and
what causeth you thus to gather round me, and what have I had to do
with you?" and they answered: "We found thee lying here asleep
during the call to dawn prayer, and this is all we know of the matter.
But where diddest thou lie last night?" "By Allah, O good people,"
replied he, "I lay last night in Cairo." Said somebody, "Thou hast
surely been eating hashish," and another, "He is a fool," and a third,
"He is a citrouille," and a fourth asked him: "Art thou out of thy
mind? Thou sleepest in Cairo and thou wakest in the morning at the
gate of Damascus city!" Cried he: "By Allah, my good people, one and
all, I lie not to you. Indeed I lay yesternight in the land of Egypt
and yesternoon I was at Bassorah." Quoth one, "Well! well!" and
quoth another, "Ho! ho!" and a third, "So! so!" and a fourth cried,
"This youth is mad, is possessed of the Jinni!" So they clapped
hands at him and said to one another: "Alas, the pity of it for his
youthl By Allah, a madman! And
madness is no respecter of persons."
Then said they to him: "Collect thy wits and return to thy reason!
How couldest thou be in Bassorah
yesterday and in Cairo yesternight
and
withal awake in Damascus this morning?" But he persisted,
"Indeed I was a
bridegroom in Cairo last night." "Belike thou hast
been dreaming," rejoined they, "and sawest all this in thy sleep."
So Hasan took thought for a while and said to them: "By Allah, this is
no dream, nor visionlike doth it seem! I certainly was in Cairo, where
they displayed the bride before me, in presence of a third person, the
hunchback groom, who was sitting hard by. By Allah, O my brother, this
be no dream, and if it were a dream, where is the bag of gold I bore
with me, and where are my
turban and my robe, and my
trousers?"
Then he rose and entered the city, threading its highways and byways
and bazaar streets, and the people pressed upon him and jeered at him,
crying out "Madman! Madman!" till he, beside himself with rage, took
refuge in a cook's shop. Now that cook had been a
trifle too
clever- that is, a rogue and thief- but Allah had made him
repent and
turn from his evil ways and open a cookshop, and all the people of
Damascus stood in fear of his
boldness and his
mischief. So when the
crowd saw the youth enter his shop, they dispersed, being afraid of
him, and went their ways. The cook looked at Badr al-Din and, noting
his beauty and
loveliness, fell in love with him forthright and
said: "Whence comest thou, O youth? Tell me at once thy tale, for thou
art become dearer to me than my soul." So Hasan recounted to him all
that had
befallen him from
beginning to end (but in
repetition there
is no fruition) and the cook said: "O my lord Badr al-Din, doubtless
thou knowest that this case is
wondrous and this story
marvelous.
Therefore, O my son, hide what hath betide thee, till Allah dispel
what ills be thine, and tarry with me here the
meanwhile, for I have
no child and I will adopt thee." Badr al-Din replied, "Be it as thou
wilt, O my uncle!" Whereupon the cook went to the bazaar and bought
him a fine suit of clothes and made him don it, then fared with him to
the kazi, and
formally declared that he was his son. So Badr al-Din
Hasan became known in Damascus city as the cook's son, and he sat with
him in the shop to take the silver, and on this wise he sojourned
there for a time.
Thus far
concerning him, but as regards his cousin, the Lady of
Beauty, when morning dawned she awoke and missed Badr al-Din Hasan
from her side; but she thought that he had gone to the privy and she
sat expecting him for an hour or so, when behold, entered her father
Shams al-Din Mohammed, Wazir of Egypt. Now he was disconsolate by
reason of what had
befallen him through the Sultan, who had
entreated him
harshly and had married his daughter by force to the
lowest of his menials and he too a lump of a groom hunchbacked
withal,
and he said to himself, "I will slay this daughter of mine if her
own free she had yielded her person to this
accursed carle." So he
came to the door of the bride's private
chamber, and said, "Ho! Sitt
al-Husn." She answered him: "Here am I! Here am I! O my lord," and
came out unsteady of pit after the pains and pleasures of the night.
And she kissed his hand, her face showing redoubled
brightness and
beauty for having lain in the arms of that gazelle, her cousin.
When her father, the Wazir, saw her in such case, he asked her, "O
thou
accursed, art thou
rejoicing because of this horse groom?" And
Sitt al-Husn smiled
sweetly and answered: "By Allah, don't ridicule
me. Enough of what passed
yesterday when folk laughed at me, and
evened me with that groom fellow who is not
worthy to bring my
husband's shoes or slippers- nay, who is not worth the paring of my
husband's nails! By the Lord, never in my life have I nighted a
night so sweet as yesternight, so don't mock by reminding me of the
Gobbo." When her parent heard her words he was filled with fury, and
his eyes glared and stared, so that little of them showed save the
whites and he cried: "Fie upon thee! What words are these? 'Twas the
hunchbacked horse groom who passed the night with thee!" "Allah upon
thee," replied the Lady of Beauty, "do not worry me about the
Gobbo- Allah damn his father- and leave jesting with me, for this
groom was only hired for ten dinars and a porringer of meat and he
took his wage and went his way. As for me, I entered the bridal
chamber, where I found my true
bridegroom sitting, after the singer
women had displayed me to him- the same who had crossed their hands
with red gold till every pauper that was present waxed
wealthy. And
I passed the night on the breast of my bonny man, a most lively
darling, with his black eyes and joined eyebrows."
When her parent heard these words, the light before his face
became night, and he cried out at her,
saying: "O thou whore! What
is this thou tellest me? Where be thy wits?" "O my father," she
rejoined, "thou breakest my heart. Enough for thee that thou hast been
so hard upon me! Indeed my husband who took my virginity is but just
now gone to the draught-house, and I feel that I have conceived by
him." The Wazir rose in much
marvel and entered the privy, where he
found the hunchbacked horse groom with his head in the hole and his
heels in the air. At this sight he was confounded and said, "This is
none other than he, the
rascal hunchback!" So he called to him, "Ho,
Hunchback!" The Gobbo grunted out, "Taghum! Taghum!" thinking it was
the Ifrit spoke to him, so the Wazir shouted at him and said, "Speak
out, or I'll strike off thy pate with this sword." Then quoth the
hunchback, "By Allah, O Sheikh of the Ifrits, ever since thou
settest me in this place I have not lifted my head, so Allah upon
thee, take pity and
entreat me kindly!"
When the Wazir heard this he asked: "What is this thou sayest? I'm
the bride's father and no Ifrit." "Enough for thee that thou hast
well-nigh done me die," answered Quasimodo. "Now go thy ways before he
come upon thee who hath served me thus. Could ye not marry me to any
save the ladylove of
buffaloes and the
beloved of Ifrits? Allah
curse her, and curse him who married me to her and was the cause of
this my case." Then said the Wazir to him, "Up and out of this place!"
"Am I mad," cried the groom, "that I should go with thee without leave
of the Ifrit whose last words to me were: 'When the sun rises, arise
and go thy gait.' So hath the sun risen, or no? For I dare not budge
from this place till then." Asked the Wazir, "Who brought thee
hither?" And he answered, "I came here yesternight for a call of
nature and to do what none can do for me, when lo! a mouse came out of
the water, and squeaked at me and swelled and waxed gross till it
was big as a
buffalo, and spoke to me words that entered my ears. Then
he left me here and went away. Allah curse the bride and him who
married me to her!"
The Wazir walked up to him and lifted his head out of the cesspool
hole, and he fared forth
running for dear life and hardly crediting
that the sun had risen, and repaired to the Sultan, to whom he told
all that had
befallen him with the Ifrit. But the Wazir returned to
the bride's private
chamber, sore troubled in spirit about her, and
said to her, "O my daughter, explain this strange matter to me!" Quoth
she: "'Tis simply this. The
bridegroom to whom they displayed me
yestereve lay with me all night, and took my virginity, and I am
with child by him. He is my husband, and if thou believe me not, there
are his
turban twisted as it was, lying on the settle and his dagger
and his
trousers beneath the bed with a something, I wot not what,
wrapped up in them."
When her father heard this, he entered the private
chamber and found
the
turban which had been left there by Badr al-Din Hasan, his
brother's son, and he took it in hand and turned it over,
saying,
"This is the
turban worn by Wazirs, save that it is of Mosul stuff."
So he opened it and,
finding what seemed to be an amulet sewn up in
the fez, he unsewed the
lining and took it out. Then he lifted up
the
trousers,
wherein was the purse of the thousand gold pieces and
opening that also, found in it a written paper. This he read, and it
was the sale
receipt of the Jew in the name of Badr al-Din Hasan son
of Nur al-Din All, the Egyptian, and the thousand dinars were also
there.
No sooner had Shams al-Din read this than he cried out with a loud
cry and fell to the ground fainting, and as soon as he revived and
understood the gist of the matter he
marveled and said: "There is no
god but the God, whose All-might is over all things! Knowest thou, O
my daughter, who it was that became the husband of thy virginity?"
"No," answered she, and he said: "Verily he is the son of my
brother, thy cousin, and this thousand dinars is thy dowry. Praise
be to Allah! And would I wot how this matter came about!" Then
opened he the amulet which was sewn up and found
therein a paper in
the
handwriting of his deceased brother, Nur al-Din the Egyptian,
father of Badr al-Din Hasan. And when he saw the
handwriting, he
kissed it again and again, and he wept and wailed over his dead
brother. Then he read the
scroll and found in it recorded the dates of
his brother's marriage with the daughter of the Wazir of Bassorah, and
of his going in to her, and her
conception, and the birth of Badr
al-Din Hasan, and all his brother's history and
doings up to his dying
day.
So he
marveled much and shook with joy and, comparing the dates with
his own marriage and going in unto his wife and the birth of his
daughter, Sitt al-Husn, he found that they
perfectly agreed. So he
took the
document and, repairing with it to the Sultan, acquainted him
with what had passed, from first to last,
whereat the King
marveled
and commanded the case to be at once recorded. The Wazir abode that
day expecting to see his brother's son, but he came not, and he waited
a second day, a third day, and so on to the seventh day without any
tidings of him. So he said, "By Allah, I will do a deed such as none
hath ever done before me!" And he took reed pen and ink and drew
upon a sheet of paper the plan of the whole house, showing whereabouts
was the private
chamber with the curtain in such a place and the
furniture in such another and so on with all that was in the room.
Then he folded up the
sketch and, causing all the furniture to be
collected, he took Badr al-Din's garments and the
turban and fez and
robe and purse, and carried the whole to his house and locked them up,
against the coming of his
nephew, Badr al-Din Hasan, the son of his
lost brother, with an iron padlock on which he set his seal.
As for the Wazir's daughter, when her tale of months was
fulfilled, she bare a son like the full moon, the image of his
father in beauty and
loveliness and fair proportions and perfect
grace. They cut his navel string and kohled his eyelids to
strengthen his eyes, and gave him over to the nurses and nursery
governesses, naming him Ajib, the Wonderful. His day was as a month
and his month was as a year, and when seven years had passed over him,
his
grandfather sent him to school, enjoining the master to teach
him Koran-reading, and to
educate him well. He remained at the
school four years, till he began to bully his schoolfellows and
abuse them and bash them and
thrash them and say: "Who among you is
like me? I am the son of the Wazir of Egypt!
At last the boys came in a body to
complain to the
monitor of what
hard usage they were wont to have from Ajib, and he said to them: "I
will tell you somewhat you may do to him so that he shall leave off
coming to the school, and it is this. When he enters tomorrow, sit
ye down about him and say some one of you to some other: 'By Allah,
none shall play with us at this game except he tell us the names of
his mamma and papa, for he who knows not the names of his mother and
his father is a
bastard, a son of adultery, and he shall not play with
us."' When morning dawned, the boys came to school, Ajib being one