To return to the Lady of Beauty. When the day broke and she awoke from sleep, she missed Bedreddin from her side and thought he had gone to the lavatory, so lay expecting him awhile, when behold, her father entered. Now he was sore at heart by reason of what had passed between him and the Sultan and for that he had married his daughter by force to one of his servants, and he a lump of a hunchbacked groom; and he said to himself, “If she have suffered this damnable fellow to possess her, I will kill her.” So he came to the door of the alcove and cried out, “Ho, Lady of Beauty!” She replied, “Here am I, O my lord”; and came out tottering for joy, with a face whose brightness and beauty had redoubled for that she had lain in the arms of that gazelle, and kissed the ground before her father. When the Vizier saw her thus, he said to her, “O accursed woman, dost thou rejoice in this groom?” At these words, the Lady of Beauty smiled and said, “O my lord, let what happened yesterday suffice, when all the folk were laughing at me and flouting me with that groom, who is not worth the paring of one of my husband’s nails. By Allah, I never in all my life passed a pleasanter night! So do not mock me by reminding me of that hunchback.” When her father heard this, he was filled with rage and glared at her, saving, “Out on thee! what words are these? It was the hunchbacked groom that lay with thee.” “For God’s sake,” replied the Lady of Beauty, “do not mention him to me, may God curse his father! And mock me not, for the groom was only hired for ten dinars to conjure the evil eye from us, and he took his hire and departed. As for me, I entered the bridal chamber, where I found my true husband sitting in the alcove, him before whom the singers had unveiled me and who flung them the red gold by handsful, till he made all the poor there rich; and I passed the night in the arms of my sprightly husband, with the black eyes and joined eyebrows.” When her father heard this, the light in his eyes became darkness, and he cried out at her, saying, “O wanton, what is this thou sayest? Where are thy senses?” “O my father,” rejoined she, “thou breakest my heart with thy persistence in making mock of me! Indeed, my husband, who took my maidenhead, is in the wardrobe and I am with child by him.” The Vizier rose, wondering, and entered the draught-house, where he found the hunchbacked groom with his head in the slit and his heels in the air. At this sight he was confounded and said, “This is none other than the hunchback.” So he called to him, “Hallo, hunchback!” The groom made no answer but a grunt, thinking it was the Afrit who spoke to him. But the Vizier cried out at him, saying, “Speak, or I will cut off thy head with this sword.” Then said the hunchback, “By Allah, O Chief of the Afrits, I have not lifted my head since thou didst set me here; so, God on thee, have mercy on me!” “What is this thou sayest?” quoth the Vizier. “I am no Afrit; I am the father of the bride.” “It is enough that though hast already gone nigh to make me lose my life,” replied the hunchback, “go thy ways ere he come upon thee who served me thus. Could ye find none to whom to marry me but the mistress of an Afrit and the beloved of a buffalo? May God curse him who married me to her and him who was the cause of it?” Then said the Vizier to him, “Come, get up out of this place.” “Am I mad,” answered the groom, “that I should go with thee without the Afrit’s leave? He said to me, ‘When the sun rises, get up and go thy way.’ So has the sun risen or no? for I dare not budge till then.” “Who brought thee hither?” asked the Vizier; and the hunchback replied, “I came here last night to do an occasion, when behold, a mouse came out of the water and squeaked and grew to a buffalo and spoke to me words that entered my ears. Then he left me here and went away, accursed be the bride and he who married me to her!” The Vizier went up to him and set him on his feet; and he went out, running, not crediting that the sun had risen, and repaired to the Sultan, to whom he related what had befallen him with the Afrit. Meanwhile, the Vizier returned to the bride’s chamber, troubled in mind about his daughter, and said to her, “O my daughter, expound thy case to me.” “O my father,” answered she, “what more can I tell thee? Indeed, the bridegroom, he before whom they displayed me yesterday, lay with me all night and took my virginity, and I am with child by him. If thou believe me not, there is his turban, just as he left it, on the settle, and his trousers under the bed, with I know not what wrapped up in them.” When her father heard this, he entered the alcove and found Bedreddin’s turban; so he took it up and turning it about, said, “This is a Vizier’s turban, except that it is of the Mosul cut.” Then he perceived an amulet sewn in the cap of the turban so he unsewed the lining and took it out; then took the trousers, in which was the purse of a thousand dinars. In the latter he found the duplicate of Bedreddin’s docket of sale to the Jew, naming him as Bedreddin Hassan, son of Noureddin Ali of Cairo. No sooner had he read this, than he cried out and fell down in a swoon; and when he revived, he wondered and said, “There is no god but God the Omnipotent! O my daughter, dost thou know who took thy maidenhead?” “No,” answered she; and he said, “It was thy cousin, my brother’s son, and these thousand dinars are thy dowry’ Glory be to God! Would I knew how this had come about!” Then he opened the amulet and found therein a paper in the handwriting of his brother Noureddin; and when he saw his writing, he knew it and kissed it again and again, weeping and making moan for his brother. Then he read the scroll and found in it a record of the dates of Noureddin’s marriage with the Vizier’s daughter of Bassora, his going in to her, her conception and the birth of Bedreddin Hassan, and the history of his brother’s life till his death. At this he wondered and was moved to joy and comparing the dates with those of his own marriage and the birth of his daughter the Lady of Beauty, found that they agreed in all respects. So he took the scroll and carrying it to the Sultan, told him the whole story from first to last, at which the King wondered and commanded the case to be at once set down in writing. The Vizier abode all that day awaiting his nephew, but he came not; and when seven days were past and he could learn nothing of him, he said, “By Allah, I will do a thing that none has done before me!” So he took pen and ink and paper and drew a plan of the bride-chamber, showing the disposition of all the furniture therein, as that the alcove was in such a place, this or that curtain in another, and so on with all that was in the room. Then he folded the paper and laid it aside, and causing all the furniture to be taken up and stored away, took Bedreddin’s purse and turban and clothes and locked them up with an iron padlock, on which he set a seal, against his nephew’s coming. As for the Lady of Beauty, she accomplished the months of her pregnancy and bore a son like the full moon, resembling his father in beauty and grace. They cut his navel and blackened his eyelids with kohl and committed him to the nurses, naming him Agib. His day was as a month and his month as a year, and when seven years had passed over him, his grandfather sent him to school, bidding the master teach him to read the Koran and give him a good education; and he remained at the school four years, till he began to bully the little ones and beat them and abuse them, saying, “Which of you is like me? I am the son of the Vizier of Egypt.” At last the children came, in a body, to complain to the monitor of Agib’s behavior to them, and he said, “I will tell you how to do with him, so that he shall leave coming to the school and you shall never see him again. It is this: when he comes to-morrow, sit down round him and let one of you say to the others, ‘By Allah, none shall play at this game except he tell us the names of his father and mother; for he who knows not his parents’ names is a bastard and shall not play with us.’” So next day, when Agib came to the school, they all assembled round him, and one of them said, “We will play a game, in which no one shall join except he tell us the names of his father and mother.” And they all said, “By Allah, it is good.” Then said one of them, “My name is Majid, my mother’s name is Alawiyeh and my father’s Izeddin.” And the others said the like, till it came to Agib’s turn and he said, “My name is Agib, my mother is the Lady of Beauty and my father Shemseddin, Vizier of Egypt.” “By Allah,” cried they, “the Vizier is not thy father.” Said he, “He is indeed my father.” Then they all laughed
and clapped their hands at him, saying, “He does not know his father! Arise and go out from us, for none shall play with us, except he know his father’s name.” Thereupon they dispersed from around him and laughed him to scorn, leaving him choked with tears and mortification. Then said the monitor to him, “O Agib, knowst thou not that the Vizier is thy mother’s father, thy grandfather and not thy father? As for thy father, thou knowest him not nor do we, for the Sultan married thy mother to a humpbacked groom; but the Jinn came and lay with her, and thou hast no known father. Wherefore, do thou leave evening thyself with the boys in the school, till thou know who is thy father; for till then thou wilt pass for a misbegotten brat amongst them. Dost thou not see that the huckster’s son knows his own father? Thy grandfather is the Vizier of Egypt, but as for thy father, we know him not, and we say, thou hast no father. So return to thy senses.” When Agib heard the insulting words of the children and the monitor, he went out at once and ran to his mother, to complain to her; but his tears would not let him speak awhile. When she heard his sobs and saw his tears, her heart was on fire for him and she said to him, “O my son, why dost thou weep? Tell me what is the matter.” So he told her what the children and the monitor had said and said to her, “Who is my father, O my mother?” “Thy father is the Vizier of Egypt,” answered she; but he said, “Do not lie to me. The Vizier is thy father, not mine. Who then is my father? Except thou tell me the truth, I will kill myself with this dagger.” When the Lady of Beauty heard him speak of his father, she wept, as she thought of her cousin and her bridal-night, and repeated the following verses:
Love in my breast, alas! they lit and went away; Far distant is
the camp that holds my soul’s delight!
Patience and reason fled from me, when they withdrew; Sleep
failed me, and despair o’ercame me like a blight.
They left me, and with them departed all my joy; Tranquility and
peace with them have taken flight.
They made my lids run down with tears of love laid waste; My eyes
for lack of them brim over day and night.
When as my sad soul longs to see them once again And waiting and
desire are heavy on my spright;
Midmost my heart of hearts their images I trace, Love and
desireful pain and longing for their sight.
O ye, one thought of whom clings round me like a cloak, Whose
love it as a shirt about my body dight,
O my beloved ones, how long will ye delay? How long must I endure
estrangement and despite?
Then she wept and cried out and her son did the like, when in came the Vizier, whose heart burned within him at the sight of their weeping, and he said, “Why do ye weep?” The Lady of Beauty told him what had happened to Agib, and the Vizier also wept and called to mind his brother and all that had passed between them and what had befallen his daughter, and knew not the secret of the matter. Then he rose at once and going to the Divan, related the matter to the Sultan and begged his leave to travel eastward to the city of Bassora and enquire for his nephew. Moreover, he besought him for letters-patent, authorizing him to take Bedreddin, wherever he should find him. And he wept before the King, who took pity on him and wrote him royal letters-patent to his deputies in all his provinces; whereat the Vizier rejoiced and called down blessings on him. Then taking leave of him, he returned to his house, where he equipped himself and his daughter and grandson for the journey, and set out and travelled till he came to the city of Damascus and found it rich in trees and waters, even as says the poet:
I mind me a night and a day spent in Damascus town, (Time swore
’twould ne’er again their like to man outmete).
We lay in its languorous glades, where the careless calm of the
night And the morn, with its smiling eyes and its
twy-coloured tresses, meet.
The dew to its branches clings like a glittering chain of pearl,
Whose jewels the zephyr smites and scatters beneath his
feet.
The birds on the branches chant from the open book of the lake;
The breezes write on the scroll and the clouds mark the
points, as they fleet.
The Vizier alighted without the city and pitched his tents in an open space called the Plain of Pebbles, saying to his servants, “We will rest here two days.” So they went down into the city upon their several occasions, this to sell, that to buy, another to go to the bath and a fourth to visit the Mosque of the Ommiades, whose like is not in the world. Agib also went into the city to look about him, followed by an eunuch, carrying a knotted cudgel of almond-tree wood, wherewith if one smote a camel, it would not rise again. When the people of the city saw Agib’s beauty and symmetry (for he was a marvel of loveliness and winning grace, blander than the Northern zephyr, sweeter than limpid water to the thirsty and more delightful than recovery to the sick), a great concourse of folk followed him, whilst others ran on before and sat down in the road, against he should come up, that they might gaze on him, till, as Fate would have it, the eunuch stopped before the shop of Bedreddin Hassan. Now the cook was dead and Bedreddin, having been formally adopted by him, had succeeded to his shop and property; and in the course of the twelve years that had passed over him, his beard had grown and his understanding ripened. When his son and the eunuch stopped before him, he had just finished preparing a mess of pomegranate-seed, dressed with sugar; and when he looked at Agib and saw how beautiful he was, his heart throbbed, blood drew to blood and his bowels yearned to him. So he called to him and said, “O my lord, O thou that hast gotten the mastery of my heart and my soul, thou to whom my bowels yearn, wilt thou not enter my shop and solace my heart by eating of my food?” And the tears welled up, uncalled, from his eyes, and he bethought him of his former estate and compared it with his present condition. When Agib heard his words his heart yearned to him, and he said to the eunuch, “Indeed, my heart inclines to this cook, and meseems he hath lost a child, so let us enter and gladden his soul by partaking of his hospitality. Perhaps God may requite us our kindness to him by reuniting us with my father.” “By Allah!” replied the eunuch, “it were a fine thing for a Vizier’s son to eat in a cookshop! Indeed, I keep off the folk with this stick, lest they look too closely on thee, and I dare not let thee enter a shop.” When Bedreddin heard these words, he wondered and turned to the eunuch, with the tears running down his cheeks, and Agib said to the latter, “Indeed, my heart yearns for him.” But he answered, “Leave this talk; indeed, thou shalt not go in.” Then Bedreddin turned to the eunuch and said, “O noble sir, why wilt thou not gladden my soul by entering my shop? O thou who art as a chestnut, black without, but with a white heart, thou of whom the poet says ………..” The eunuch laughed and said, “What? Say on, by Allah, and be quick about it.” So Bedreddin repeated the following verses:
Were he not polished and discreet and worthy of all trust, He in
kings’ houses would not be advanced to high estate.
O what a guardian he is for a seraglio! The very angels of the
skies delight on him to wait.
This pleased the eunuch, who laughed and taking Agib by the hand, entered the shop with him. Bedreddin ladled out a dishful of pomegranate-seed, conserved with almonds and sugar, and set it before them, saying, “Ye do me honour. Eat and may health and enjoyment attend you!” And Agib said to him, “Sit down and eat with us, so haply God may unite us with him for whom we long.” “O my son,” said Bedreddin, “hast thou then suffered the loss of friends, at thy tender age?” “Yes, O uncle!” answered Agib, “my heart irks me for the loss of a beloved one, who is none other than my father; and indeed my grandfather and myself have come forth to seek for him throughout the world. Alas I how I sigh to be united with him!” Then he wept sore, whilst Bedreddin wept at the sight of his tears and for his bereavement, which recalled to him his own separation from those he loved and from his father and moth
er, and the eunuch was moved to pity for him. Then they ate together till they were satisfied, and Agib and the eunuch rose and left the shop. At this, Bedreddin felt as if his soul had departed his body and gone with them, for he could not live a moment without their sight, albeit he knew not that Agib was his son. So he rose and shutting his shop, hastened after them and overtook them before they went out at the great gate. The eunuch turned and said to him, “What dost thou want?” “When you left me,” replied Bedreddin, “meseemed my soul had quitted my body, and as I had an occasion without the city, I thought to bear you company till I had done my business and so return.” The eunuch was vexed and said to Agib, “This is what I feared. Because we entered this fellow’s shop and ate that unlucky mouthful, he thinks he has a right to presume upon us, for see, he follows us from place to place.” Agib turned and seeing the cook following him, reddened for anger and said to the eunuch, “Let him walk in the high road of the Muslims; but if he follow us when we turn aside to our tents, we will drive him away.” Then he bowed his head and walked on, with the eunuch behind him. When they came to the Plain of Pebbles and drew near their tents, Agib turned and saw Bedreddin still following him; whereat he was enraged, fearing least the eunuch should tell his grandfather and vexed that it should be said he had entered a cookshop and the cook had followed him. So he looked at Bedreddin and found his eyes fixed on him, for he was as it were a body without a soul; and it seemed to Agib that his eye was that of a knave or a lewd fellow. So his rage redoubled and he took up a stone and threw it at Bedreddin. It struck him on the forehead and cut it open; and he fell down in a swoon, with the blood streaming down his face, whilst Agib and the eunuch made for the tents. When he came to himself, he wiped away the blood and tore off a piece of the muslin of his turban, with which he bound his head, blaming himself and saying, “I wronged the lad in closing my shop and following him, so that he thought I was some lewd fellow.” Then he returned to his shop, where he busied himself with the sale of his meats; and he yearned after his mother at Bassora and wept over her and recited the following verses:
One Thousand and One Nights Page 176