HASSAN (In terror) Call me not brother, thou savage man, who dost talk of shedding the holiest blood in Islam!
RAFI When high office is polluted, when the holy is unholy, when justice is a lie, when the people are starved, and the great fools of the world are in high office, then dares a man talk of shedding the holiest blood in Islam?
CALIPH Also when one has a vengeance to wreak on the Caliph and a claim on a lady of his household.
MASRUR
Why do you want to nail him in his coffin alive? Tell us the tale.
JAFAR
Tell us, if would not have us think you a mad man or a buffoon.
CALIPH Tell us about the woman; what harm can do you since we are in your power?
RAFI (After hesitation) Yes, what harm can it do, if for my own sake, to relieve the heaviness of my heart, I tell you something of my story?
My name is Rafi. I come from the hills beyond Mosul, where the men walk free and the women go unveiled. There I was betrothed to Pervaneh, a woman beautiful and wise. But the very day before our marriage the Governor of Mosul remembered my country and invaded it with a thousand men. And little enough plunder they got from our village, but they caught Pervaneh walking alone among the pine woods and carried her away. When I heard this I leapt on my horse and galloped to Mosul, prepared to slay the Governor and all the inhabitants thereof single-handed, if evil had come to Pervaneh. But there I found she had already been sent with a raft full of slaves down the Tigris to Bagdad. Whereupon I hired six men with shining muscles to row me there. We arrived at Bagdad at the end of the third night's rowing at the grey of dawn. I sprang out of the raft like a tiger, and ran like a madman through the streets, crying "The Slave Market! Tell me the way, O ye citizens! The Slave Market, O the Slave Market!"
And suddenly turning a corner I came upon the market, which was like a garden full of girls in splendid clothes grouped in groups like flowers in garden beds and some like lilies, naked. I ran around the market to find Pervaneh and all the women laughed at me aloud, and behold there she stood; she who had never worn a veil before, the only veiled woman in all the market, for she had sworn to bite off her lips if her master would not veil her: but I knew her by the beauty of her hands, and I cried: "O dealer, the veiled woman for a thousand dinars!" And the dealer laughed in the way of dealers at the presumption of my offer and demanded two thousand, and so I purchased for gold the blood of my own heart, and she lifted her veil and sang for joy and hung upon my neck, and all the slave girls clapped their hands.
But at that moment there entered into the market a negro eunuch, so tall and so disgusting that the sun was darkened and the birds whistled for terror in the trees. And all the dealers and the slaves bowed low before him. Coming to my dealer, he cried: "Why dost thou sell slaves before the Caliph has made his choice?"