SELIM Listen to me, Hassan, why is it that in this last year you have become different from the Hassan that was Hassan? From time to time you talk strangely in your cups, like a mad poet; and you have bought a lute and a carpet too fine for your house. And now I feel you are losing your senses when I hear this talk of love from one who is past the age of folly.
HASSAN
It may be so, young man. Indeed, a think I am a fool.
It is the affliction of Allah.
SELIM Tell me, at least, who she is. It may be she is not so unattainable as you imagine, unless indeed you have set eyes on the Caliph's daughter, or on the Queen of all the Jinn.
HASSAN Listen, Selim, and I will tell you my affair. Three days ago a woman came here to buy loukoum of me, dressed as a widow, and bade me follow her to her door with a parcel. Alas, Selim! I could see her eyes beneath her veil, and they were like the twin fountains in the Caliph's garden; and her lips beneath her veil were like roses hidden in moss, and her waist was flexible as a palm-tree swaying in the wind, and her hips were large and heavy and round, like water melons in the season of water melons. I glanced at her but she would not smile, and I sighed but she would not glance, and the door of her house shut fast against me, like the gate of paradise against an infidel. Eywallah! (Recommences moaning.)
SELIM And where was the house of this widow who bought sweetmeats and had none to sell?
HASSAN
In the street of Felicity, by the fountain of the Two Pigeons.
SELIM (Musing) It must be the widow of that Achmet they hung last year by the Basra Gate.
HASSAN
Which Achmet?
SELIM
The hairy one.
HASSAN
Istagfurallah! He fluttered like a bird. May I never soar so high.