"Anna senna! Baba senna! Curses be on his mother! Perdition seize his father!" exclaimed the poor tailor, "for bringing me into this dilemma. My heart misgave me as that dog of a eunuch talked of blindfolding and silence to me: I thought, as true as I am a Turk, that the job could not consist only in making a suit of clothes; and sure enough this dog's son has tacked a head to it. Allah! Allah! what am I to do now? I know not the way to his home, or else I would take it back to him immediately, and throw it in his face. We shall have the bostangi bashi and a hundred other bashis here in a minute, and we shall be made to pay the price of blood; or, who knows, be hanged, or drowned, or impaled! What shall we do, eh, Dilferîb, my soul, say?"
"Do?" said his wife; "get rid of the head, to be sure: we have no more right to have it palmed upon us than anybody else."
"But the day will soon dawn," said the tailor, "and then it will be too late. Let us be doing something at once."
"A thought has struck me," said the old woman. "Our neighbour, the baker, Hassan, heats his oven at this hour, and begins soon after to bake his bread for his morning's customers. He frequently has different sorts of things to bake from the neighbouring houses, which are placed near the oven's mouth over-night: suppose I put this head into one of our earthen pots and send it to be baked; no body will find it out until it is done, and then we need not send for it, so it will remain on the baker's hands."
Babadul admired his wife's sagacity, and forthwith she put her plan into execution. When the head had been placed in a baking-pan, she watched a moment when nobody was at hand, and set it on the ground, in the same row with the other articles that were to be inserted in Hassan's oven. The old couple then double-barred the door of their house, and retired to rest, comforting themselves with the acquisition of the fine shawl and napkin in which the head had been wrapped.
The baker Hassan and his son Mahmûd were heating their oven, inserting therein thorns, chips, and old rubbish at a great rate, when their attention was arrested by the extraordinary whinings and barking of a dog, that was a constant customer at the oven for stray bits of bread, and much befriended by Hassan and his son, who were noted for being conscientious Mussulmans.
"Look, Mahmûd," said the father to the son, "see what is the matter with the dog: something extraordinary is in the wind."
The son did what his father bade him, and seeing no reason for the dog's noises, said, "Bir chey yok, there is nothing," and drove him away.
But the howlings not ceasing, Hassan went himself, and found the dog most extremely intent upon smelling and pointing at the tailor's pipkin. He jumped upon Hassan, then at the pot, then upon Hassan again, until the baker no longer doubted that the beast took great interest in its contents. He therefore gently drew off the lid, when need I mention his horror and surprise at seeing a human head staring him in the face?
"Allah! Allah!" cried the baker; but being a man of strong nerves, instead of letting it fall, as most people would have done, he quietly put on the lid again, and called his son to him.