The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan

by James Justinian Morier

'Do not grieve, my son,' said the mollah; 'we know that there is a God, and if it be his will to try you with misfortune, why do you repine? Your money is gone,—gone it is, and gone let it be; but your skin is left,—and what do you want more? A skin is no bad thing, after all!'

'What words are these?' said I: 'I know that a skin is no bad thing; but will it get back my money from the dervish?'

I then requested the old man to state my misfortune to the mûshtehed, and, moreover, my impossibility of showing him that respect by a present, which was due to him, and which it had been my intention to make.

He left me with promises of setting my case in its proper light before the holy man; and, to my great joy, on the very same day the news of the approaching arrival of the Shah was brought to Kom by the chief of the tent-pitchers, who came to make the necessary preparations for his accommodation.

The large open saloon in the sanctuary in which the king prays was spread with fine carpets, the court was swept and watered, the fountain in the centre of the reservoir was made to play, and the avenues to the tomb were put into order. A deputation, consisting of all the priests, was collected, to go before him, and meet him on his entry; and nothing of ceremony was omitted which was due to the honour and dignity of the Shadow of the Almighty upon earth.

I now became exceedingly anxious about my future fate; for it was long since I had heard from Tehran, and I was ignorant of the measure of the Shah's resentment against me. Looking upon the dark side of things, my imagination led me to think that nothing short of my head would satisfy him; but then, cheering myself with a more pleasing prospect, I endeavoured to believe that I was too insignificant a personage that my death should be of any consequence, and built all my hopes upon the intercession of the mûshtehed.

The chief tent-pitcher had formerly been my friend, and among his assistants I recognized many of my acquaintance. I soon made myself known to them; and they did not, for a wonder, draw back from recognizing me, although one of our greatest sages hath said, 'that a man in adversity is shunned like a piece of base money, which nobody will take; and which, if perchance it has been received, is passed off to another as soon as possible.'

The newcomers gave me all the intelligence of what had happened at court since I had left it; and although I professed to have renounced the world, and to have become a recluse, a sitter in a corner, as it is called, yet still I found that I had an ear for what was passing in it. They informed me that the chief executioner had returned from his campaign against the Russians, and had brought the Shah a present of two Georgian slaves, a male and a female, besides other rarities, in order the better to persuade him of his great feats and generalship. The present had been accepted, and his face was to be whitened by a dress of honour, provided he made the tobeh, oath of penance, restraining himself from the use of wine for the future. I also learnt, notwithstanding it was known how deeply I was implicated in Zeenab's guilt, that my former master, the hakîm, had still been obliged to make a large present to the Shah, besides having had half his beard pulled out by the roots, for the loss which his majesty had incurred by her death, and for his disappointment at not finding her ready to dance and sing before him on his return from Sultanieh. The king's wrath for the loss of the Cûrdish slave had in great measure subsided, owing to the chief executioner's gift of the Georgian one, who was described as being the finest person of the sort who had been exhibited at the slave-market since the days of the celebrated Taous, or Peacock; and was, in short, the pearl of the shell of beauty, the marrow of the spine of perfection. She had a face like the full moon, eyes of the circumference of the chief tent-pitcher's forefinger and thumb, a waist that he could span, and a form tall and majestic as the full-grown cypress. And they moreover assured me, that the Shah's anger against me would very easily cede to a present of a few tomauns.

Here again my anathemas against the dervish broke forth; 'and but for him,' said I, 'I might have appeared not empty-handed.' However, I was delighted to hear that my case was not so desperate as I had imagined; and, seated on the carpet of hope, smoking the pipe of expectation, I determined to await my fate with that comfortable feeling of predestination which has been so wisely dispensed by the holy Prophet for the peace and quiet of all true believers.

The King of Kings arrived the next day, and alighted at his tents, which were pitched without the town. I will not waste the reader's time in describing all the ceremonies of his reception, which, by his desire, were curtailed as much as possible, inasmuch as his object in visiting the tomb of Fatimeh was not to reap worldly distinctions, but to humble himself before God and men, in the hope of obtaining better and higher reward.