SHĀITĀN AND HIS SAVAGE WIFE.
The young men said, “Well my friend, if ever you get married, and have a wife like that woman; you will remember what we have said, and you will then think her not merely as wicked as ‘Shāitān,’ but a thousand times worse.”
After taking some refreshment he pondered over these words, and bidding them “salaam” “Shāitān” went on his way.
It was some little time after this when “Shāitān” did take unto himself a wife, and as it happened, she turned out to be a most violent woman, and used to abuse and maltreat him on every occasion, and would even go so far as to kick and beat him and torture him in a variety of ways.
Their youngest and best child was a son, and she would even chastise him, and if the father remonstrated or interfered with her, he would always come in for a large share of her ire and abuse. When “Shāitān” had pondered over the sad plight he was in, his thoughts reverted to the saying of the young men in the village, and he said to himself, “Tobâh! Tobâh! Oh tush! fie! why certainly this wife of mine is worse than the woman in the village, yes a thousand times worse.”
Now this son began to grow up a bit of a demon in nature, and as time wore on, it was necessary that he should be given something to do, so his father one day called him aside and said, “I want you to hear some advice from me,” but the son replied, “I know you are my father, but I could never be advised by you, for you are ‘Shāitān,’ and you never did give good advice to anyone.” “That is true,” said the father, “but though I know it is my way to give bad advice to all, I could not do so to my son: come to me at all events, and hear what I have got to say,” “Say on!” replied the son, “and I will listen.”
“You know,” “Shāitān” said, “how you and I are maltreated by your mother, so that life is wellnigh unbearable to both of us: now, my advice to you is that you go on earth as a ‘Hakīm,’ or doctor.”
The son replied, “I know nothing of medicine, and how could I be a physician?” “That is of no consequence,” said his father; “you do as I tell you, and all will go right. When, for instance, you are called to see a patient, as soon as you enter the room, the first thing you do should be to look at the head of the bed or ‘charpai,’ (literally a sleeping place with four legs, ‘char’ meaning four and ‘pai” legs, in Persian). Should you see my shadow there, you should at once say to the people of the house, ‘Do not I pray you spend any more money on the patient, for he is sure to die.’ The people will then say, ‘What a marvellous doctor is this, for he tells us before-hand that he knows the patient will die, and will not receive any fees!’ By this means your fame will become great all over the country.
“But if you should not see my shadow at the head of any patient’s bed, then you should prescribe any simple thing which is known to the common people round about, and of course you will know from the absence of my shadow that the patient will get well, and your renown will go on increasing in this way.”