In the morning, he was seated at the edge of the sunshine,[420] his new hawk preening her feathers, etc., in the manner I have just described. He was, of course, watchful that his unmanned hawk should not be suddenly scared; for you must know that, should a new hawk be suddenly scared, it is difficult to efface from her memory[421] the remembrance of the fright, and she is perhaps spoilt for ever after. While the hawk was engaged in her preening, Sayyid Adham was suddenly horrified to see his small two-year-old son toddling towards him. Quietly intervening himself between the boy and the hawk he beckoned to the former to come to him. As soon as the child came up to him, he deftly took his head under his arm and kept it there till the hawk, having finished her toilet, was fed and rehooded. He released his son and found that the poor child had been suffocated:—
To save his hawk from starting in alarm
He seized the child and thrust him ’neath his arm,
And pressing tight and tighter in his dread,
He killed the boy by crushing up his head.
Though I myself never saw the Sayyid,[422] I was well acquainted with his immediate descendants. In training bālābān to gazelle they had no equal, and were justly proud of their skill. They used to pride themselves on the incident narrated above as being a proof of their father’s devotion to sport.
Bet with the Pasha.—It is also well known that Sayyid Adham once laid a wager with the Pasha of Baghdad that he would, within twelve days, fly at gazelle, with success, a certain newly caught bālābān. He did so; on the twelfth day, in the presence of the Pasha, the bālābān took its first gazelle in noble style, and the Sayyid his wager. Only a falconer knows the difficulty of taking a wild gazelle with a passage falcon within twelve days of its capture.[423]
Concerning these two matters God is the Knower[424]—but all the old men[425] of Baghdad bore constant testimony to their truth.
FOOTNOTES:
[417] Ṣayyād, Ar., as comprehensive a word as shikārchī; vide page 54, note [216].