“Thou miser!” said Haifa, still greatly interested, “tell thy tale and be done!”
“The thief has rupees and to spare, I warrant,” added Scudi, contributing yet another anna.
And Zad-el-Din and Ahmed, because they were lustful of the great beauty of Yanee, each added an anna to his takings.
“Berate me not, O friends,” pleaded Gazzar tactfully, hiding his anna in his cloak, “for I am as poor as thou seest—a son of the road, a beggar, a wanderer, with nowhere to lay my head. Other than my tales I have nothing.” But seeing scant sympathy in the faces of his hearers, he resumed.
“Now at the time that Abou was in charge of the dark bazaar it chanced that the caliph, who annually arranged for the departure of his daughter for the mountains which are beyond Azol in Bactria, where he maintained a summer palace of great beauty, sent forth a vast company mounted upon elephants and camels out of Ullar and Cerf and horses of the rarest blood from Taif. This company was caparisoned and swathed in silks and thin wool and the braided and spun cloth of Esher and Bar with their knitted threads of gold. And it made a glorious spectacle indeed, and all paused to behold. But it also chanced that as this cavalcade passed through the streets of Baghdad, Abou, hearing a great tumult and the cries of the multitude and the drivers and the tramp of the horses’ feet and the pad of the camels’, came to the door of his bazaar, his robes of silk about him, a turban of rare cloth knitted with silver threads upon his head. He had now grown to be a youth of eighteen summers. His hair was as black as the wing of the duck, his eyes large and dark and sad from many thoughts as is the pool into which the moon falls. His face and hands were tinted as with henna when it is spread very thin, and his manners were graceful and languorous. As he paused within his doorway he looked wonderingly at the great company as it moved and disappeared about the curves of the long street. And it could not but occur to him, trained as he was, how rich would be the prize could one but seize upon such a company and take all the wealth that was here and the men and women as slaves.
“Yet, even as he gazed and so thought, so strange are the ways of Allah, there passed a camel, its houdah heavy with rich silks, and ornaments of the rarest within, but without disguised as humble, so that none might guess. And within was the beautiful Princess Yanee, hidden darkly behind folds of fluttering silk, her face and forehead covered to her starry eyes, as is prescribed, and even these veiled. Yet so strange are the ways of life and of Allah that, being young and full of the wonder which is youth and the curiosity and awe which that which is unknown or strange begets in us all, she was at this very moment engaged in peeping out from behind her veils, the while the bright panorama of the world was passing. And as she looked, behold, there was Abou, gazing wonderingly upon her fine accoutrements. So lithe was his form and so deep his eyes and so fair his face that, transfixed as by a beam, her heart melted and without thought she threw back her veil and parted the curtains of the houdah the better to see, and the better that he might see. And Abou, seeing the curtains put to one side and the vision of eyes that were as pools and the cheeks as the leaf of the rose shine upon him, was transfixed and could no longer move or think.
“So gazing, he stood until her camel and those of many others had passed and turned beyond a curve of the street. Then bethinking himself that he might never more see her, he awoke and ran after, throwing one citizen and another to the right and the left. When at last he came up to the camel of his fair one, guarded by eunuchs and slaves, he drew one aside and said softly: ‘Friend, be not wrathful and I will give thee a hundred dinars in gold do thou, within such time as thou canst, report to me at the bazaar of Yussuf, the rug-merchant, who it is that rides within this houdah. Ask thou only for Abou. No more will I ask.’ The slave, noting his fine robes and the green-and-silver turban, thought him to be no less than a noble, and replied: ‘Young master, be not overcurious. Remember the vengeance of the caliph.... ‘Yet dinars have I to give.’... ‘I will yet come to thee.’
“Abou was enraptured by even so little as this, and yet dejected also by the swift approach and departure of joy. ‘For what am I now?’ he asked himself. ‘But a moment since, I was whole and one who could find delight in all things that were given me to do; but now I am as one who is lost and knows not his way.’”
“Ay-ee,” sighed Azad Bakht, the barber, “I have had that same feeling more than once. It is something that one may not overcome.”
“Al Tzoud, in the desert—” began Parfi, but he was interrupted by cries of “Peace—Peace!”