For ‘tis but little since that same left hand ✿ Washed off Sir Reverence when ablution made.
Then she made them give me other fifty dinars (making in all four hundred gold pieces I had of her) and bade me depart. So I went out from her and came hither, that I might pray Allah (extolled and exalted be He!) to make her husband return to the cookmaid, that haply I might be again admitted to her favours. When the Emir of the pilgrims heard the man’s story, he set him free and said to the bystanders, “Allah upon you, pray for him, for indeed he is excusable.” And men also tell the tale of
[182]. I have described this scene, the wretch clinging to the curtain and sighing and crying as if his heart would break (Pilgrimage iii. 216 and 220). The same is done at the place Al-Multazam, “the attached to;” (ibid. 156) and various spots called Al-Mustajáb, “where prayer is granted” (ibid. 162). At Jerusalem the “Wailing place of the Jews” shows queer scenes; the worshippers embrace the wall with a peculiar wriggle crying out in Hebrew, “O build Thy House, soon, without delay,” etc.
[183]. i.e. The wife. The scene in the text was common at Cairo twenty years ago; and no one complained of the stick. See Pilgrimage i., 120.
[184]. Arab. “Udm, Udum” (plur. of Idám) = “relish,” olives, cheese, pickled cucumbers, etc.
[185]. I have noticed how the left hand is used in the East. In the second couplet we have “Istinjá” = washing the fundament after stool. The lines are highly appropriate for a nightman. Easterns have many foul but most emphatic expressions like those in the text: I have heard a mother say to her brat, “I would eat thy merde!” (i.e. how I love thee!)
THE MOCK CALIPH.
It is related that the Caliph Harun al-Rashid, was one night restless with extreme restlessness, so he summoned his Wazir Ja’afar the Barmecide, and said to him, “My breast is straitened and I have a desire to divert myself to-night by walking about the streets of Baghdad and looking into folks’ affairs; but with this precaution that we disguise ourselves in merchants’ gear, so none shall know us.” He answered, “Hearkening and obedience.” They rose at once and doffing the rich raiment they wore, donned merchants’ habits and sallied forth three in number, the Caliph, Ja’afar and Masrur the sworder. Then they walked from place to place, till they came to the Tigris and saw an old man sitting in a boat; so they went up to him and saluting him, said, “O Shaykh, we desire thee of thy kindness and favour to carry us a-pleasuring down the river, in this thy boat, and take this dinar to thy hire.”——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.
Now when it was the Two Hundred and Eighty-sixth Night,