Though now thou jeer, O Hind, how many a night ✿ I’ve left thee wakeful sighing for the light.
And she answered him with these two:—
We reck not, an our life escape from bane, ✿ For waste of wealth and gear that went in vain:
Money may be regained and rank re-won ✿ When one is cured of malady and pain.
And she ceased not to laugh at him and make sport of him, till they drew near the city of the Caliph, when she threw down a dinar with her own hand and said to Al-Hajjaj, “O camel-driver, I have dropped a dirham; look for it and give it to me.” So he looked and seeing naught but the dinar, said, “This is a dinar.” She replied, “Nay, ’tis a dirham.” But he said, “This is a dinar.” Then quoth she, “Praised be Allah who hath given us in exchange for a paltry dirham a dinar! Give it us.” And Al-Hajjaj was abashed at this. Then he carried her to the palace of the Commander of the Faithful, and she went in to him and became his favourite.——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.
Now when it was the Six Hundred and Eighty-third Night,
She pursued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that men also tell a tale anent
[94]. Al-Mas’údí (chapt. xcv.), mentions a Hind bint Asmá and tells a facetious story of her and the “enemy of Allah,” the poet Jarír.
[95]. Here the old Shiah hatred of the energetic conqueror of Oman crops out again. Hind’s song is that of Maysum concerning her husband Mu’áwiyah which Mrs. Godfrey Clark (’Ilâm-en-Nâs, p. 108) thus translates:—