And he keeps my kohl-pencil by him as a pledge: oh, the shame that he has gotten by so doing:
For my eye is dry through giving him this pledge; my hand fails to ransom its anointer.
Now by this statement fathom the depth of my misery and pity one unused to bear it.
Then turned the Kadi to the old man, and said "Come, speak without glozing." and he said:
I swear by the holy place of sacrifice, and the devout whom the slope of Mina brings together;
If the time had been my helper, thou wouldst not have seen me taking in pledge the pencil which he has pledged to me.
Nor would I bring myself to seek a substitute for a needle that he had spoiled; no, nor the price of it.
But the bow of calamities shoots at me with deadly arrows from here and there:
And to know my condition is to know his; misery, and distress, and exile, and sickness.
Fortune has put us on a level: I am his like in misery, and he is as I.