liness and yet embraced her not neither kissed her nor put his hand to her, but turned his back and slept." Answered they, "Even so!" Thereupon Maymunah changed herself into a flea and entering into the raiment of Budur, the loved of Dahnash, crept up her calf and came upon her thigh and, reaching a place some four carats[1] below her navel, there bit her. Thereupon she opened her eyes and sitting up in bed, saw a youth lying beside her and breathing heavily in his sleep, the loveliest of Almighty Allah's creatures, with eyes that put to shame the fairest Houris of Heaven; and a mouth like Solomon's seal, whose water was sweeter to the taste and more efficacious than a theriack, and lips the colour of coral-stone, and cheeks like the blood red anemone, even as saith one, describing him in these couplets:—
My mind's withdrawn from Zaynab and Nawár[2] * By rosy cheeks that growth of myrtle bear;
I love a fawn, a tunic-vested boy, * And leave the love of bracelet-wearing Fair:
My mate in hall and closet is unlike * Her that I play with, as at home we pair.
Oh thou, who blam'st my flight from Hind and Zaynab, * The cause is clear as dawn uplighting air!
Would'st have me fare[3] a slave, the thrall of thrall, * Cribbed, pent, confined behind the bar and wall?
Now when Princess Budur saw him, she was seized by a transport of passion and yearning and love-longing,And Shahrazad per ceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.
Now when it was the Hundred and Eighty-fifth Night,
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when Princess Budur saw Kamar al-Zaman she was forthwith seized with a transport of passion and yearning and love longing, and she said to herself, "Alas, my shame! This is a strange youth and
- ↑ Arab. "Kirát" from (
language characters), i.e. bean, the seed of the Abrus precatorius, in weight = two to three (English) grains; and in length = one finger-breadth here; 24 being the total. The Moslem system is evidently borrowed from the Roman "as" and "uncia."
- ↑ Names of women.
- ↑ Arab. "Amsa" (lit. he passed the evening) like "asbaha" (he rose in the morning) "Azhá" (he spent the forenoon) and "bata" (he spent the night), are idiomatically used for "to be in any state, to continue" without specification of time or season.
