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and apple[1] of mine eye!” And the abode on this wise, weeping and lamenting, till Alaeddin’s mother was certified that he was in earnest and that he was like to swoon of the excess of his wailing and his lamentation. So she came to him and raised him from the ground, saying, “What profiteth it that thou shouldst kill thyself?” And[2] she proceeded to comfort him and made him sit down.
Then, before she laid the table, the Maugrabin fell to relating to her [his history] and said to her, “O wife of my brother, let it not amaze thee that in all thy days thou never sawest me neither knewest of me in my late brother’s lifetime, for that I left this country forty years agone and became an exile from my native land. I journeyed to the lands of Hind and Sind and all the country of the Arabs and coming presently into Egypt, sojourned awhile in the magnificent city [of Cairo], which is the wonder of the world.[3] Ultimately I betook myself to the land of Hither Barbary[4] and sojourned there thirty years’ space,[5] till one day of the days, as I sat,[6]
- ↑ Lit. “vein” (irc).
- ↑ Night DXVIII.
- ↑ Ujoubetu ’l aalem. See ante, p. 32, note.
- ↑ Ila biladi ’l gherbi ’l jewwaniy.
- ↑ Burton, “to the regions of the Setting Sun and abode for a space of thirty years in the Moroccan interior.” See ante, p. 57, notes.
- ↑ Burton adds, “Alone at home.”
