be again free from the smell, and we will expel it.’ So Abu-Nowâs brought a pipe, and went to the soldiers who come during the night to the palace of the Sultan [saying to them]: ‘When you hear the watchman above, you must make an uproar.’[1] The next night the Sultan was asleep, when his wife said: ‘There’s a smell rising from me.’ Thereupon the soldiers made an uproar, and the Sultan cried: ‘What’s the matter?’ The soldiers answered: ‘Abu-Nowâs is the author of this.’ In the morning the Sultan said to the Vizier: ‘I never want to see Abu-Nowâs again.’ The Vizier said to the Sultan: ‘If you don’t want to see Abu-Nowâs we will throw him into the well, where the ape will eat him.’ When Abu-Nowâs comes in the morning the Vizier said to him: ‘The Sultan will throw you into the well today.’ Abu-Nowâs replied that he would come after two or three hours, so he went and bought a sheep; he bought a drum, (and) he bought some bagpipes; he put them into a bag and went to the Sultan’s palace. Then the Vizier asked: ‘What does this mean, Abu-Nowâs?’ He answered: ‘It’s food, because the dead people have not eaten.’ Abu-Nowâs took his food with him, and then took it to the well. Then Abu-Nowâs said that the ape would kill him if he descended slowly into the well. The people said: ‘Very good.’ While he was being let down slowly into the well, he saw the ape in the well. Abu-Nowâs gives it a piece of the meat, and went on giving it piece by piece until the ape was satiated. Then the people above say: ‘All is over; Abu-Nowâs has been let down into the well, and the ape has eaten him!’ But Abu-Nowâs took the drum, and while the ape is still hungry, he gives it a piece of the meat. The people come to see Abu-Nowâs, and, moreover, see him making a noise in the well. So the people say to the Sultan: ‘Hitherto when you throw a man into the well the ape always eats him at once, but now Abu-Nowâs is playing on his drum and on the bagpipes in the well.’ The Sultan went to the well and cried: ‘Abu-Nowâs!’ Abu-Nowâs answers: ‘What do you want?’ He says: ‘Come!’ Abu-Nowâs replies: ‘No! I don’t want (to come); I’m quite content (here).’ Then the people let down a rope, and lift Abu-Nowâs out of the well. And he said: ‘I was quite content in the well: why do you come to me?’”
Is there a reminiscence in this story of Daniel in the lions’ den?
One day I asked Mustafa if he had ever seen an “ ’afrît”, or ghost. He told me he had not, but that when he was a lad of fifteen he was
- ↑ Through the pipe, that is to say, which was supposed to be inserted in the wall of the Sultan’s bedroom, and so become a channel of sound. I believe that the relater of the story forgot a portion of it at this point.
