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afflicted me, I could not dry the spring of tears flowing forth from mine eyes.
1193. "House and child became hateful to me, I sat with cheerless heart; waking I thought of her, when I fell asleep (I thought of her) in my drowsiness.[1] The oathbreaker Usen seems to me of the infidels in faith; the accursed one cannot approach me, to be near me with his cursed face.
1194. "One day at eventide, just at sunset, I passed the guards, the door of the asylum[2] caught mine eye; I was in a reverie, sadness at the thought of her was slaying me; I said: 'Cursed is the vow of every man!'
1195. "From somewhere there came a wandering slave with three companions, the slave clad as a slave, the others in coarse travelling garb;[3] they brought food and drink which they had bought in the city for a drama.[4] They drank, they ate, they chattered, thus they sat merry.
1196. "I hearkened to them, I watched them. They said: 'Pleasantly we rejoiced, but (though) here we are joined as comrades, (yet) are we strangers, none of us knows who another is or whence we are come; we must at least tell one another our stories with our tongues.'
1197. "Those others told their tales as is the wont of wayfarers. The slave said: 'O brothers, providence is a celestial thing; I harvest for you pearls, you sowed but millet; my story is better than your stories:
1198. "'I am the slave of the exalted king, the ruler of the Kadjis.[5] It chanced that he was struck by a sickness which prevailed over him; the helper of the widow, the comforter of the orphan,[6] was dead to us; now his sister, better than a parent, rears his children.
- ↑ Luli, light slumber; ruli, 377, 1053, 1184.
- ↑ Khanaga, "dervish monastery"? (Abul.); "almshouse" (Ch.); "orphan home" (Car.), 785. "The founding of (Mohammedan) Orders cannot easily be traced back earlier than the sixth century of Islam" (Margoliouth, Mohammedanism; London, 1911).
- ↑ Khami, P., simple, clownish (Abul.); of cotton tissue (Car.).
- ↑ 371, 528, 573, 668, 1031, 1040, 1214; here, perhaps, "money."
- ↑ P., a fabulous race, devils, demons, djinns; 190, 282, 559, 564, 1220–1227, 1344.
- ↑ Cf. 1146.
