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to the burial-place, laid him in the grave[1] and threw the earth over him; after which the folk dispersed, but El Merouzi and the widow abode by the tomb, weeping, and gave not over sitting till sundown, when the woman said to him, ‘Come, let us go to the house, for this weeping will not profit us, nor will it restore the dead.’ ‘By Allah,’ answered the sharper, ‘I will not budge hence till I have slept and waked by this tomb ten days, with their nights!’ When she heard this his speech, she feared lest he should keep his word and his oath, and so her husband perish; but she said in herself, ‘This fellow dissembleth: if I go away and return to my house, he will abide by him a little while and go away.’ And El Merouzi said to her, ‘Arise, thou, and go away.’
So she arose and returned to her house, whilst El Merouzi abode in his place till the night was half spent, when he said to himself, ‘How long [is this to last]? Yet how can I let this knavish dog die and lose the money? Methinks I were better open the tomb on him and bring him forth and take my due of him by dint of grievous beating and torment.’ Accordingly, he dug him up and pulled him forth of the tomb; after which he betook himself to an orchard hard by the burial-ground and cut thence staves and palm sticks. Then he tied the dead man’s legs and came down on him
- ↑ The Mohammedan grave is a cell, hollowed out in the sides of a trench and so constructed as to keep out the earth, that the deceased may be able to sit up and answer the examining angels when they visit him in the tomb. There was, therefore, nothing improbable in Er Razi’s boast that he could abide two days in the tomb.
