thousand sighs. And when the shafts of the two regards which met rankled in his heart, he repeated these two couplets,
"She 'spied the moon of Heaven, reminding me * Of nights when met
we in the meadows li'en:
True, both saw moons, but sooth to say, it was * Her very eyes I
saw, and she my eyne."
And when she drew near him, and there remained but two paces between them, he recited these two couplets,
"She spread three tresses of unplaited hair * One night, and
showed me nights not one but four;
And faced the moon of Heaven with her brow, * And showed me two-
fold moons in single hour."
And as she was hard by him he said to her, "Keep away from me, lest thou infect me." Whereupon she uncovered her wrist[1] to him, and he saw that it was cleft, as it were in two halves, by its veins and sinews and its whiteness was as the whiteness of virgin silver. Then said she, "Keep away from me, thou! for thou art stricken with leprosy, and maybe thou wilt infect me." He asked, "Who told thee I was a leper?" and she answered, "The old woman so told me." Quoth he, "'Twas she told me also that thou wast afflicted with white scurvy;" and so saying, he bared his forearms and showed her that his skin was also like virgin silver. Thereupon she pressed him to her bosom and he pressed her to his bosom and the twain embraced with closest embrace, then she took him and, lying down on her back, let down her petticoat trousers, and in an instant that which his father had left him rose up in rebellion against him and he said, "Go it, O Shayth Zachary[2] of shaggery, O father of veins!"; and putting both hands to her flanks, he set the sugar-stick[3] to the mouth of the cleft and thrust on till he came to the wicket called "Pecten." His passage was by the Gate of Victories[4] and therefrom he entered the
- ↑ Where the "Juzám" (leprosy, elephantiasis, morbus sacrum, etc. etc.) is supposed first to show: the swelling would alter the shape. Lane (ii. 267) translates "her wrist which was bipartite."
- ↑ Arab. "Zakariyá" (Zacharias): a play upon the term "Zakar"=the sign of "masculinity." Zacharias, mentioned in the Koran as the educator of the Virgin Mary (chaps. iii.) and repeatedly referred to (chaps. xix. etc.), is a well-known personage amongst Moslems and his church is now the great Cathedral-Mosque of Aleppo.
- ↑ Arab. " Ark al-Haláwat " = vein of sweetness.
- ↑ Arab. "Futúh," which may also mean openings, has before occurred.
