Today's excerpt is from The First Calendar's Story. Previously
So the headsman carried me without the city to the midst of the desert, where he took me out of the chest, bound hand and foot as I was, and would have bandaged my eyes, that he might slay me. But I wept sore till I made him weep, and looking at him, repeated the following verses: I counted on you as a coat of dart-proof mail toward The foeman's
arrows from my breast. Alas! ye are his sword!
I hoped in you to succour me in every evil chance, Although my
right hand to my left no more should help afford.
Yet stand aloof nor cast your lot with those who do me hate, And
let my foemen shoot their shafts against your whilom lord!
If you refuse to succour me against my enemies, At least be
neutral, nor to me nor them your aid accord.
And these also:
How many of my friends, methought, were coats of mail! And so
they were, indeed, but on my foeman's part. Unerring shafts and true I deemed them; and they were Unerring shafts, indeed, alas, but in my heart!
When the headsman heard this (now he had been my father's headsman and I had done him kindness) he said, "O my lord what can I do, being but a slave commanded?"
Then he said, "Fly for thy life and never return to this country, or thou art lost and I with thee." As says one of the poets:
Escape with thy life, if oppression betide thee, And let the
house tell of its builder's fate!
Country for country thou'lt find, if thou seek it; Life for life
never, early or late.
It is strange men should dwell in the house of abjection, When
the plain of God's world is so wide and so great!
I kissed his hands, hardly crediting my escape; and reckoned little of the loss of my eye, in consideration of my deliverance from death. Then I repaired to my uncle's capital and going in to him, told him what had befallen my father and myself; whereat he wept sore and said, "Verily, thou addest affliction to my affliction and sorrow to my sorrow; for thy cousin has been missing these many days; I know not what is become of him, and none can give me any news of him." Then he wept till he swooned away, and my heart was sore for him. When he revived, he would have medicined my eye, but found there was but the socket left and said, "O my son, it is well that it was thine eye and not thy life!"
Continued next week. Tomorrow's installment from The Illiad by Homer.
From the Arab world: these stories date back to the Middle Ages.
Picture: Queen Scheherazade tells her stories to King Shahryār.
More information here:
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