Thousand & One Nights: 28th Night: The Porter and Three Ladies

There was a bachelor in the city of Baghdad. He was a porter. He was standing in the market, leaning on his basket, when a woman approached him. She wore a Mosul cloak, a silk veil, a fine kerchief embroidered with gold, a pair of leggings tied with fluttering laces. She lifted her veil, and a pair of beautiful dark eyes graced with long lashes and tender expression appeared. "Porter, take your basket and follow me," said she in a soft voice and sweet tone. Hardly believing his ears, the porter took his basket and hurried behind her. He said to himself, "O happy day, O lucky day" and hurried behind her. She stopped at the fruit vendor, and bought from him red and yellow apples, Herbon peaches, and Turkish quinces, sea coast lemons, royal oranges, as well as baby cucumbers. Then she asked potter to put them into his basket. Next, she approached the flower vendors. And
bought Aleppo jasmines, Damascus lilies, myrtle berries and mignonettes, daisies and gilly flowers, lilies of the valley and irises, narcissus, daffodils, violets, anemones as well as pomegranate blossoms. Everything she got put into porter's basket after each purchase. 

"Now follow me," she said. She walked towards the butcher. "Cut me off ten pounds of mutton," she said to the butcher. He cut it, wrapped it gave it to her while she paid. She placed in the basket together with some charcoal.[1] She asked the porter follow her, and the potter followed her with the basket on his head.

Next was a grocer. Here she bought condiments, pitted, salted and pickled tarragon, [2] cream cheese, Syrian cheese, sweet pickles, as well as sour pickles, and put them in the basket. Next he went to a dry fruits vendor. Here she bought all sorts of dry fruits and nuts: Aleppo raisins, Iraqi sugar canes, pressed Ba'albak figs, roasted chick - peas, as well as shelled pistachios, and hazel nuts. She placed everything in the basket and turned to him, and said, "Porter, take your basket and follow me."

The porter followed her, carrying the basket on his head, until she came to the confectioners. She bought whole tray full of every kind of pastry and sweet in the shop, such as sour barley rolls, sweet rolls, date rolls, Cairo rolls, Turkish rolls, and open worked Balkan rolls, as well as cookies, Stuffed and musk scented kataifs, amber combs, ladyfingers, windows, bread, Kadis tidbits, eat-and-thanks, and almond pudding. When she placed the tray in the basket, the porter said to her, "Mistress, if you had let me know I would have brought with me a nag, or camel to carry all these purchase." She smiled and walked ahead until she came to the druggist, where she bought two loaves of sugar and candles and torches. She put everything in the basket, turned to the porter, and said, "Porter, take your basket and follow me." The porter carried the basket and walked behind her until she came to a spacious courtyard facing a tall stately mansion with massive pillars and a double door inlaid with ivory and shining gold. The girl stopped at the door and knocked gently.

The break of dawn and the curtain fell before the story tellers.






Notes:-

1. Charcoal is used while cooking mutton to infuse the meat with smoky flavour and enhance its overall taste and texture. In some traditional methods a piece of burning charcoal is placed in a bowl of ghee within cooking pot.
2. Tarragon: Also known as estragon is a perennial herb, used as an aromatic culinary ingredient.

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