Thousand & One Nights: 110 Night

One hundred and tenth night.
Shahrazad the queen, her husband and king Shahriar were present. Dinarzad, also known as Dunyazad, the sister of Shahrazad was also present. This story was originally told by the Christian trader to the king of China. The title of the story is:
The Young Man with Severed Hand & the Girl -1

Christian trader: 
- O king, I came as a stranger to your country, bringing merchandise with me, and was fated to stay here these many years. I was born an Egyptian Christian, a native of Cairo. My father was a prominent broker. When he died I stepped into his shoes. One day, when I was sitting in the market of fodder merchants in Cairo, a handsome, well dressed young man, riding a tall ass, came upto me. He saluted me, and I rose in salute. He took out a handkerchief containing sesame, and asked me, "How much is the measure worth?"
I replied, "It is a hundred dirhams worth."
"Take a measure and some porters and come to al-Jawli caravanserai by the Gate of Victory, where you will find me." I rose, and went to find the buyer. Making the rounds of sesame merchants, confectioners, and fodder dealers, I got one hundred dirhams per mesure. Then I took with me four teams of porters and went with them to al-Jawli caravanserai, where I found the young man waiting for me. As soon as he saw me, he rose and led me to the store room, carrying fifty measures in all, costing five thousand dirhams. Then the young man said to me, "Take ten dirhams per mesure for your brokerage, and keep my share four thousand and five hundred dirhams with you. When I finish selling the rest of my crop, I will come to you and take the money." I replied "very well," kissed his hand, and departed, surprised at his liberality.

For a month I waited. He came and asked me, "where is the money?" I welcomed him and invited him to sit with me and have something to eat, but he refused and said, "Go and get the money, and in a little while I will come back to take it from you." Then  he departed on ass back. I went and brought the money and sat waiting for him. But he did not turn up for a month, and I said to myself, "This is indeed a liberal young man. He has left four thousand five hundred dirhams of his money with me, for two full months, without coming to take it." At last he came back riding an ass, dressed in fine clothes, and looking as if he had just come from bath. -

The dawn came. Shahrazad stopped storytelling.


Notes:-

1. Caravanserai: An inn with large courtyard for travellers of desert region of Asia or Africa.

2. al-Jawli: there are many places by the name, but most prominent among them being Sanjar al-Jawli mosque in  Hebron Palestine. Sanjar al-Jawli was a prominent Mamluk emir and the Governor of Gaza and Palestine.

3. Gate of Victory: Also known as Buland Darwaza is a monumental Gateway located in Fatehpur Sikri, Agra, India. Literary geography is different from real geography. It is a fascinating aspect of literary geography. It is a kind of cultural fusion. Fiction makers are allowed the fusion different cultures, time and space, as a part of literary freedom.

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