Thousand & One Nights: 149th Night: Lame Young Man & Baghdad Barber -11

Shahrazad is the Frame story teller. These stories had been passed down over centuries, by professional story tellers, and the stories are mixture of different cultures and traditions. Shahrazad uses these stories to shed light on the meaninglessness of certain beliefs like virginity and chastity. The subject story was told originally by the lame young man to an assembly around Quran recitation in which the tailor involved in the murder case of the hunchback was present, who later present it to the king of China to get a relief from the punishment.

Continue to read the story by Lame Young Man:

I am the fittest of all the men to help you in your plan and to see that no one sees you entering the place and put you in jeopardy, for in Baghdad one cannot do anything of the kind, especially on a day like this, and in a city whose chief of police is very powerful, severe and sharp tempered," said the barber.

I said, "Damn you, wretched old man! Aren't you ashamed to speak to me like this?"

He replied, "You, silly man, you ask me whether I am not ashamed, yet you hide from me your plan, which I know for certain, while all I wanted was to help you today." Fearful lest my family and neighbours should hear the barber's talk, and I be exposed, I remained silent, while he finished shaving my head. By then it was almost noon, and the first and second exhortations to prayer were over and the hour of prayer had come.

I said to him, "Take the food and drink to your friends, while I wait for your return and take you with me."

I kept trying to cajole and outsmart the cursed fellow, hoping that he would leave me, but he replied, "I think that you are tricking me and go alone and cast yourself in some peril from which there is no escape. For God's sake don't leave until I come back and go with you, so that I may watch for you and see that you don't fall into a trap."

I replied, "Very well, but don't be late."
He took all that I had given; food, drink, roasted lamb and perfume and went out. But the cursed fellow sent everything to his house with the porter and hid himself in an alley.

I rose at once, for the announcers of prayer had already chanted the salutations, dressed myself, and went out in a hurry until I came to the house where I had seen the young lady --- I did not realise that the cursed barber had followed me. I found the door open, and I went in, I found the old woman on her feet, waiting for me. I went upstairs to the young lady's room, but hardly had I gone in, when the master of the house returned from mosque and, entering the house, closed the door behind him. I looked out from the window and saw this cursed barber sitting by the door and said to myself, "How did that devil find me out?" At that moment, as God  had decreed my undoing, it happened that a maid had committed some some offence for which the master of the house beat her. She screamed, and when a male slave came to rescue her, the judge beat him also, and the slave too began to scream. The cursed barber concluded that it was I whom the judge  was beating and began to tear his clothes, throw dust on his head, and cry out for help. The people began to gather around him, while  he kept crying out, "My master is being murdered in the Judge' s house."

Then he ran, shrieking, towards my house, followed by the crowd, and told my family and servants.  Before I knew it, they arrived, with torn clothes and dishevelled hair, crying out, "Alas for our master!" with the barber at their head, in a sorry state, tearing his clothes and screaming.

Morning overtook, and Shahrazad lapsed into silence.



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