Thousand & One Nights: 161st Night: The Barber Tells His Story - 11

My brother decided to run away from that city, and go to a place where no one would recognise him.

He came and settled down in another city, and began to thrive until one day he went out to divert himself, when he heard the tramping of horses behind him.  He exclaimed, "the judgement of God is upon me," and looking for a place to hide, found  nothing but a closed door.  When he pushed it, the door opened, and he fell forward, finding himself in a long hallway.  But hardly had he advanced, when two men seized him and said, "Praise be to God, who has delivered you to our hands, O enemy of God.  For three nights you have robbed us of peace and sleep, and made us test the agonies of death."

My brother said, "Fellows, what is your problem?"

They said, "You have been tormenting us and plotting to kill the master of the house.  Is it not enough that you and your friends have made him a beggar?  Give us the knife with which you have been threatening us every night."  Then they searched him and found a knife tucked in his belt.

He said to them, "Fellows, for God's sake, treat me kindly, for my story is a strange one." Then he said to himself, "I will tell them my tale."  He hoped that they would let him go, but they paid no attention to him, and refused to listen to him.  Instead they beat him and tore off his clothes, and finding on him the marks of former beatings, said, "Cursed man, these are marks of punishment."

Then they took my brother to the chief of police, while my brother said to himself, "I am undone for my sins.  Now no one can save me but the Almighty God."

The chief said to my brother, "Villian, what made you enter their house and threaten them with death?"

My brother replied, "I beg, for God's sake, to listen to me and hear my story, before you hasten to condemn me."

But the two men said to the chief, "Will you listen to the chief of beggars people, a man who bears the marks of punishment?"

When the chief saw the marks on my brother's back, he said to him, "They would not have done this to you, were it not for a grave crime."

Then he sentenced him, and they gave him a hundred lashes, and paraded him on a camel throughout the city, crying out, "This is the reward to those who break into people's houses."

Then the chief banished my brother from the city, and he wandered until I went out after him, and found him.  When I questioned him, he told me this tale.  I took him secretly back to Baghdad and made him an allowance to live on.  It was out of the utmost generosity that I treated my brothers in this fashion.

The Caliph laughed, until he fell on his back, and ordered a gift for me.  But I said, "By God, my lord, though I am not a man of many words, I must complete the stories of my other brothers, so that our lord the Caliph will be acquainted with all their tales, and have them recorded and kept in his library, and so that he may discover that I am not a garrulous man.

But morning overtook and Shahrazad lapsed into silence.

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