Thousand & One Nights: 164th Night: The Barber Tells His Story -14

The old woman finished her prayer, and blessed my brother.  He thanked her and pulled out two dinars from his purse, and gave them to her, and said, "This is an offering from me."
"How strange!" She exclaimed, "Why do you look at me as if I was a beggar? Keep it for yourself.  I don't need it. However, I do have for you in this city a wealthy woman. She is charming."

My brother asked, "How could I get such a woman?"

"She replied, "Take all your money, and follow me, and when you are with her, spare neither fair words nor amiability, and you will enjoy her beauty and her wealth to your hearts content."  My brother took all his money and went with the old woman.

They came to the door of a mansion.  She knocked the door.  It was opened by a Greek slave girl.  She entered, and my  brother followed.  They were in a spacious hall spread with carpets and hung with curtains.  My brother sat down, placed the money before him, and, taking off his turban, put it on his knee.  Soon came in a young lady, beautiful and richly dressed.  My brother rose to his feet. The lady smiled to him.  Then she bade the door be shut and, taking him by the hand led him to a private room, where she seated him and sitting beside him dallied with him for a while.  Then she rose and said, "Wait until I come back," and went away.

He sat by himself, when suddenly a great black slave came in, with a sword in his hand, and said to him, "Damn you, what are you doing here?" My brother was tongue-tied and could not answer.  The black slave seized him and, stripping him of his clothes, struck him with the flat of his sword and left him paralyzed.  Then he kept striking him so severely that my brother fell unconscious.  The hideous slave concluded that my brother was dead, and asked, "Where is the salt woman?" and in came a woman with a large salt dish full of salt.  The black slave began to stuff my brother's wounds with salt until he fainted again.

When he came to himself, he lay motionless as dead because he thought the black slave would finish him.  The maid went away.  "Where is the cellar woman?" cried out the black slave.  There came an old woman, who took my brother by feet and dragged him away and, opening a cellar door, threw him down on a heap of dead bodies.  There he remained unconscious for full two days, but the Almighty and Glorious God made the salt the cause of saving his life, for it stopped the flow of blood.  As soon as he found himself able to move, he crept fearfully out of the cellar and made his way to the hallway, where he hid till morning.  When the old woman went out in quest of another, prey he went out behind her, without her knowledge, and headed home.  There he seated himself for a month until he recovered.  Meanwhile he kept a constant watch on the old woman, while she took one man after another, and led them to the house. But my brother said nothing.  When he regained his health and recovered his strength, he took a piece of cloth and made it into a bag which he filled with glass.

But morning overtook and Shahrazad lapsed into silence 


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