书城公版Volume Seven
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第131章

Then the Sultan summoned Bahram and bade strike off his head;but he said,'O most mighty King,art thou indeed resolved to put me to death?'Replied the King,'Yes,except thou save thyself by becoming a Moslem.'Quoth Bahram,'O King,bear with me a little while!'Then he bowed his head groundwards and presently raising it again,made pro fession of The Faith and islamised at the hands of the Sultan. They all rejoiced at his conversion and Amjad and As'ad told him all that had befallen them,whereat he wondered and said,'O my lords,make ready for the journey and I will depart with you and carry you back to your father's court in a ship.'At this they rejoiced and wept with sore weeping but he said,'O my lords,weep not for your departure,for it shall reunite you with those you love,even as were Ni'amah and Naomi.'

'And what befel Ni'amah and Naomi?'asked they.'They tell,'replied Bahram,'(but Allah alone is All knowing) the following tale of End of Vol. 3.

Footnotes

[1] This'horripilation,'for which we have the poetical term'gooseflesh,'is often mentioned in Hindu as in Arab literature.

[2] How often we have heard this in England!

[3] As a styptic.The scene in the text has often been enacted in Egypt where a favourite feminine mode of murdering men is by beating and bruising the testicles.The Fellahs are exceedingly clever in inventing methods of manslaughter.For some years bodies were found that bore no outer mark of violence,and only Frankish inquisitiveness discovered that the barrel of a pistol had been passed up the anus and the weapon discharged internally Murders of this deion are known in English history;but never became popular practice.

[4] Arab.'Zakar,'that which betokens masculinity.At the end of the tale we learn that she also gelded him;thus he was a'Sandal),'a rase.

[5] See vol. i. p. 104. {see Volume 1,Note 188}

[6] The purity and intensity of her love had attained to a something of prophetic strain.

[7] Lane corrupts this Persian name to Shah Zeman (i. 568).

[8] i.e. the world,which includes the ideas of Fate,Time,Chance.

[9] Arab.'Barid,'silly,noyous,contemptible;as in the proverb Two things than ice are colder cold:

An old man young,a young man old.

A'coldofcountenance'=a fool:'May Allah make cold thy face!'=may it show want and misery.'By Allah,a cold speech!'=a silly or abusive tirade (Pilgrimage,ii. 22).

[10] The popular form is,'often the ear loveth before the eye.'

[11] Not the first time that royalty has played this prank,nor the last,perhaps.

[12] i.e. the Lady Dunya.

[13] These magazines are small stronglybuilt rooms on the ground floor,where robbery is almost impossible.

[14] Lit.'approbation,''benediction';also the Angel who keeps the Gates of Paradise and who has allowed one of the Ghilman (or Wuldan) the boys of supernatural beauty that wait upon the Faithful,to wander forth into this wicked world.

[15] In Europe this would be a plurale majestatis,used only by Royalty. In Arabic it has no such significance,and even the lower orders apply it to themselves;although it often has a soup噊n of'I and thou.'

[16] Man being an'extract of despicable water'(Koran xxxii.7) ex spermate genital),which Mr. Rodwell renders'from germs of life,''from sorry water.'

[17] i.e. begotten by man's seed in the light of salvation (Nur alhuda).

[18] The rolls of white (camphorlike) scarfskin and sordes which come off under the bathman's glove become by miracle of Beauty,as brown musk. The Rubber or Shampooer is called in Egypt'Mukayyis'(vulgarly'Mukayyisati') or'bagman,'from his'Kis,'a bagglove of coarse woollen stuff. To'Johnny Raws'he never fails to show the little rolls which come off the body and prove to them how unclean they are,but the material is mostly dead scarfskin .

[19] The normal phrase on such occasions (there is always a'dovetail'de rigueur)'Allah give thee profit!'

[20] i.e. We are forced to love him only,and ignore giving him a rival (referring to Koranic denunciations of'Shirk,'or attributing a partner to Allah,the religion of plurality,syntheism not polytheism): see,he walks tottering under the weight of his back parts wriggling them whilst they are rounded like the revolving heavens.

[21] Jannat alNa'im (Garden of Delight);the fifth of the seven Paradises made of white diamond;the gardens and the plurality being borrowed from the Talmud. Mohammed's Paradise,by the by,is not a greater failure than Dante's. Only ignorance or pious fraud asserts it to be wholly sensual;and a single verse is sufficient refutation:'Their prayer therein shall be'Praise unto thee,O. Allah!' and their salutation therein shall be'Peace!' and the end of their prayer shall be,'Praise unto God,the Lord of all creatures'' (Koran x. 1011). See also lvi. 2426. It will also be an intellectual condition wherein knowledge will greatly be increased (lxxxviii viii. 1720). Moreover the Moslems,far more logical than Christians,admit into Paradise the socalled'lower animals.'

[22] Sed vitam faciunt balnea,vine,Venus! The Hammam to Easterns is a luxury as well as a necessity;men sit there for hours talking chiefly of money and their prowess with the fair;

and women pass half the day in it complaining of their husbands'

overamativeness and contrasting their own chaste and modest aversion to camel congress.

[23] The frigidarium or cold room,coolness being delightful to the Arab.

[24] The calidarium or hot room of the bath.

[25] The Angel who acts doorkeeper of Hell;others say he specially presides over the torments of the damned (Koran xliii. 78).

[26] The Doorkeeper of Heaven before mentioned who,like the Guebre Zamiyad has charge of the heavenly lads and lasses,and who is often charged by poets with letting them slip.