At the sight they shrieked
and wept and beat their faces, loudly cursing the murderer, whilst a
swoon came over the Sheikh so that the slaves deemed him dead,
unable to survive his son. At last they wrapped the slain youth in his
clothes and carried him up and laid him on the ground, covering him
with a shroud of silk.
Whilst they were making for the ship the old man revived, and,
gazing on his son who was stretched out, fell on the ground and
strewed dust over his head and smote his face and plucked out his
beard, and his weeping redoubled as he thought of his murdered son and
he swooned away once more. After a while a slave went and fetched a
strip of silk whereupon they lay the old man and sat down at his head.
All this took place and I was on the tree above them watching
everything that came to pass, and my heart became hoary before my head
waxed gray, for the hard lot which was mine, and for the distress
and anguish I had undergone, and I fell to reciting:
"How many a joy by Allah's will hath fled
With flight escaping sight of wisest head!
How many a sadness shall begin the day,
Yet grow right gladsome ere the day is sped!
How many a weal trips on the heels of ill,
Causing the mourner's heart with joy to thrill!"
But the old man, O my lady, ceased not from his swoon till near
sunset, when he came to himself and, looking upon his dead son, he
recalled what had happened, and how what he had dreaded had come to
pass, and he beat his face and head.
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