"
Then said they to him: "Collect thy wits and return to thy reason!
How couldest thou be in Bassorah yesterday and in Cairo yesternight
and withal awake in Damascus this morning?" But he persisted,
"Indeed I was a bridegroom in Cairo last night." "Belike thou hast
been dreaming," rejoined they, "and sawest all this in thy sleep."
So Hasan took thought for a while and said to them: "By Allah, this is
no dream, nor visionlike doth it seem! I certainly was in Cairo, where
they displayed the bride before me, in presence of a third person, the
hunchback groom, who was sitting hard by. By Allah, O my brother, this
be no dream, and if it were a dream, where is the bag of gold I bore
with me, and where are my turban and my robe, and my trousers?"
Then he rose and entered the city, threading its highways and byways
and bazaar streets, and the people pressed upon him and jeered at him,
crying out "Madman! Madman!" till he, beside himself with rage, took
refuge in a cook's shop. Now that cook had been a trifle too
clever- that is, a rogue and thief- but Allah had made him repent and
turn from his evil ways and open a cookshop, and all the people of
Damascus stood in fear of his boldness and his mischief.
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