Then he bethought him of his brother Nur al-Din Ali, and how he had
died in a strange land far from kith and kin and friends, and he
wept and repeated these lines:
"I wander 'mid these walls, my Lavla's walls,
And kissing this and other wall I roam.
'Tis not the walls or roof my heart so loves,
But those who in this house had made their home."
Then he passed through the gate into a courtyard and found a vaulted
doorway builded of hardest syenite inlaid with sundry kinds of
multicolored marble. Into this he walked, and wandered about the house
and, throwing many a glance around, saw the name of his brother Nur
al-Din written in gold wash upon the walls. So he went up to the
inscription and kissed it and wept and thought of how he had been
separated from his brother and had now lost him forever.
Then he walked on till he came to the apartment of his brother's
widow, the mother of Badr al-Din Hasan, the Egyptian. Now from the
time of her son's disappearance she had never ceased weeping and
wailing through the light hours and the dark, and when the years
grew longsome with her, she built for him a tomb of marble in the
midst of the saloon and there used to weep for him day and night,
never sleeping save thereby.
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