When I saw this, I said to myself, "By Allah, this fashion of
death is more grievous than the first!" And I went in to the King
and said to him, "O my lord, why do ye bury the quick with the
dead?" Quoth he: "It hath been the custom, thou must know, of our
forebears and our olden kings from time immemorial, if the husband die
first, to bury his wife with him, and the like with the wife, so we
may not sever them, alive or dead." I asked, "O King of the Age, if
the wife of a foreigner like myself die among you, deal ye with him as
with yonder man?" and he answered, "Assuredly we do with him even as
thou hast seen." When I heard this, my gall bladder was like to burst,
for the violence of my dismay and concern for myself. My wit became
dazed, I felt as if in a vile dungeon, and hated their society, for
I went about in fear lest my wife should die before me and they bury
me alive with her. However, after a while I comforted myself,
saying, "Haply I shall predecease her, or shall have returned to my
own land before she die, for none knoweth which shall go first and
which shall go last."
Then I applied myself to diverting my mind from this thought with
various occupations, but it was not long before my wife sickened and
complained and took to her pillow and fared after a few days to the
mercy of Allah.
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