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compensate us with his bounties and cause our mourning to cease. What sayst thou, O my son? Shall we walk abroad to view Damascus and cheer our spirits?” “Thy will is mine,” replied Zoulmekan. So the stoker took him by the hand, and they sallied forth and walked on, till they came to the stables of the Viceroy of Damascus, where they found camels laden with chests and carpets and brocaded stuffs and saddle-horses and Bactrian camels and slaves, white and black, and folk running to and fro and a great bustle. Quoth Zoulmekan, “I wonder to whom all these camels and stuffs and servants belong!” So he asked one of the slaves, and he replied, “These are presents that the Viceroy of Damascus is sending to King Omar ben Ennuman, with the tribute of Syria.” When Zoulmekan heard his father’s name, his eyes filled with tears and he repeated the following verses:
Ye that are far removed from my desireful sight, Ye that within my heart are sojourners for aye,
Your comeliness is gone and life no more for me Is sweet, nor will the pains of longing pass away.
If God one day decree reunion of our loves, How long a tale of woes my tongue will have to say!
Then he wept and the stoker said to him, “O my son, thou art hardly yet recovered; so take heart and do not weep, for I fear a relapse for thee.” And he applied himself to comfort him and cheer him, whilst Zoulmekan sighed and bemoaned his strangerhood and separation from his sister and his family and repeated the following verses, with tears streaming from his eyes:
Provide thee for the world to come, for needs must thou be gone; Or soon or late, for every one the lot of death is drawn.
Thy fortune in this world is but delusion and regret; Thy life in it but vanity and empty chaff and awn.
The world, indeed, is but as ’twere a traveller’s halting-place, Who makes his camels kneel at eve and fares on with the dawn.
