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mother, ‘Wilt thou take up thine abode in this palace?’ ‘I will well, O my son,’ answered she and called down blessings upon him.
Then he rubbed the ring and bade the genie fetch him forty handsome white slave-girls and forty male white slaves, besides the like number of black slaves, male and female. ‘Thy will shall be done,’ answered Er Raad and betaking himself, with forty of his attendant Jinn, to Hind and Sind and Persia, carried off every handsome girl and boy they saw, till they had made up the required number. Moreover, he sent other fourscore, who fetched handsome black slaves, male and female, forty of either sex, and carried them all to Jouder’s house, which they filled. Then he showed them to Jouder, who was pleased with them and bade him bring a suit of the richest raiment for each of them and dresses to boot for himself and his mother and brothers. So the genie brought all that was needed and clad the female slaves, saying to them, ‘This is your mistress: kiss her hands and cross her not, but serve her, white and black.’ The male slaves also clad themselves and kissed Jouder’s hands; and he and his brothers arrayed themselves in the robes the genie had brought them and became, Jouder as he were a king and his brothers as viziers. Now his house was spacious; so he lodged Salim and his slave-girls in one part thereof and Selim and his slave-girls in another, whilst he and his mother took up their abode in the new palace; and each in his own place was like the Sultan.
Meanwhile, the king’s treasurer, thinking to take something from the treasury, went in and found it altogether empty, even as saith the poet:
Once was it as a beehive stocked and full of bees galore; But when they left it, it became devoid of all its store.[1]
- ↑ The point of this verse is an untranslatable play upon the double meaning of the word kheliyeh, which signifies “beehive” and is also the feminine of the word kheliy “empty.”
