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No breeze blows from their quarter but I stand, With eyes attent and nostrils open thrown,
And on the South wind snuff their musky gale, Whose scent is grateful to the lover lone.
Then he returned, mad with love-longing, to her house, and finding it empty and deserted, wept till he wet his clothes; after which he swooned away and his soul was like to depart his body. When he revived, he recited the following couplet:
O house, on my abjection have ruth and on my plight, My tears for ever flowing and body wasted quite,
And waft me the aroma of their sweet-scented breeze, So haply with its fragrance it heal my anguished spright.
Then he returned to his own house and abode there, confounded and tearful-eyed, for the space of ten days.
Meanwhile, the Jew journeyed on with Zein el Mewasif half a score days, at the end of which time he halted at a certain city and she wrote to Mesrour a letter and gave it to Huboub, saying, ‘Send this to Mesrour, so he may know how we have been tricked and how the Jew hath cheated us.’ So Huboub despatched it to Mesrour, whom when it reached, its news was grievous to him and he wept till he wet the ground. Then he wrote a reply and sent it to his mistress, subscribing it with the following couplets:
Where is the road unto the doors of solace? How shall he, Who’s all for love-longing on flames of fire consoléd be?
How pleasant were the days of yore, that now are past away! Ah would some scantling of their times were yet with thee and me!
When the letter reached Zein el Mewasif, she read it and gave it to her maid Huboub, bidding her keep it secret. However, the Jew came to know of their correspondence and removed with her to another city, at a distance of twenty days’ journey.
