69
and before; and he was abashed at their talk, but could not hinder them from talking; so he fell to reviling the boy’s mother and cursing her for that she had been the cause of his bringing him out. Then he walked on till he reached his shop and opening it, sat down and seated his son before him: after which he looked out and saw the thoroughfare blocked with people, for all the passers-by, going and coming, stopped before the shop, to gaze on that fair-faced one, and could not leave him and all the men and women crowded about him, applying to themselves the words of him who saith:
Thou didst beauty create a temptation to us And saidst, ‘O my servants fear [Me and abstain].’
Behold, Thou art lovely and loveliness lov’st: How, then, shall Thy creatures from loving refrain?
When Abdurrehman saw the folk thus crowding about him and standing in rows, men and women, to gaze upon his son, he was sore abashed and confounded and knew not what to do; but presently there came up from the end of the bazaar a man of the wandering dervishes, clad in haircloth garments, [the apparel] of the pious servants of God and seeing Kemerezzeman sitting there as he were a willow wand springing from a mound of saffron, wept copiously and recited the following verses:
I saw a sapling on a sand-hill grow, As ’twere a moon at full and all aglow.
‘Thy name?’ I questioned, and he said, ‘A pearl.’ Quoth I, ‘Mine! Mine!’ but he replied, ‘No! No!’[1]
Then he fell to walking, now drawing near and now moving away, and wiping his gray hairs with his right hand, whilst the heart of the crowd was cloven asunder
- ↑ This line in the original contains one of the word-jingles of which Orientals are so fond, i.e. lou-lou (pearl), Li! Li! (Mine! Mine!) and La! La! (No! No!).
