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178 friends asked for anything she said she had not got it. If he asked for a piece of bread or a match she beat him with her broom. So the poor man had to hide his bread under his galahîya (upper garment) and eat by stealth. Finally he died. His wife died soon afterwards. Before she died she asked her sons to bury her along with her husband by his side. They did so. The next night the man came to his sons and told them to remove the body. ‘I died,’ he said, ‘in order to escape hell, and now I am in hell again.’”

“There was a man who married a wife of whom he was very fond. But after a while the wife died. Then the man wandered away in order to find a country in which no one died. So he went from place to place, looking for a town where there were no graves. At last he came to a town in the Sudân where there were no graves. So he remained here, in the house of the shêkh. The shêkh made a feast for him, and first offered him a piece of a roasted leg. ‘Where is your father?’ asked the man. ‘This is his leg,’ said the shêkh, ‘the rest of him is up there,’ pointing to a shelf. Then the man learned that when anyone fell ill, he was killed and eaten, and that this was the reason there were no graves. So in the night he ran away back to his own country.”

“There was a man who wanted his mother-in-law to die so that he might inherit her property. She had bad eyes; so he professed to set up as a doctor who could cure disease in the eyes. When his mother-in-law came to consult him, he said it was necessary that she should put certain plasters over her eyes which he would give her. He took some lime (gîr) and laid it upon pieces of cloth, and