Page:Tales from the Gulistan (1928).pdf/216

On Love and Youth

in patched garments accompanied us in a caravan to the Hejâz, and one of the Arab Amirs presented him with a hundred dinârs to spend upon his family; but robbers of the Kufatcha tribe suddenly fell upon the caravan and robbed it clean of everything. The merchants began to wail and cry, uttering vain shouts and lamentations.

The Dervish alone had not lost his equanimity, and showed no change. I asked: "Perhaps they have not taken thy money?"

He replied: "Yes, they have, but I was not so much accustomed to that money that separation therefrom could grieve my heart. The heart must not be tied to any thing or person, because to take off the heart is a difficult affair."

I replied: "What thou hast said resembles my case, because when I was young, my intimacy with a young man and my friendship for him were such that his beauty was the Qiblah of my eye; and the chief joy of my life union with him. Perhaps an angel in heaven, but no mortal can be on earth equal in beauty or form to him. [I swear] by the amity, after which companionship is illicit, no [human] germ will [ever] become a man like him!

"All of a sudden the foot of his life sank into the mire of non-existence, the smoke [grief] of separation arose from his family; I kept him company on his grave for many days, and one of my compositions on his loss is as follows:

"Would that on the day when the thorn of fate entered thy foot, the hand of heaven had struck a sword on my head: so