Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 6.djvu/266

238 rare trick to entice yonder young lady from her husband’s house and strip her of all her clothes and jewels and make off with them!’ So she took up her stand under the windows of the Amir’s house, and fell to calling aloud upon the name of God and saying, ‘Be present, O ye friends of God!’ Whereupon all the women of the street looked from their lattices and seeing the old woman clad, after the Soufi manner, in clothes of white wool, as she were a pavilion of light, said, ‘God vouchsafe us a blessing by the intermission of this pious old woman, from whose face issueth light!’ And Khatoun, the wife of the Amir Hassan, wept and said to her maid, ‘Go down and kiss the hand of Sheikh Abou Ali, the porter, and say to him, “Let yonder pious old woman enter, so haply we may get a blessing of her.”’ So she went down to the porter and kissing his hand, said to him, ‘Quoth my mistress to thee, “Let yonder pious old woman come in to her, so she may get a blessing of her;” and belike her benediction may extend to us likewise.’ Accordingly, he went up to Delileh and kissed her hand, but she forbade him, saying, ‘Away from me, lest my ablution be avoided! Thou, also, O Abou Ali, art absorbed [in the contemplation of the Deity,] one of the elect of God and under His especial guardianship. Verily, He shall deliver thee from this servitude.’

Now the Amir owed the porter three months’ wage and he was straitened for want thereof, but knew not how to recover it from him; so he said to the old woman, ‘O my mother, give me to drink from thy pitcher, so I may have a blessing through thee.’ So she took the pitcher from her shoulder and waved it in the air, so that the stopper flew out and the three dinars fell to the ground. The porter saw them and picked them up, saying in himself, ‘Glory to God! This old woman is one of the saints that have hidden treasures at their commandment!