Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 7.djvu/239

217 be gracious to me in Thy judgments and deliver me from [this] Thine affliction!’ And Shewahi charged him by the way how he should speak with the queen. When he stood before Nour el Huda, he found her veiled with the chinband; so he kissed the earth before her and saluted her, reciting the following verses:

Then Nour el Huda bade the old woman question him before her, that she might hear his answers: so she said to him, ‘The queen returns thy greeting and asks thee what is thy name and that of thy country, and what are the names of thy wife and children, on whose account thou art come hither?’ ‘O queen of the age and the day and peerless jewel of the epoch and the time,’ answered he, (and indeed he had made firm his heart and providence aided him,) ‘my name is Hassan, the fulfilled of sorrow, and my native city is Bassora. I know not the name of my wife, but my children’s names are Mensour and Nasir.’

When the queen heard his reply, she bespoke him herself and said, ‘And whence took she her children?’ ‘O queen,’ answered he, ‘she took them from the city of Baghdad and the palace of the Khalifate.’ Quoth Nour el Huda, ‘And did she say nought to thee, whenas she flew away?’ And he replied, ‘Yes; she said to my mother, “When thy son cometh and the days of separation are long upon him and he craveth meeting with me and reunion and the winds of love and longing agitate him, let him come to me in the Islands of Wac.”’ Whereupon the queen shook her head and said to him, ‘Except she desired thee and yearned for reunion with thee, she had