Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 9.djvu/131

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Then the merchants came up to Kemerezzeman and saluting him, saw with him many loads and servants and a travelling litter enclosed in a spacious canopy. So they took him and carried him home; and when Helimeh came forth from the litter, his father saw her a ravishment to all who beheld her. So they opened her an upper chamber, as it were a treasure from which the talismans had been loosed; and when his mother saw her, she was ravished with her and deemed her a queen of the wives of the kings. So she rejoiced in her and questioned her; and she answered, saying, ‘I am thy son’s wife.’ ‘Since he is married to thee,’ rejoined the other, ‘we must make thee a splendid bride-feast, that we may rejoice in thee and in my son.’

When the folk had dispersed and each had gone his way, Abdurrehman foregathered with his son and said to him, ‘O my son, what is this slave-girl thou hast brought with thee and for how much didst thou buy her?’ ‘O my father,’ answered Kemerezzeman, ‘she is no slave-girl; but it is she who was the cause of my going abroad.abroad.’ [sic] ‘How so?’ asked his father, and he said, ‘It is she whom the dervish described to us the night he lay with us; for indeed my hopes clove to her from that hour and I sought not to travel but on her account. The wild Arabs came out upon me by the way and stripped me and took my