Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 2.djvu/28

 IO A If Laylak wa Laylafo me acceptance ! " Then he pronounced the Two Testimonies, 1 or Professions of the Faith, and was recorded among the blessed. The palace was filled with crying and lamentation and the news of his death reached the King, and the city-people wept, even those at their prayers and women at household cares and the school- children shed tears for Bin-Khakan. Then his son Nur al-Din Ali arose and made ready his funeral, and the Emirs and Wazirs and high Officers of State and city-notables were present, amongst them the Wazir al-Mu'in bin Sawi. And as the bier went forth from the house some one in the crowd of mourners began to chant these lines : On the fifth day I quitted all my friends for evermore, o And they laid me out and washed me on a slab without my door : 2 They stripped me of the clothes I was ever wont to wear, c And they clothed me in the clothes which till then I never wore . On four men's necks they bore me and carried me from home o To chapel ; and some prayed for him on neck they bore : They prayed for me a prayer that no prostration knows ; 3 o They prayed for me who praised me and were my friends of yore ; And they laid me in a house with a ceiling vaulted o'er, o And Time shall be no more ere it ope to me its door. When they had shovelled in the dust over him and the crowd had dispersed, Nur al-Din returned home and he lamented with sobs and tears; and the tongue of the case repeated these couplets : On the fifth day at even-tide they went away from me: o I farewelled them as faring they made farewell my lot : But my spirit as they went, with them went and so I cried, o " Ah return ye I " but replied she, " Alas ! return is not To a framework lere and lorn that lacketh blood and life, o A frame whereof remaineth naught but bones that rattle and rot : Mine eyes are blind and cannot see quencht by the flowing tear ! o Mine ears are dull and lost to sense: they have no power to hear! " He abode a long time sorrowing for his father till, one day, as he was sitting at home, there came a knocking at the door; so he rose in haste and opening let in a man, one of his father's intimates and who had been the Wazir's boon-companion. The visitor kissed The Unity of the Godhead and the Apostleship of Mohammed. This would be done only in the case of the very poor. Prayers over the dead are not universal in AMslam ; but when they are recited they lack the "sijdah" or prostration.