Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 2.djvu/40

 22 A If Laylah wa Laylah. Now this garden was named the Garden of Gladness 1 and therein stood a belvedere hight the Palace of Pleasure and the Pavilion of Pictures, the whole belonging to the Caliph Hartm al-Rashid who was wont, when his breast was straitened with care, to frequent garden and palace and there to sit. The palace had eighty latticed windows and fourscore lamps hanging round a great candelabrum of gold furnished with wax-candles ; and, when the Caliph used to enter, he would order the handmaids to throw open the lattices and light up the rooms ; and he would bid Ishak bin Ibrahim the cup-companion and the slave-girls to sing till his breast was broadened and his ailments were allayed. Now the keeper of the garden, Shaykh Ibrahim, was a very old man, and he had found from time to time, when he went out on any business, people pleasuring about the garden gate with their bona robas ; at which he was angered with exceeding anger. 2 But he took patience till one day when the Caliph came to his garden ; and he complained of this to Harun al-Rashid who said, " Whomsoever thou surprisest about the door of the garden, deal with him as thou wilt." Now on this day the Gardener chanced to be abroad on some occasion and returning found these two sleeping at the gate covered with a single mantilla ; whereupon said he, " By Allah, good ! These twain know not that the Caliph hath given me leave to slay any- one I may catch at the door ; but I will give this couple a shrewd whipping, that none may come near the gate in future." So he cut a green palm-frond 3 and went up to them and, raising his arm till the white of his arm-pit appeared, was about to strike them, when he bethought himself and said, "O Ibrahim, wilt thou beat them unknowing their case ? Haply they are strangers or of the Sons Hence the Khedivial Palace near Cairo " Kasr al-Nuzhah ;" literally " of Delights ; " one of those flimsy new-Cairo buildings which contrast so marvellously with the archi- tecture of ancient and even of mediaeval Egypt, and which are covering the land with modern ruins. Compare Mohammed Ali's mosque in the citadel with the older Sultan Hasan. A popular tale is told that, when the conquering Turk, Yawviz Sultan Selim, first visited Cairo, they led him to Mosque Al-Ghun. "This is a splendid Kd'ah (saloon) 1 " quoth he. When he entered Sultan Hasan, he exclaimed, " This is a citadel!"; but after inspecting the Mosque Al-Mu'ayyad he cried, " 'Tis a veritable place of prayer, a fit stead for the Faithful to adore the Eternal ! " Arab, gardeners are very touchy on this point. A friend of mine was on a similar occasion addressed, in true Egyptian lingo, by an old Adam-son, " Ya ibn al-Kalb! be- ta'mil ay ? " (O dog-son, what art thou up to ?). "The green palm-stick is of the trees of Paradise;" say the Arabs in Solomonic tyle but not Solomonic words : so our " Spare the rod,*' jetc.