Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 2.djvu/51

 Nur a I- Din Alt and the Damsel Anis al-Jalis. 31 without their knowing me." So they walked towards the Tigris pondering the matter, and presently came upon a fisherman who Stood fishing under the pavilion windows. Now some time before this, the Caliph (being in the pavilion) had called to Shaykh Ibra- him and asked him, " What noise is this I hear under the windows ?" and he had answered, " It is voices of fisher folk catching fish :" so quoth the Caliph, " Go down and forbid them this place ;" and he forbade them accordingly. However that night a fisherman named Karim, happening to pass by and seeing the garden gate open, said to himself, " This is a time of negligence ; and I will take advantage of it to do a bit of fishing." So he took his net and cast it, but he had hardly done so when behold, the Caliph came up single-handed and, standing hard by, knew him and called aloud to him, " Ho, Karim ! " The fisherman, hearing himself named, turned round, md seeing the Caliph, trembled and his side-muscles quivered, as h,e cried, " By Allah, O Commander of the Faithful, I did it not in srtockery of the mandate ; but poverty and a large family drove me to what thou seest ! " Quoth the Caliph, " Make a cast in my nme." At this the fisherman was glad and going to the bank threw his net, then waiting till it had spread out at full stretch and settled down, hauled it up and found in it various kinds of fish. The Caliph was pleased and said, " O Karim, doff thy habit." So he put off a gaberdine of coarse woollen stuff patched in an hun- dred places whereon the lice were rampant, and a turband which had never been untwisted for three years but to which he had sewn every rag he came upon. The Caliph also pulled off his person two vests of Alexandrian and Ba'lbak silk, a loose inner robe and a long-sleeved outer coat, and said to the fisherman, " Take them and put them on/* while he assumed the foul gaberdine and filthy turband and drew a corner of the head-cloth as a mouth-veil l before his face. Then said he to the fisherman, " Get thee about thy business! "; and the man kissed the Caliph's feet and thanked him and improvised the following couplets : Arab. " Lisam,"the end of the " Kufiyah," or head-kerchief passed over the face under the eyes and made fast on the other side. This mouth-veil serves as a mask (eyes not being recognisable) and defends from heat, cold and thirst. I also believe that hooding the eyes with this article, Badawi-fashion, produces a sensation of coolness, at any rate a marked difference of apparent temperature ; somewhat like a pair of dark spectacles or looking at the sea from a sandy shore. Pilgrimage i., 210 and 346. The '^ " Lisam" (chin-vil} or Yashmak is noticed in i., 333,