Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 5.djvu/103



MUSAB BIN AL-ZUBAYR AND AYISHAH HIS WIFE

It is told of Musab bin al-Zubayr [FN#111] that he met in Al-Medinah Izzah, who was one of the shrewdest of women, and said to her, I have a mind to marry Ayishah [FN#112] daughter of Talhah, and I should like thee to go herwards and spy out for me how she is made.  So she went away and returning to Musab, said, I have seen her, and her face is fairer than health; she hath large and well-opened eyes and under them a nose straight and smooth as a cane; oval cheeks and a mouth like a cleft pomegranate, a neck as a silver ewer and below it a bosom with two breasts like twin-pomegranates and further down a slim waist and a slender stomach with a navel therein as it were a casket of ivory, and back parts like a hummock of sand; and plumply rounded thighs and calves like columns of alabaster; but I saw her feet to be large, and thou wilt fall short with her in time of need.  Upon this report he married her, -- And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.

When it was the Three Hundred and Eighty-seventh Day

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when Izzah this wise reported of Ayishah bint Talhah, Musab married her and went in to her. And presently Izzah invited Ayishah and the women of the tribe Kuraysh to her house, when Ayishah sang these two couplets with Musab standing by,

And the lips of girls, that are perfume sweet; * So nice to kiss when with smiles they greet: Yet neer tasted I them, but in thought of him; * And by thought the Ruler rules worldly seat.

The night of Musabs going in unto her, he departed not from her, till after seven bouts; and on the morrow, a freewoman of his met him and said to him, May I be thy sacrifice! Thou