Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 5.djvu/125

 Almighty will requite the kindness with what is better for thee than any requital of mine.  Continued Jaafar, Now lend me an ear and I will give thee a prescription, which I have given to none but thee.  What is that? asked the Badawi; and Jaafar answered, Take three ounces of wind-breaths and the like of sunbeams and the same of moonshine and as much of lamp-light; mix them well together and let them lie in the wind three months. Then place them three months in a mortar without a bottom and pound them to a fine powder and after trituration set them in a cleft platter, and let it stand in the wind other three months; after which use of this medicine three drachms every night in thy sleep, and, Inshallah! thou shalt be healed and whole.  Now when the Badawi heard this, he stretched himself out to full length on the donkeys back and let fly a terrible loud fart [FN#142] and said to Jaafar, Take this fart in payment of thy prescription. When I have followed it, if Allah grant me recovery, I will give thee a slave-girl, who shall serve thee in they lifetime a service, wherewith Allah shall cut short thy term; and when thou diest and the Lord hurrieth thy soul to hell-fire, she shall blacken thy face with her skite, of her mourning for thee, and shall keen and beat her face, saying O frosty-beard, what a fool thou wast? [FN#143]  thereupon Harun al-Rashid laughed till he fell backward, and ordered the Badawi three thousand silver pieces. And a tale is told of

THE CALIPH OMAR BIN AL-KHATTAB AND THE YOUNG BADAWI

The Sharif Husayn bin Rayyán relateth that the Caliph Omar bin Al-Khattáb was sitting one day judging the folk and doing justice between his subjects, attended by the best and wisest of his counsellors, when there came up to him a youth comely and cleanly attired, upon whom two very handsome youths had laid