suddenly he felt something beside him in the bed and awaking
started up in alarm and cried, "I seek refuge with Allah from
Satan the stoned!" Then he opened his eyes and seeing by his side
a woman foul of favour, said to her, "Who art thou?" Said she,
"Fear not, I am thy wife Fatimah al-Urrah." Whereupon he looked
in her face and knew her by her loathly form and the length of
her dog-teeth: so he asked her, "Whence camest thou in to me and
who brought thee to this country?" "In what country art thou at
this present?" "In the city of Ikhtiyan al-Khatan. But thou, when
didst thou leave Cairo?" "But now." "How can that be?" "Know,"
said she, "that, when I fell out with thee and Satan prompted me
to do thee a damage, I complained of thee to the magistrates, who
sought for thee and the Kazis enquired of thee, but found thee
not. When two days were past, repentance gat hold upon me and I
knew that the fault was with me; but penitence availed me not,
and I abode for some days weeping for thy loss, till what was in
my hand failed and I was obliged to beg my bread. So I fell to
begging of all, from the courted rich to the contemned poor, and
since thou leftest me, I have eaten of the bitterness of beggary
and have been in the sorriest of conditions. Every night I sat
beweeping our separation and that which I suffered, since thy
departure, of humiliation and ignominy, of abjection and misery."
And she went on to tell him what had befallen her, whilst he
stared at her in amazement, till she said, "Yesterday, I went
about begging all day but none gave me aught; and as often as I
accosted any one and craved of him a crust of bread, he reviled
me and gave me naught. When night came, I went to bed supperless,
and hunger burned me and sore on me was that which I suffered:
and I sat weeping when, behold, one appeared to me and said, O
woman why weepest thou? Said I, erst I had a husband who used to