“Thank god,” she interrupted heatedly, “thank god that I have not read these dissolute books, and that I protect my honor like a decent girl should!”
She turned and left; the ladder creaked under her light steps, and soon light appeared in the slits of the walls surrounding the balcony.
“I upset her,” Hodja Nasreddin pondered. “How did I mess up like that? No fear: now I know her personality. If she slapped me, then she will slap another as well and make a faithful wife. I would be happy to receive ten more slaps from her before the wedding, so long as she dispenses slaps just as generously to others after the wedding!”
He approached the balcony on tiptoes and called in a quiet voice:
“Guljan!” She did not reply.
“Guljan!”
The fragrant darkness remained silent. Hodja Nasreddin grew sad. Quietly, so as not to wake up the old man, he began to sing:
“You have stolen my heart with your eyelashes.
“You judge me, yet you use your eyelashes to steal. And then you demand payment for having stolen my heart! O, wonders! O, miracles! Who has ever heard of anything like this?
“Who has ever heard of paying a thief? Give me two or three kisses for free.
“No, that’s not enough for me. Some kisses are like bitter water – the more you drink, the more thirsty you become. You have closed your doors before me.
“O, let my blood pour out on the ground! Where will I find peace?
“Perhaps you can tell me? This is my lament for your eyes that cast arrows, this is my lament for your curls, fragrant as musk!”
He kept singing, and although Guljan did not appear and did not reply, he knew that she was listening closely, and he knew also that not a single woman could resist such words. And he was not mistaken: the shutter opened slightly.
“Come!” Guljan whispered from above. “Only be quiet, so that my father does not wake up.”
He climbed up the ladder, sat next to her again, and the wick floating in the saucer of melted tallow crackled and burned until dawn; they talked and could not get their fill of talking. In other words, everything was as it should have been, and as it is described by the most wise Abu-Muhammad Ali-ibn-Hazm in the book known as The Dove’s Necklace, in the chapter entitled: “A word on the nature of love.”
“Love – may Allah glorify it – is at first a joke, but in the end a very important thing. Its qualities are too subtle and elevated to describe, and its true nature cannot be divined except with great effort. As for the cause of the fact that love, in the majority of cases, arises from a beautiful appearance, it is quite understandable that the soul is beautiful, and it is attracted to all beautiful things and perfect images. And, having seen one of these, the soul begins to study it, and if it discerns something similar to itself beneath this appearance, the soul will enter a union with it, and true love will arise… It is truly wondrous how appearance connects the distant parts of the soul!”
Chapter 17
The old man began to toss and turn on the roof. He croaked, coughed, and called Guljan in a hoarse, sleepy voice to bring him some cold water. She pushed Hodja Nasreddin towards the door; he flew down the stairs, barely touching the steps, leaped over the fence, and, a short time later, after washing up in an aryk and wiping himself with the flap of his robe, he was already knocking on the gate from the outside.
“Good morning, Hodja Nasreddin,” the old man greeted him from the roof. “How early you have been getting up these days. When do you have time to sleep? Let us have some tea and, with a blessing, begin our work.”
At midday, Hodja Nasreddin left the old man and went to the bazaar to buy Guljan a gift. As usual, he put on a colorful Badakhshan turban and a false beard out of caution. In this outfit he was unrecognizable and could prowl the trading rows and the chaikhanas without fearing spies.
He picked out a coral necklace whose color reminded him of the lips of his beloved. The jeweler turned out to be an agreeable man, and after only an hour or so of noise, shouting, and arguing, Hodja Nasreddin took possession of the necklace for thirty tanga.
On the way back, Hodja Nasreddin saw a large crowd near the bazaar mosque. The people were crowding and clambering on each other’s shoulders. Drawing closer, Hodja Nasreddin heard a sharp, piercing voice:
“See with your own eyes, o faithfuclass="underline" he is paralyzed and has been lying without movement for ten years now! His limbs are cold and lifeless. Look, he does not even open his eyes. He has come to our city from afar; good relatives and friends brought him here to try the final cure. In a week, on the day of the memorial of the most holy and incomparable Sheikh Bogaeddin, he will be placed on the steps of the tomb. The blind, the lame, and the paralyzed have been cured many times by this means: let us pray, o faithful, that the holy sheikh take pity on this poor man and cure him!”
The crowd said a prayer; then the sharp voice came again:
“See with your own eyes, o faithfuclass="underline" he is paralyzed and has been lying without movement for ten years now!…”
Hodja Nasreddin squeezed into the crowd, got up on his toes, and saw a tall, bony mullah with mean little eyes and a thin beard. Pointing his finger at his feet, where the paralyzed man was lying on a stretcher, he was shouting:
“Look, look, Muslims, how pathetic and pitiful he is, but in a week the holy Bogaeddin will send him a cure, and this man will return to life!”
The paralyzed man lay with his eyes closed, maintaining a mournful and pitiful expression on his face. Hodja Nasreddin gasped quietly in surprise: without a doubt, he would have recognized this pockmarked face with a flat nose among a thousand other faces! Apparently the servant had become paralyzed some time ago, for his face had grown considerably fatter from lying still and from general idleness.
From that day, no matter when Hodja Nasreddin would pass by the mosque, he would always see the mullah and the paralyzed man, the latter lying prone with a pitiful expression his face, which grew fatter and plumper day by day.
Then came the memorial day of the most holy sheikh. According to legend, the holy man had died in May, on a clear noon, and even though there had not been a single cloud in the sky, the sun darkened in the hour of his death, the earth shook, and the houses of many sinners were destroyed, while the sinners themselves perished in the ruins. Thus spoke the mullahs in the mosques, calling on Muslims to visit the tomb of the sheikh and worship his remains, so as not to appear impious and share the fate of the aforementioned sinners.
The pilgrims set off to worship while it was still dark, and when the sun rose, the entire enormous square surrounding the tomb was already filled with people from corner to corner. The streams of people on the roads did not thin out; everyone was walking barefoot, as required by ancient custom. There were people who had come from far away – the particularly pious, or, conversely, those who had committed great sins and had come here hoping to receive absolution. Husbands brought their barren wives, mothers carried their sick children, old men were hobbling along on crooked crutches, lepers had gathered in the distance and were staring hopefully at the white dome of the tomb.
The service did not start for a long time: they were waiting for the emir. The people were standing under the burning sun in the dense crowd, pressing against one another firmly and not daring to sit. The eyes of the people burned with a greedy, insatiable fire: having lost their faith in earthly happiness, the people were hoping for a miracle and shuddering with every loud noise. The waiting became unbearable, two dervishes collapsed on the ground in convulsions and, yelling loudly, began to chew the dirt, producing copious gray foam. The crowd stirred in agitation, women began crying and screaming everywhere, and then a thousand-voiced rumble carried through the square: