Pagina 434 de 1116

Finding them reject me thus I foresaw that matters would go hard

with me, and I remembered the many miseries which Destiny had

written upon my forehead; and I fared forth from among them heavy

hearted and tearful eyed, repeating to myself these words, "I was

sitting at mine ease but my frowardness brought me to unease."

Then I shaved beard and mustachios and eye brows, renouncing the

world, and wandered in Kalandar garb about Allah's earth; and the

Almighty decreed safety for me till I arrived at Baghdad, which

was on the evening of this very night. Here I met these two other

Kalandars standing bewildered; so I saluted them saying, "I am a

stranger!" and they answered, "And we likewise be strangers!" By

the freak of Fortune we were like to like, three Kalandars and

three monoculars all blind of the left eye. Such, O my lady, is

the cause of the shearing of my beard and the manner of my losing

an eye.