She wears seven veils but has no modesty.

He fasted a year and breakfasted on an onion.

A false friend is an open enemy.

They gave me no food, but the smoke from their kitchen blinded me.

When the lion is away, the hyenas play.

They said to the blind man, throw away your stick; he replied, why desert an old friend?

Haste is of the devil; deliberation, of God.

They put the dog’s tail in the press forty years, and when it came out it still had a curl.

Lucky days do not come in a bunch.

Look for a thing where you lost it.

Some of these resemble our own proverbs and others may perplex you at first.  Of course they are all better in Arabic than in the translation.  The people of Arabia seldom or never engage in practical jokes, but they are often very witty in their remarks.  The Caliph Mansur once met an Arab on the desert and said to him:  “Give thanks to God who has caused the plague to cease that ravaged thy country.”

“God is too good,” the Arab answered, “to punish us with two such scourges at the same time as the plague and thy government.”

An Arab poet sent his book to a famous author.  “Dost thou want fame?” said the latter, “then hang thy book up in the market-place where all can see it.”

“But how will they know the author?”

“Why, just hang yourself close to the book!”

Here is another story that is told about a Moslem preacher.  One Friday when the people were gathered in the mosque to pray and to hear the sermon, he got up in the pulpit and asked the audience if they knew what he intended to preach about.

“No,” they replied.

“Well, then, I shall not tell you,” and he stepped down.  The next Friday he asked the same question, and now, taught by experience, they answered: 

“Yes, we know.”

“Well, then, I need not tell you,” and again he stepped down.

The third Friday when the same question was put, the people said, “Some of us know and some don’t know.”

“In that case,” said the preacher-wag, “let those of you who know tell those that don’t know.”  And again there was no sermon.

And now to close this chapter here is a very topsy-turvy story with a puzzle in it: 

The Arabs relate that when the prophet Jonah fled from Joppa to Tarshish, there were thirty passengers, all told, in the ship.  The storm grew very fierce, and out of fear, the captain determined to throw half the crew overboard, that is, fifteen men.  But he knew that fifteen of the thirty were true believers, and fifteen were infidels, and among them, Jonah also.  To avoid suspicion and accomplish his purpose he put the thirty men all in a row in such a way that by counting out every ninth man, the believers alone remained and the unbelievers were all of them one by one cast into the sea.

This is the way he arranged them; every dot stands for an unbeliever, and the strokes for believers—­thirty altogether.