THE BETROTHAL

Now, when Shibli Bagarag had ceased speaking, the Vizier smiled gravely, and shook his beard with satisfaction, and said to the Eclipser of Reason, ’What opinest thou of this nephew of the barber, O Noorna bin Noorka?’

She answered, “O Feshnavat, my father, truly I am content with the bargain of my betrothal.  He, Wullahy, is a fair youth of flowing speech.’  Then she said, ’Ask thou him what he opineth of me, his betrothed?”

So the Vizier put that interrogation to Shibli Bagarag, and the youth was in perplexity; thinking, ’Is it possible to be joyful in the embrace of one that hath brought thwackings upon us, serious blows?’ Thinking, ’Yet hath she, when the mood cometh, kindly looks; and I marked her eye dwelling on me admiringly!’ And he thought, ’Mayhap she that groweth younger and counteth nature backwards, hath a history that would affect me; or, it may be, my kisses—­wah!  I like not to give them, and it is said,

          “Love is wither’d by the withered lip”;

and that,

          “On bones become too prominent he’ll trip.”

Yet put the case, that my kisses—­I shower them not, Allah the All-seeing is my witness! and they be given daintily as ’twere to the leaf of a nettle, or over-hot pilau.  Yet haply kisses repeated might restore her to a bloom, and it is certain youth is somehow stolen from her, if the Vizier Feshnavat went before her, and his blood be her blood; and he is powerful, she wise.  I’ll decide to act the part of a rejoicer, and express of her opinions honeyed to the soul of that sex.’

Now, while he was thus debating he hung his head, and the Vizier awaited his response, knitting his brows angrily at the delay, and at the last he cried, ’What! no answer? how ’s this?  Shall thy like dare hold debate when questioned of my like?  And is my daughter Noorna bin Noorka, thinkest thou, a slave-girl in the market,—­thou haggling at her price, O thou nephew of the barber?’

So Shibli Bagarag exclaimed, ’O exalted one, bestower of the bride! surely I debated with myself but for appropriate terms; and I delayed to select the metre of the verse fitting my thoughts of her, and my wondrous good fortune, and the honour done me.’

Then the Vizier, ‘Let us hear:  we listen.’

And Shibli Bagarag was advised to deal with illustrations in his dilemma, by-ways of expression, and spake in extemporaneous verse, and with a full voice: 

     The pupils of the Sage for living Beauty sought;
     And one a Vision clasped, and one a Model wrought. 
    ‘I have it!’ each exclaimed, and rivalry arose: 
    ‘Paint me thy Maid of air!’ ‘Thy Grace of clay disclose.’ 
    ‘What! limbs that cannot move!’ ‘What! lips that melt away!’
    ‘Keep thou thy Maid of air!’ ‘Shroud up thy Grace of clay!’
    ’Twas thus, contending hot, they went before the Sage,
     And knelt at the wise wells of cold ascetic age. 
    ‘The fairest of the twain, O father, thou record’: