Hassan: The Story of Hassan of Baghdad and How He Came to Make the Golden Journey to Samarkand | Page 4

"behind the shop" in Old Bagdad. In the background a large caldron steaming, for the shop is a sweet-stuff shop and the sugar is boiling. The room has little furniture beyond the carpet, old but unexpectedly choice, and some Persian hangings (geometrical designs, with crude animals and some verses from the Koran hand-printed on linen). A ramshackle wooden partition in one corner shuts off from a living room what appears to be the shop.
Squatting on the carpet--facing each other:
HASSAN, the Confectioner, 45, rotund, moustache, turban, greasy grey dress.
SELIM, his friend, young, vulgarly handsome, gaudily clothed.
HASSAN (Rocking on his mat) Eywallah, Eywallah!
SELIM Thirty-seven times have you made the same remark, O father of repetition.
HASSAN (More dolefully than ever) Eywallah, Eywallah!
SELIM Have you caught fever? Is your chest narrow, or your belly thunderous?
HASSAN (With a ponderous sigh) Eywallah!
SELIM Is that the merchant of sweetmeats, that sour face? O poisoner of children, surely it would be better to cut the knot of reluctance and uncord the casket of explanation. And the poet Antari has justly remarked:
Divide your sorrow and impart your grief, O fool. That good man comforteth beyond belief, O fool.
HASSAN (Inclining towards the mat) None is good, save God. And Abou Awas has excellently sung:
The importunate Are seldom fortunate.
Nevertheless, know, Selim, that I am in love.
SELIM In love! Then why sit moaning on the mat? Are there not beauties at the barbers, and lights of love at the bazaar?
HASSAN (Angrily) Hold your tongue, Selim, or leave me. I was in earnest when I said I loved, and your coarseness is ill-fitting to my mood. And well I know I am Hassan, the Confectioner, yet I can love as sincerely as Mejnun; for assuredly she of whom my heart is bent is not less fair than Leila.
SELIM (Ironically) Alas! I mistook the particular for the general, and did not recognise the purity of your intentions. But I would not mention Mejnun. Mejnun was young, and you are old, and he was a prince, and you are a Confectioner, and he was beautiful, and you are not, and he was very thin because of his sorrow, and you are fatter than those four-legged I mention not-- God curse their herdsmen!
HASSAN And if it be as you say, Selim, if I am indeed a fat, old, ugly tradesman, have I not good reason to be sorry and rock upon my mat, for how shall maintain my heart's desire?
SELIM Listen to me, Hassan, why is it that in this last year you have become different from the Hassan that was Hassan? From time to time you talk strangely in your cups, like a mad poet; and you have bought a lute and a carpet too fine for your house. And now I feel you are losing your senses when I hear this talk of love from one who is past the age of folly.
HASSAN It may be so, young man. Indeed, a think I am a fool. It is the affliction of Allah.
SELIM Tell me, at least, who she is. It may be she is not so unattainable as you imagine, unless indeed you have set eyes on the Caliph's daughter, or on the Queen of all the Jinn.
HASSAN Listen, Selim, and I will tell you my affair. Three days ago a woman came here to buy loukoum of me, dressed as a widow, and bade me follow her to her door with a parcel. Alas, Selim! I could see her eyes beneath her veil, and they were like the twin fountains in the Caliph's garden; and her lips beneath her veil were like roses hidden in moss, and her waist was flexible as a palm-tree swaying in the wind, and her hips were large and heavy and round, like water melons in the season of water melons. I glanced at her but she would not smile, and I sighed but she would not glance, and the door of her house shut fast against me, like the gate of paradise against an infidel. Eywallah! (Recommences moaning.)
SELIM And where was the house of this widow who bought sweetmeats and had none to sell?
HASSAN In the street of Felicity, by the fountain of the Two Pigeons.
SELIM (Musing) It must be the widow of that Achmet they hung last year by the Basra Gate.
HASSAN Which Achmet?
SELIM The hairy one.
HASSAN Istagfurallah! He fluttered like a bird. May I never soar so high.
SELIM Istagfurallah! May I see you! I should burst with laughter and vultures with repletion. But tell me, you who have fallen so deeply in love, do you rejoice in your misfortune like a dervish in his dirt, or do you honestly desire satisfaction?
HASSAN I desire satisfaction Selim. But I pray you talk no more of this.
SELIM Well, take courage, faint heart, since all things can be cured