“I’m afraid,” she said, “he’s met with some mishap.”
“Don’t be too worried,” the friend advised. “From what I hear, your husband’s on shore with an ape he’s made friends with. They eat, drink, and make merry. He’s been away for a long time now. If he’s forgotten you, then forget him. But if you can make away with the ape to get your husband back, then do it. If the ape should perish, your husband will come back to you.”
The turtle’s wife grew sick from grief and worry; she looked pallid, drained, and wasted. Luckily for her, though, the turtle said to himself one day: “I must go back home. I’ve been away long enough.”
There at home he found his wife sick and exhausted. “How are you?” he asked her. No answer. He asked again. Still no reply. When he asked for the third time, a woman, a neighbor of his wife’s, replied:
“Your wife’s very sick, close to death.”
“Can nothing cure her?” the husband asked.
“Yes,” the neighbor replied. “The heart of an ape will cure her.”
“That’s a knotty problem,” the husband observed. “Where am I to find an ape’s heart, apart from my friend’s. Shall I murder my friend, or let my wife die?”
He thought for a while. Then, at last, he said:
“A wife has her rights. What a wife offers her husband is beyond price. She’s always close by her husband, in this world and the next. I’m bound by the vows of marriage, by honor and duty, to put her first and save her whatever the cost.”
And so he went off to meet the ape, confused, hesitant about what he ought to do.
“To kill a loyal friend for a woman,” he said to himself, “that’s a deed to be feared, a deed God will never forgive.”
He greeted the ape, who asked him, with concern:
“What kept you away so long, brother?”
“What held me back,” the turtle replied, “greatly though I missed you, was a sense of shame. I haven’t returned your favors. You don’t, I know, expect your favors to be returned, and yet I feel I really must do you a good deed in return. By nature you’re good-hearted, noble, and generous. You give to those who don’t give, and you don’t expect to be given in return.”
“Don’t shame me by talking like that,” the ape replied. “I’ve been a burden to you. I was an outcast, chased out of my home. You’ve given me refuge, friendship, and affection. Through that, and through you, God’s driven away my sorrow and gloom.”
“And yet,” answered the turtle, “three things make for a close friendship: dining, visiting, and socializing with each other’s families. A friend should seek only amiability and affection from his friend. Those who seek material gain from friends would do better to stay away from them. A man shouldn’t make too great demands on his friends, for that merely gives rise to irritation and rupture. A calf, sucking too much at the udders, greedily and insistently, is kicked away by the vexed mother cow.
“I mention all this” (the turtle went on) “because I’m so well aware of your virtues: of how good-hearted, hospitable, and honest you are. And now I’m inviting you to come and visit me at my home. It lies in a wooded island, thick with trees, heavy with fruit. Do accept my invitation. Climb on my shell, and let’s go to my house.”
The ape, longing for the fruit, climbed on the turtle’s back. Once at sea, though, with the ape on his back, the turtle began to have qualms of conscience.
“This deed I’m planning,” he said to himself, “is heinous treachery. Females aren’t worth committing crimes for. They inspire no trust. Gold, it’s said, is tested and revealed by fire, a man’s honesty by what he gives and takes, and the quality of a beast of burden by the weight it can bear. But there are no standards by which women can be tested and known.”
The ape, seeing how the turtle had stopped swimming, became suspicious.
“The turtle,” he said to himself, “had something on his mind when he stopped. How can I be sure he hasn’t turned against me? Nothing, as I’ve learned, is more fickle than the heart, nothing is quicker to change. It’s said a wise man should always know what his wife and children, friends and acquaintances, are thinking—every day, through every word they utter, since that shows what they have in their hearts.”
With that he turned to the turtle.
“Why have you stopped?” he asked. “Some anxiety, I can see, is weighing you down.”
“I’m concerned,” the turtle replied, “my house might not be suitable to receive such a good friend, and such a worthy guest, as you are. It doesn’t, now I reflect, seem to be so. My wife’s sick, and the house is gloomy and neglected.”
“Have no worries about that,” the ape said comfortingly, sitting there on the turtle’s back. “Just find medicines and physicians for your wife. It’s said: ‘Let a man spend his money in three places: on charity, if he seeks the next world; on the ruler, if he wishes for honors in this world; and on the women of his household, if he seeks to hold his family together.’ ”
“The physicians,” the turtle admitted guiltily, “say there’s no cure for her but an ape’s heart.”
“Woe is me!” the ape said to himself. “Greed, in my old age, has dragged me down to this. That man spoke well who said once that the contented are safe and secure and extend their safety and security, their peace and comfort, to others. The covetous and greedy, though, live in fear of what they might not gain. I have to set my mind to work now, to find a way out of my plight.”
“My friend!” the ape told the turtle. “One friend shouldn’t withhold favors or advice from another. Had I known your wife needed an ape’s heart to be cured, I would have brought my own heart along with me.”
“And where is your heart?” the turtle asked, astonished.
“I left it behind.”
“And what made you leave it behind?”
“It’s a thing we apes do. When we visit a friend, we leave our hearts at home. If you like, I could return home and fetch it for you.”
The turtle, pleased at the ape’s goodness, swam back with him to the island. Once on shore, the ape climbed up his fig tree. The turtle waited for an hour, then called out to him:
“Come on, my friend! You’ve kept me waiting long enough. Fetch your heart and come down!”
“You seem to think,” the ape replied, “that I’m like the ass. The one told by the fox that he had neither heart nor ears.”
“How was that?” the turtle asked.
It’s told (the ape replied) how once a lion was feeding on a carcass, and a fox was feeding there with him. The lion had become fearfully afflicted by mange, a malady so severe that it disabled him, and he could no longer hunt as he’d done before.
“What’s happened to you, king of beasts?” the fox asked the ailing lion. “You’ve changed. You kill hardly anything. Why is that?”
“It’s the mange, as you can see,” said the sick lion. “There’s no cure for me but an ass’s ears and heart.”
“I know a place nearby,” the fox said, “where a washerman brings his ass to a meadow. He unloads the laundry, then he turns his ass free in the meadow to graze. I could, perhaps, bring the ass here to you. You could have its ears and heart.”
“If you can do that,” the lion replied gleefully, “then do it quickly. That’s where my cure lies.”
So the fox trotted up to the ass.
“How lean and wasted you look,” the fox said. “And just look at those sores on your back!”
“It’s that miserly washerman,” the ass complained. “He gives me hardly anything to eat. He sets me to work for long, long hours. And the loads he gives me are too heavy.”
“Why do you put up with such ill-treatment?” asked the fox.
“What can I do?” the ass replied. “Where can I go? How would I escape from people?”
“I could show you a secluded spot,” the fox suggested, “lush with grazing, where no man has ever set foot. And there’s a she-ass, more comely than any that’s ever been seen. She needs a
mate.”
When the ass heard mention of a female, he replied joyfully:
“Why are we waiting?” he asked. “Lead on! Even if I didn’t wish—as I do—to have you as a friend, I’d follow you to where she is.”
And so they went to the lion. The fox hurried up to the lion first and told him about the ass. Then, stalking the ass, the lion leaped at him from the rear. But he missed him, and the ass escaped.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the irate fox asked the fumbling lion. “If you couldn’t even kill the ass, why did you put me to the trouble of bringing it? Woe to us all if our Lord Lion, the king of beasts, can’t dispatch a mere ass.”
The lion knew that, if he said, “I missed him deliberately,” he’d merely seem foolish. Yet if he said, “I missed him because I’m sick,” he’d seem like a weakling.
“If you could just bring me back the ass,” he said, “I’ll explain everything then.”
“The ass has found out my sly ways,” the fox said. “But I’ll try, even so, to deceive him one more time.”
The fox accordingly returned to the ass.
“What do you have planned for me now?” the ass asked warily.
“I really did mean the best for you,” the fox reassured him. “Who do you think it was attacked you? It was the she-ass. She was crazed with desire for a mate. If you hadn’t run away, but waited for a while instead, you could have had her.”
When the ass heard all this about the female, he was inflamed with desire, and he cantered off toward her, with the fox trotting alongside. Lying in wait was the lion, who let the ass come close, then leaped on him, killing him at once.
The lion turned to the fox.
“The cure prescribed,” he said, “was that I should first bathe, then devour the two ears and the heart, then, finally, offer the rest of the carcass as a sacrifice. Now, guard the dead ass till I’ve bathed and returned.”
With the lion gone, the fox ate the ass’s ears and heart, hoping the lion would see a bad omen in this and leave the rest of the carcass.
“Where are the ass’s ears and heart?” the lion asked.
“Didn’t you see?” the fox replied. “This ass has no ears or heart!”
“I’ve never,” the lion said, “heard anything so strange!”
“If he’d had ears and a heart,” the fox objected, “he wouldn’t have come back to you after what you did to him the first time.”
“I’ve told you this story” (the ape concluded, turning to the turtle) “to show you I’m not the simpleton you seem to think. You deceived me, and I’ve returned your deception. I realize now how naive I was.”
“What you’ve said is true,” the turtle admitted. “Those whose minds are sound and strong say little and do much. They admit their faults, take care before embarking on anything, and set their minds to work to repair any damage their faults have caused. Their minds are the ground upon which they rise after stumbling.”
“This,” the philosopher said to the king, in conclusion, “is a story of one who sought something and gained it, then afterward lost it.”
3. The Man and the Ferret
The king said to the philosopher:
“Tell me a fable about a man who acts without first reflecting.”
“The man who doesn’t take care,” the philosopher replied, “and fails to reflect before making a decision will regret it bitterly. An example of that is the story of the man and the ferret.”
“Tell me this story,” the king commanded.
It is told (the philosopher began) how there lived once, in the land of Jurjan, a man whose wife had long been barren, then was with child.
“This is joyful news!” the delighted man cried to his wife. “I hope for a son who will be our pride and joy. I shall look for a wet nurse and choose the best of names for him.”
“Man!” the wife exclaimed. “Why are you talking like that? You don’t know yet whether he’ll be born or not, whether he’ll live or die. Leave that kind of talk. Be content with what God gives us. A wise man doesn’t speak about things he’s ignorant of. He doesn’t try to predict what destiny may or may not decree, what will or won’t happen to him. A man can’t make things happen as he wishes. He’ll just end up like the man who poured oil and honey over his own head.”
“Oil and honey?” the man said. “How was that? Tell me about it.”
It is told (the wife began) how a man once received a gift from a wealthy merchant of flour and oil and honey. The man kept the oil and honey in a jug he hung from the beams of his house. One day the man was lying down, gazing at the jug hanging there above him and thinking how expensive oil and honey was.
“I shall sell what’s in the jug for a dinar,” he said to himself, “and with that I’ll buy ten goats. And the goats will have kids.” In five years, he calculated, he’d have more than four hundred goats. “Then,” he went on, “I’ll sell them all and buy a hundred head of cattle—an ox for every four goats. Next, I’ll sow seeds and plow land with my oxen. Within five years I’ll be rich. I’ll build a fine mansion and furnish it with the best money can buy. Then I’ll marry a beautiful woman, who’ll bear me a fine son. He’ll be raised to be well mannered, well behaved, well educated, and, most important, he’ll be fully obedient to his father’s commands. If he disobeys me, then, as God’s my witness, I’ll beat him with this stick, like so.”
With that he lifted the stick alongside him and brandished it high above his head. The stick struck the earthenware jug and shattered it. And the oil and honey poured down all over his head and beard.
“I’ve told you this story,” the wife explained, “to stop your talking of things you know nothing about.”
The man admitted the sense of what she’d said. In time, the wife bore him a fine son. The father was delighted.
“Sit by the boy,” the wife told her husband, “till I’ve bathed and come back.”
As the father was sitting with the child, the king’s messenger came and summoned him, and the child was left all by itself. Now, the man kept a ferret as a house pet, and, as he was being escorted away, he told the ferret to look after the child. A snake crawled out of its hole, inside the house, and wound its way to the child’s cot; and the ferret, pouncing on the snake, tore it to pieces.
When he returned home, the man was met by the ferret, which was about to tell him how it had defended the child against the snake. But the father, seeing the ferret spattered with blood he took to be his child’s, became crazed with fury. He brought his stick down hard on the ferret, killing it instantly. Then, seeing the child safe and well and the snake dead, he fell into an agony of remorse. “I wish,” the anguished man cried out, “this child had never been born! Then I would have been spared this vile, treacherous act I’ve committed.”
“What’s the matter?” the wife asked, seeing him sobbing so bitterly. “Why is this snake dead, along with our ferret?”
He told her the whole story. “This,” he cried out finally, “is the price to be paid for acting in too much haste.”
4. The Wildcat and the Rat
The king said to the philosopher:
“Tell me a fable about a man besieged by enemies on every side, who is about to perish, then finds a way of appeasing his enemies and saves himself by conciliating them. Tell me about truce and conciliation.”
The philosopher obediently began his account.
“Enmity and hatred,” the philosopher said, “are, like affection, never permanent. Often affection turns to hatred, and hatred to affection. The wise will always keep a channel open to their enemies, so as to explore the enemy’s means. What the enemy possesses, a wise man may well use to allay that enemy’s hostility, leading to a truce and, if all goes well, to conciliation. Ways should always be sought to keep contact and exchange views. The one who judiciously seeks such ways and follows his notion firmly through will win his prize. An example of this is the story of the rat and the wildcat. The truce they agreed on saved them both from
a great danger that might have proved mortal.”
“Tell me this story,” the king commanded.
It’s told (the philosopher began) how there was once, in the land of Sernedib, a huge tree that soared to a great height. In the base of its massive trunk was the hole of a rat called Fraydoun and the lair of a wildcat called Rumi. There were hunters in the lands round about the tree, and, one day, a hunter laid his net near the tree, and he caught Rumi. The rat came out from his hole to forage for food, looking around him warily. He saw the wildcat entangled in the net. But then, looking back, he saw a ferret heading toward himself and, looking up, he saw an owl perched on a branch, watching him, ready to swoop. Surrounded as he was by danger, he said to himself:
“I’m trapped, with nothing to save me but my wits. I mustn’t be taken by surprise but stay fully alert. The wise should always keep their presence of mind. The mind of wisdom is deep like the ocean. Adversity never conquers those who set their minds tirelessly to work. Prosperity should never intoxicate the wise nor should it veil their insight or dim the clarity of their vision.
“The wisest course” (the rat continued) “would be to make a truce with this snared wildcat. I could help him in his plight. If he hears me speak truthfully and honestly, without any deception or treachery, then it may be he’ll trust me and trust the truce I offer him. And that, perhaps, could lead us both to a safe escape.”
With this in mind, the rat approached the snared wildcat and greeted him, asking:
“How are things with you?”
“As you see,” the wildcat replied sullenly, “I’m tightly bound.”
Classical Arabic Stories Page 35
