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Updated: June 16, 2025
Now when the King's daughter saw her, she sprang to her feet in honour, and the old woman said, "Allah! Allah! O King's daughter, say me, whose was the fault, mine or thine?" Hayat al-Nufus replied, "The fault was mine, and 'tis thine to pardon and forgive. Verily, I was beside myself and could not recover my senses; but, O my nurse, I repent of what deed I did."
Now this care-taker was a man aged three-score and ten, who had never in all his life possessed so much money: so, when he saw the two dinars in his hand, he was like to fly for joy and rising forthwith opened the garden gate to the Prince and the Wazir, and made them enter and sit down under a wide-spreading, fruit-laden, shade-affording tree, saying, "Sit ye here and go no further into the garden, for it hath a privy door communicating with the palace of the Princess Hayat al-Nufus."
Then, placing a dish before her she turned into it the contents of the jar, when there fell out into the dish with the olives a heap of red gold; and she said to the Lady Hayat al-Nufus, "This is naught but gold!" So she sent for the rest of the bottles and found them all full of precious metal and scarce enough olives to fill a single jar.
Thereupon he went in to his mother, Queen Hayat al-Nufus, whom he found lying on her bed in feeble case, for that which had betided her with Prince Amjad, and railed at her and cursed her; after which he left her and fore-gathered with his brother, to whom he related all that had befallen him with Queen Budur, adding, "By Allah, O my brother, but that I was ashamed before thee, I had gone in to her forthright and had smitten her head off her shoulders!"
He then folded the scroll and gave it to the old woman, together with two purses of two hundred dinars, which she would have refused, but he conjured her by oath to accept of them. So she took them both and said, "Needs must I bring thee to thy desire, despite the noses of thy foes." Then she repaired to the palace and gave the letter to Hayat al-Nufus who said, "What is this, O my nurse?
When he came to himself Hayat al-Nufus had passed from his sight and was hidden from him among the trees; so he sighed from his heart-core and improvised these couplets, "Whenas mine eyes behold her loveliness, * My heart is torn with love's own ecstasy. She turned and ravished this sad Love-thrall'd sprite; * Mercy, by Allah, ruth; nay, sympathy!
Now Prince Amjad sat in judgement the first day, bidding and forbidding, appointing and deposing, giving and refusing; and Queen Hayat al-Nufus, mother of As'ad, wrote to him a letter suing for his favour and discovering to him her passion and devotion; altogether put tiny off the mask and giving him to know that she desired to enjoy him.
She continued, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the old woman betook herself to the Prince and told him all that had passed between herself and the Princess Hayat al-Nufus; and how her mistress was minded to go down into the garden on such a day and said to him, "Hast thou done as I bade thee with the Warder of the garden and hast thou made him taste of thy bounties?"
"There needeth nor letter nor answer." "I must have a letter that I may rebuke him roughly and cut off his hopes." "Thou canst do that without a letter." "I cannot do it without the letter." So Hayat al-Nufus called for pen-case and paper and wrote these verses, "Long have I chid thee but my chiding hindereth thee not * How often would my verse with writ o' hand ensnare thee, ah!
And when she had finished her repeating, the Lady Budur sat down beside the Princess Hayat al-Nufus and kissed her on the mouth; after which rising abruptly, she made the minor ablution and betook herself to her devotions; nor did she leave praying till Hayat al-Nufus fell asleep, when she slips into bed and lay with her back to her till morning.
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