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As like as not he be waiting for the river to lower, he said. At which Joseph had half a mind to leave Banu for John; but a passenger was calling the ferryman from the opposite bank and he was left with incomplete information and wandered on in doubt whether to return in quest of the Baptist or make the disciple his shift.
And seven times Arjmand Banu walked the ancient way of motherhood that way along which woman finds the testing of her soul, the mystic reach and infinite meaning of her existence, as man must find his in some bitter conflict that forever frees him from the bonds of selfishness.
Yet consult somebody he must; and a few days afterwards he got leave again to visit Banu, whom he found lying in his cave, sick: not very sick; though having eaten nothing for nearly two days he begged Joseph to fetch him a little water from the rock; which Joseph did.
But these brambles betoken water, he said; and on coming round a certain rock bulging uncouth from the hillside, he discovered a trickle, and a few paces distant, Banu, ugly as a hyena and more ridiculous than the animal, for having no shirt to cover his nakedness he had tressed a garland of leaves about his waist!
Furthermore I desire that of thy favour thou wilt grant him his request without stay or delay; for it is my own, and all graciousness thou showest him, I take for myself; but beware of crossing me in this, for know, O King Bahrwan, that Allah hath bestowed upon me the Kingdom of Kabul, and hath given me dominion over the Banu Shahlan and vouchsafed me a mighty empire; and if I marry thy daughter, we will be, I and thou, as one thing in kingship; and I will send thee every year as much treasure as will suffice thee.
The inscription in Persian characters over the archway, "Only the Pure in Heart May Enter the Garden of God," is enough to assure one that Arjmand Banu, "The Exalted One of the Palace," whose dust it was built to shelter, was a queen as beautiful in character as she was in form and feature. We know but little about her. "Mumtaz-i-Mahal," they called her "Pride of the Palace."
Banu pointed to it, and Joseph knelt and drank, and after drinking he was in better humour to tell Banu that Mathias, the great philosopher from Alexandria, scorned the prophecies that the end of the world could not be delayed much longer. And, as John is not baptizing these days, I thought I'd come and ask if we had better begin to prepare for the resurrection and the judgment.
So I sought her in marriage of her sire, but he refused and married her to a man of the Banu Odhrah, who went in to her and carried her to his abiding-place this last year. He replied, "Say on, O my cousin"; and quoth I, "When it is night and the girl cometh, set her on my she-camel which is swift of pace, and mount thou thy steed, whilst I bestride one of these dromedaries.
When grown very feeble, he begged to be laid where he could see the Taj Mahal; and, the request being granted, you know how he died with his face towards the tomb of the beautiful Persian, "whose palankeen followed all his campaigns in the days when Empire was still a-winning, whose children called him father Arjmand Banu, silent and unseen now for four-and-thirty years, the wife of his youth."
You've heard him preach in Galilee, tell me who he is, and in what does his teaching consist? a direct question that prompted Joseph to relate his associations with the Essenes, Banu, John, the search for Jesus in Egypt and among the Judean hills a long story I'm afraid it is, Joseph mentioned apologetically to Nicodemus, who begged him to omit no detail of it.
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