THE WOMAN'S TRICK AGAINST HER HUSBAND
A man brought his wife a fish one Friday and, bidding her to cook
it against the end of the congregational prayers, went out to his
craft and business. Meanwhile in came her friend who bade her to
a wedding at his house; so she agreed and, laying the fish in a
jar of water, went off with him and was absent a whole week till
the Friday following;[FN#137] whilst her husband sought her from
house to house and enquired after her; but none could give him
any tidings of her. Now on the next Friday she came home and he
fell foul of her; but she brought out to him the fish alive from
the jar and assembled the folk against him and told them her
tale.--And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say
her permitted say.
When it was the Three Hundred and Ninety-fourth Night
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the woman
brought out the fish alive from the water-jar and assembled the
folk against her husband, and told them her tale. He also told
his; but they credited him not and said, "It cannot be that the
fish should have remained alive all this while." So they proved
him mad and imprisoned him and mocked at him, where upon he shed
tears in floods and recited these two couplets,
"Old hag, of high degree in filthy life, *
Whose face her monstrous lewdness witnesses.
When menstuous she bawds; when clean she whores; *
And all her time bawd or adulteress is."
And a tale is related of the
