ke to swoon of the excess of his wailing
and his lamentation. So she came to him and raised him from the ground,
saying, "What profiteth it that thou shouldst kill thyself?" And [171]
she proceeded to comfort him and made him sit down.

Then, before she laid the table, the Maugrabin fell to relating to her
[his history] and said to her, "O wife of my brother, let it not amaze
thee that in all thy days thou never sawest me neither knewest of me
in my late brother's lifetime, for that I left this country forty years
agone and became an exile from my native land. I journeyed to the lands
of Hind and Sind and all the country of the Arabs and coming presently
into Egypt, sojourned awhile in the magnificent city [of Cairo], which
is the wonder of the world. [172] Ultimately I betook myself to the land
of Hither Barbary [173] and sojourned there thirty years' space, [174]
till one day of the days, as I sat, [175] O wife of my brother, I
bethought me of my country and my native place and of my late brother
and longing waxed on me to see him and I fell a-weeping and lamenting
over my strangerhood and distance from him. In fine, my yearning for him
importuned me till I resolved to journey to this country, the which was
the falling-place of my head [176] and my native land, that I might see
my brother. And I said in myself, "O man, how long wilt thou be an exile
[177] from thy country and thy native place, whenas thou hast an only
brother and no more? Arise and journey and look upon him ere thou die.
Who knoweth the calamities of fate and the vicissitudes of the days?
Sore pity 'twere that thou shouldst die and not see thy brother.
Moreover, Allah (praised be He) hath given thee abundant wealth and it
may be thy brother is in poor case and straitened, and thou wilt help
him, an [178] thou see him." So I arose forthright and equipped myself
for travel; then, reciting the Fatiheh [179], I took horse, after the
Friday prayer, and came, after many hardships and fatigues,--which I
suffered, till the Lord (to whom belong might and majesty) protected
[me],--to this city. I entered it and as I went about its thoroughfares
the day before yesterday, I saw my brother's son Alaeddin playing with
the boys; and by Allah the Great, O wife of my brother, when I saw him,
my heart crave to him, for that blood yearneth unto blood, and my soul
foreboded me he was my brother's son. At his sight I forgot all my toils
and troubles and was like to fly for