The Costly Apple
It was evening. The Caliph, Harun-al-Raschid, and his Wazir, Zafar, were strolling along the narrow lanes of the city of Bagdad. Needless to say, they were in disguise. Nobody recognized them. Nobody cared to talk to them. But they talked to people and learned about their sorrows and joys. "O God, O God!" sighed an old man and cursed his own fate, as they passed by him. "What ails you?" queried the Caliph. "I am a fisherman. I have spent the whole day casting my net into the river, but without being able to catch a single fish," said the man with a sigh. The Caliph was moved to pity. "Come with me to the riverside. Cast your net just once more. Whatever comes ashore when you drag the net shall be bought over by me for a hundred gold mohurs" assured the Caliph.
The old man gladly accompanied the two to the river again. As the Caliph and the Wazir looked on, he cast his net. When he dragged it ashore, it was found to have brought with it a wooden casket. The Caliph rewarded the fisherman with a hundred mohurs and, with the help of the Wazir, carried the casket to the palace. But his surprise and sorrow knew no bound when the casket was opened. Inside it lay the dead body of a charming young lady. She had been stabbed to death. "My Wazir! You must catch the murderer at the earliest. Failing, you lose your head!" said the Caliph, overwhelmed with sorrow and trembling with rage. The Wazir was granted three days to find out the culprit. And, we may be sure that he and his hundred assistants did their best. But the culprit could not be traced. On the fourth day, the Caliph ordered for the Wazir to be hanged. The people of the city heard the Caliph's decision with deep sorrow, for they new the Wazir to be a just and good man. The citizens came by the hundreds to witness the hanging. The Wazir's kinsmen were wailing loudly. The Wazir stood with a solemn face. The Caliph was extremely unhappy to punish his good Wazir, but he wanted to set an example for the future Wazir. Suddenly a young man dashed at the Caliph and kneeling down before him, said, "O just ruler! spare the innocent Wazir and hang me. It is I who murdered the young lady." "He is not speaking the truth, O just Caliph!" shouted an old man who came out pushing through the crowd. "It is I who killed the young lady!" The Caliph, the Wazir, and all the people were perplexed. "Speak the truth- who between you is the murderer- or I will hang both!" growled the Caliph. "If you will be pleased to hear why she was killed, you will understand who could have killed her, myself, or this gentleman who is her father," said the young man.
With the Caliph's permission, he then narrated his story: He was a merchant. He considered himself lucky in his wife who was at once beautiful and faithful. Once the young lady fell sick. When no medicine did her any good, she expressed her desire to taste an apple. Her husband, thinking that to satisfy her desire would do her good, set out in search of apples. He visited every fruit shop in the city and every orchard. But no apple was available. He learned that in that season there was only one orchard, the Caliph's, away in the city of Bassora, where apples grew. The young merchant rode to Bassora. It took him four weeks to return with three fruits which he had bought paying three gold coins. His wife was delighted to receive the apples. However, instead of eating them, she kept them beside herself and continued to be delighted looking at them and playing with them. She began to recover. The merchant, absent from his shop for a long time, now gave more attention to his business in order to make good the lapse. One evening while closing the shop, he was surprised to see a fellow who looked a ruffian passing by holding an apple in his hand. The merchant asked him how he got the apple. The fellow's eyes brightened up. He whispered to him, "I have a mistress in this town, a very rich man's wife. Her husband brought three apples for her from the Caliph's garden in the faraway city of Bassora. She passed on one to me!" The ruffian then ran away with merry strides. The merchant felt that his blood had begun boiling! He marched home and saw that beside his wife lay two apples instead of three. "Where is the third apple?" he demanded. "It is missing for some time," said the lady. The merchant felt sure that what the ruffian said was true. Nobody had access to his wife's bedroom. The ruffian could not have got the apple unless she had given it to him. At the height of passion, he killed her. He then put her dead body in a casket and went out of the room. He saw his little son standing in a corner of the house. Afraid that the child might have seen what he did, the merchant asked him, "Why are you looking so gloomy?" "I do not know how to face my mother," said the boy sadly. "She did not allow me to touch those apples saying that you had brought them with great pains and so she would like to dry them and keep them with her forever. I stole an apple this afternoon only to play with it. As I was hurling it up and was catching it, standing in the meadow, a passer-by came rushing and took hold of it. I told him how it had been brought by my father from Bassora for my mother who was sick and requested him to return it. But he escaped with it." The merchant now realized the blunder he had made. He felt like smashing himself. Soon his father-in-law arrived there. The merchant told him everything. Both of them wept bitterly and carried the casket to the river and immersed it in the water.
The Caliph heard the story with rapt attention. His anger was now shifted to the ruffian. He order his Wazir to find out the fellow. Another three days passed. Again the Wazir failed to trace the culprit. On the fourth day, the Caliph ordered that the Wazir be hanged. The Wazir bade goodbye to his family. When he embraced his little daughter, he felt an apple hidden in her clothes. At his asking the girl showed him the apple and said that she had just bought it from their household slave, paying him a coin. The slave was questioned. He confessed to his pinching it from the merchant's son. The Wazir dragged the fellow to the Caliph who was happy that the culprit had been caught. He handed over the slave to the hangman and offered to reward the Wazir. "My lord! Let the slave be spared of his life. He can be paraded through the country and let the people know how an idle lie can cause a great tragedy!" appealed the Wazir. "But let people know the whole truth. The tragedy was caused by this fellow's lie on one hand and my passion and hasty action on the other hand. I too should be paraded with the fellow," proposed the weeping merchant.
For More Bedtime Stories Click Here
Comments
Post a Comment