THE STORY OF THE PORTER WITH THE YOUNG LADIES
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The porter follows the young lady who bought many things. Then he carries his burden to a palace where there were two other young ladies.
Although he is told to go away, after being paid, he has no desire to do so, being the only man in the presence of three beautiful ladies.
ON THE FIRST NIGHT
Sheherazade started again the Story of the Porter with the Young Ladies:
There was a man in the city of Baghdad who was single and also a porter.
One of the days, while he was in the souk, nonchalantly leaning on his carrying basket, a woman stopped in front of him wrapped in her ample veil of Mosul fabric, silk sprinkled with gold sequins, and lined with brocade. She lifted her little face-veil, and from below then appeared black eyes with long eyelashes and beautiful lids! And she was slender and fine in extremities, perfect in qualities. Then she said with the sweetness of her pronunciation: “O porter, take your carrying basket and follow me! And the porter, completely taken aback, could not believe the words he heard; however, he took his basket and followed the young woman, who finally stopped in front of the door of a house. She knocked at the door, and immediately a Christian man came down and gave her, for a dinar, a measure of olives which she put in the basket, saying to the porter: "Carry this and follow me. !" And the porter exclaimed: “By Allah! what a blessed day!" And he carried the hood and followed the young woman. She stopped in front of a fruiterer's shop and bought apples from Syria, quinces and peaches from Oman, jasmines from Aleppo, water lilies from Damascus, cucumbers from the Nile, lemons from Egypt, citrons, myrtle berries, henna flowers, blood-red anemones, violets, pomegranate flowers, and narcissus. And she put everything in the basket of the porter and said to him: “Carry!" And he carried and followed her until she came to a butcher to whom she said: "Cut ten thirty ounces of meat." He cut the thirty ounces; and she wrapped them in banana leaves, put them in the basket, and said: “Carry, O porter!" He carried and followed her to stop in front of the seller of almonds, from whom she took all kinds of almonds, and said: "Carry and follow me!" And he carried the basket and followed her to the shop of the seller of sweets; there she bought a tray and covered it with everything the merchant had: intertwining sugar and butter, velvety pasta flavored with musk and deliciously stuffed, biscuits called 'saboun', small pâtés, lemon pies, tasty jams, sweets called 'mouchabac', small puffed bites called 'loucmet-el-kadi', and others called 'assabih-zeinab', made with butter, honey, and milk. Then she put all these varieties of treats on the tray and put the tray on the basket. Then the porter said, "If you had warned me, I would have come with a mule to load all these things!" And she smiled at these words. Then she stopped at the distiller and bought him ten kinds of water: rose water, orange blossom water, and many others too; she also took a measure of intoxicating drinks; she also bought a sprinkler of rosehip water, grains of male frankincense, aloe wood, ambergris, and musk; finally, she took candles of Alexandrian wax. She put everything in the basket and said, "Carry the basket and follow me!" And he carried the basket and followed her, until the young lady had come to a magnificent palace, with a spacious court in the back garden; it was very tall, square in shape, and imposing; the gate had two leaves of ebony, laminated with blades of red gold.
Then the young lady stopped at the door and rang in a sweet-sounding way, and the door opened with its two leaves. The porter then looked at the one who had opened the door to him, and he found that she was a young girl of elegant and graceful figure, a real model for rounded and protruding breasts, for her prettiness, her elegance, her beauty, and all the perfections of its size and bearing; her forehead was white like the first light of the new moon, her eyes like the eyes of gazelles, her eyebrows like the crescent of the month of Ramadan, her cheeks like an anemone, her mouth like Suleiman's seal, her face like the full moon at its rising, her two breasts like twin pomegranates; as for her elastic and flexible young belly, it was hidden under the clothes like a precious letter under the roll which envelops it.
So, at the sight of it, the porter felt his reason fly away and the hood almost fell from his head, and he said to himself: “By Allah! I have never had a more blessed day in my life than this day! »
Then this young portress, while remaining inside, said to her sister the provider, and the porter: “Come in! And may the welcome here be wide and kind to you!"
So they went in, and at last, came to a spacious hall overlooking the central courtyard, all adorned with silk and gold brocades, and full of well-executed furniture inlaid with gold specks, and also vases and carved seats, and carefully closed curtains and wardrobes. In the middle of the room there was a bed of marble encrusted with brilliant pearls and jewels; over this bed was stretched a mosquito net of red satin, and on the bed was a marvelous maiden, with Babylonian eyes, a waist straight as the letter aleph, and a face so beautiful that it filled with confusion the bright sun. She was like one of the bright stars, and truly like a noble Arabian woman, as the poet says:
He who measures your size, O young girl, and compares it to the delicacy of the bending twig,
Does not tell the whole truth, and judges with error, despite his talent.
For your size has no equal, nor your body a brother!
For the branch is only pretty when bare on the tree, but you!
Anyway, you are beautiful, and the clothes that hide you are just another delight!
Then the young girl got up from the bed, took a few steps to be in the middle of the room near her two sisters, and said to them: “Why do you remain so motionless? Take the burden off the porter's head." Then the provider came in front of the porter, the portress got behind him, and, aided by their third sister, they relieved him of the burden. Then they removed everything that was in the basket, put everything in its place, gave two dinars to the porter, and said to him: “Turn your face and go away, O porter!" But the porter looked at the maidens and began to admire all their beauty and perfection, and he thought he had never seen anything like it. Yet he noticed that there was no man among them. Then he saw all there was there of drinks, fruits, fragrant flowers, and other good things, and he marveled at the edge of wonder and had no more desire to go.
— At this point in her narration, Sheherazade saw the morning appear and quietly fell silent.
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