old woman rejoined, "Then make them up and give me what thou hast
mentioned, with the blessing of Almighty Allah." So saying, she
threw upon the shop board ten gold pieces, and he looked at
Ni'amah and bade him prepare the necessary drugs; whereupon she
also looked at the youth and exclaimed, "Allah have thee in his
keeping, O my son! Verily, she favoureth thee in age and mien."
Then said she to the physician, "O my brother the Persian, is
this thy slave or thy son?" "He is my son," answered he. So
Ni'amah put up the medicine and, placing it in a little box, took
a piece of paper and wrote thereon these two couplets,[FN#15]

"If Naomi bless me with a single glance, * Let Su'ada sue and
Juml joy to
They said, "Forget her: twenty such thou'lt find." * But none is
like her--I will not forget!"

He pressed the paper into the box and, sealing it up, wrote upon
the cover the following words in Cufic characters, "I am Ni'amah
of al-Rabi'a of Cufa." Then he set it before the old woman who
took it and bade them farewell and returned to the Caliph's
palace, and when she went up with the drugs to the damsel she
placed the little box of medicine at her feet, saying, "O my
lady, know that there is lately come to our town a Persian
physician, than whom I never saw a more skilful nor a better
versed in matters of malady. I told him thy name, after showing
him the water-bottle, and forthwith he knew thine ailment and
prescribed a remedy. Then he bade his son make thee up this
medicine; and there is not in Damascus a comelier or a seemlier
youth than this lad of his, nor hath anyone a shop the like of
his shop." So Naomi took the box and, seeing the names of her