(Alone) Go on thy way without me, Commander of the Faithful.
I will follow you no further. Find one more adventure if you will.
For me the break of day is adventure enough--and water splashing
in the fountain. Find out, Haroun, the secret of the lights
and of the music, of a house that has no door, and a master
that will admit no citizen. Drag out the mystery of a man's love
or loss, then break your oath and publish his tale to all Bagdad,
then fling him gold, and fling him gold, and dream you have made a friend!
Those bags of gold you fling, O my generous master, to a mistress for night,
to a poet for a jest, to a rich friend for entertainment,
to a beggar for a whim, are they not the revenues of cities,
wrung by torture from the poor? But the sighs of your people, Haroun,
do not so much as stir the leaves in your palace garden!

And I--I have taken your gold, I, Ishak, who was born on the mountains
free of the woods and winds. I have made my home in your palace,
and almost forgot it was a prison. And for you I have strung glittering,
fulsome verses, a hundred rhyming to one rhyme, ingeniously woven,
my disgrace as a poet, my dishonour as a man. And I have forgotten
that there are men who dig and sow, and a hut on the hills
where I was born.
(Perceives Hassan.) Ah, there is a body, here in the shade.
Corpses of the poor are very common on the streets these days.
They die of poison or the knife, but most of hunger. Mashallah,
but you have not died of hunger, my friend, and there is that
on your face that I do not like to see. By his clothes
this was a common man, a grocer or a baker, his person ill-proportioned
and unseemly, but by his forehead not quite a common man. I think--

JAFAR