JAFAR
Tell us, if would not have us think you a mad man or a buffoon.

CALIPH
Tell us about the woman; what harm can do you
since we are in your power?

RAFI
(After hesitation) Yes, what harm can it do, if for my own sake,
to relieve the heaviness of my heart, I tell you something of my story?

My name is Rafi. I come from the hills beyond Mosul, where the men
walk free and the women go unveiled. There I was betrothed to Pervaneh,
a woman beautiful and wise. But the very day before our marriage
the Governor of Mosul remembered my country and invaded it
with a thousand men. And little enough plunder they got from our village,
but they caught Pervaneh walking alone among the pine woods
and carried her away. When I heard this I leapt on my horse
and galloped to Mosul, prepared to slay the Governor and all
the inhabitants thereof single-handed, if evil had come to Pervaneh.
But there I found she had already been sent with a raft full of slaves
down the Tigris to Bagdad. Whereupon I hired six men with shining muscles
to row me there. We arrived at Bagdad at the end of the third night's
rowing at the grey of dawn. I sprang out of the raft like a tiger,
and ran like a madman through the streets, crying "The Slave Market!
Tell me the way, O ye citizens! The Slave Market, O the Slave Market!"

And suddenly turning a corner I came upon the market,
which was like a garden full of girls in splendid clothes
grouped in groups like flowers in garden beds and some like lilies, naked.