ABSTRACT
IT is related-but Allah knows all-that there was once in Cairo a girl of such subtlety that it was as easy for her to pass through the eye of a needle as to drink a cup of water. Allah had dowered her with so ardent a temperament that, if she had been one of the four wives of a Believer and had received only the nights allowed her by law, she would speedily have died of frustration; but she had arranged her life so well that she was not only a man’s single wife, but the single wife of two men, each hardy cocks of Upper Egypt, who could assuage twenty hens one after the other. She had taken such wise precautions that neither man supposed that he was living in a way forbidden by the Faith. In this she was helped by the professions of her two husbands; for the one named Haram was a robber, working by night and returning only for the day, and the other, called Akil, was a pickpocket who laboured all day and only returned to her for the night.
