A Story of Damascus

Such famine was there once in Damascus that lovers forgot their love. So miserly was the sky towards the earth that the sown fields and the date-trees moistened not their lips. Fountains dried up, and no water remained but the tears in the eyes of the orphans. If smoke issued from a chimney, nought was it but the sighs of the widows. Like beggars, the trees stood leafless, and the mountains lost their verdure. The locusts devoured the gardens, and men devoured the locusts.

At that time came to me a friend on whose bones skin alone remained. I was astonished, since he was of lofty rank and rich. “O friend!” said I, “what misfortune has befallen thee?”

“Where is thy sense?” he answered. “Seest thou not that the severities of famine have reached their limit? Rain comes not from the sky, neither do the lamentations of the suffering reach to heaven.”

“Thou, at least,” I urged, “hast nought to fear; poison kills only where there is no antidote.”

Regarding me with indignation, as a learned man regards a fool, my friend replied: “Although a man be safely on the shore, he stands not supine while his friends are drowning. My face is not pale through want; the sorrows of the poor have wounded my heart. Although, praise be to Allah, I am free from wounds, I tremble when I see the wounds of others.”

Bitter are the pleasures of him who is in health when a sick man is at his side. When the beggar has not eaten, poisonous and baneful is one’s food.