The Woman's Trick Against Her Husband

A man brought his wife a fish one Friday and, bidding her to cook it against the end of the congregational prayers, went out to his craft and business. Meanwhile in came her friend who bade her to a wedding at his house; so she agreed and, laying the fish in a jar of water, went off with him and was absent a whole week till the Friday following;[FN#137] whilst her husband sought her from house to house and enquired after her; but none could give him any tidings of her. Now on the next Friday she came home and he fell foul of her; but she brought out to him the fish alive from the jar and assembled the folk against him and told them her tale.—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

When it was the Three Hundred and Ninety-fourth Night

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the woman brought out the fish alive from the water-jar and assembled the folk against her husband, and told them her tale. He also told his; but they credited him not and said, "It cannot be that the fish should have remained alive all this while." So they proved him mad and imprisoned him and mocked at him, where upon he shed tears in floods and recited these two couplets,

         "Old hag, of high degree in filthy life, *
                 Whose face her monstrous lewdness witnesses.
         When menstuous she bawds; when clean she whores; *
                 And all her time bawd or adulteress is."

And a tale is related of the

Footnotes:

[FN#137] Moslem women have this advantage over their Western sisterhood: they can always leave the house of father or husband and, without asking permission, pay a week or ten days' visit to their friends. But they are not expected to meet their lovers.