Page:Folk-lore of the Holy Land.djvu/279

she was even fonder of him, for he was very rich.

“Were I to die,” she would sometimes sigh in his ear, “you would soon dry your eyes and take a better wife; whereas, if you died first, I should end my days in grief.” “Nay, by Allah,” replied the man fiercely. “Were you to die, I would renounce my business and weep on your grave seven years.” “Would you?” she cried, enraptured. ‘Oh, I would do more than that for your sweet memory!”

The woman, as it was decreed, died first, and the man, true to his vow, gave up his business, and mourned at her graveside night and day for seven long years, subsisting upon scraps of broken meat thrown to him by the charitable. His clothes turned to rags; his hair and beard hung about him like the fronds of maiden hair; his nails grew as long as eagle’s talons, and his body became as emaciated as that of the leaf insect.^[1]

At the end of the seven years El Khudr, being sent that way, saw the strange mourner, and inquired his story. The saint asked him whether he really believed that his wife, had she outlived him, would have done as much. “Of course,” was the reply. “Do you think that, if she were now alive, she would still love you?” “Of course I do.” “ Well,” said El Khudr, “we shall see.” He struck the grave with Moses’ rod and bade it open, when the woman arose in her shroud, young and lovely as ever. El Khudr,