Turkey
In one of the towers overlooking the Sea of Marmora and skirting the
ancient city of Stamboul, there lived an old junkman, who earned a
precarious livelihood in gathering cinders and useless pieces of iron, and
selling them to smiths.
Often did he moralize on the sad Kismet that had reduced him to the task
of daily laboring for his bread to make a shoe, perhaps for an ass. Surely
he, a true Muslim, might at least be permitted to ride the ass. His
eternal longing often found satisfaction in passing his hours of sleep in
dreams of wealth and luxury. But with the dawning of the day came reality
and increased longing.
Often did he call on the spirit of sleep to reverse matters, but in vain;
with the rising of the sun began the gathering of the cinders and iron.
One night he dreamt that he begged this nocturnal visitor to change his
night to day, and the spirit said to him, "Go to Egypt, and it shall be
so."
This encouraging phrase haunted him by day and inspired him by night. So
persecuted was he with the thought that when his wife said to him, from
the door, "Have you brought home any bread?" he would reply, "No, I have
not gone; I will go tomorrow; " thinking she had asked him, " Have you
gone to Egypt?"
At last, when friends and neighbors began to pity poor Ahmet, for that was
his name, as a man on whom the hand of Allah was heavily laid, removing
his intelligence, he one morning left his house, saying, "I go! I go! to
the land of wealth!" And he left his wife wringing her hands in despair,
while the neighbors tried to comfort her. Poor Ahmet went straight on
board a boat which he had been told was bound for Iskender (Alexandria),
and assured the captain that he was summoned thither, and that he was
bound to take him. Half-witted and mad persons being more holy than
others, Ahmet was conveyed to Iskender.
Arriving in Iskender, Hadji Ahmet roamed far and wide, proceeding as far
as Cairo, in search of the luxuries he had enjoyed at Constantinople when
in the land of Morpheus, which he had been promised to enjoy in the
sunshine, if he came to Egypt. Alas! for Hadji Ahmet; the only bread he
had to eat was that which was given him by sympathizing humanity. Time
sped on, sympathy was growing tired of expending itself on Hadji Ahmet,
and his crusts of bread were few and far between.
Wearied of life and suffering, he decided to ask Allah to let him die, and
wandering out to the pyramids he solicited the stones to have pity and
fall on him. It happened that a Turk heard this prayer, and said to him,
"Why so miserable, father? Has your soul been so strangled that you prefer
its being dashed out of your body, to its remaining the prescribed time in
bondage?"
"Yes, my son," said Hadji Ahmet. "Far away in Stamboul, with the help of
God, I managed as a junkman to feed my wife and myself; but here am I, in
Egypt, a stranger, alone and starving, with possibly my wife already dead
of starvation, and all this through a dream."
"Alas! Alas! my father! that you at your age should be tempted to wander
so far from home and friends, because of a dream. Why, were I to obey my
dreams, I would at this present moment be in Stamboul, digging for a
treasure that lies buried under a tree. I can even now, although I have
never been there, describe where it is. In my mind's eye I see a wall, a
great wall, that must have been built many years ago, and supporting or
seeming to support this wall are towers with many corners, towers that are
round, towers that are square, and others that have smaller towers within
them. In one of these towers, a square one, there live an old man and
woman, and close by the tower is a large tree, and every night when I
dream of the place, the old man tells me to dig and disclose the treasure.
But, father, I am not such a fool as to go to Stamboul and seek to verify
this. It is an oft-repeated dream and nothing more. See what you have been
reduced to by coming so far."
"Yes," said Hadji Ahmet, "it is a dream and nothing more, but you have
interpreted it. Allah be praised, you have encouraged me; I will return to
my home." And Hadji Ahmet and the young stranger parted, the one grateful
that it had pleased Allah to give him the power to revive and encourage a
drooping spirit, and the other grateful to Allah that when he had
despaired of life a stranger should come and give him the interpretation
of his dream. He certainly had wandered far and long to learn that the
treasure was in his own garden.
Hadji Ahmet in due course, much to the astonishment of both wife and
neighbors, again appeared upon the scene not a much changed man. In fact,
he was the cinder and iron gatherer of old.
To all questions as to where he was and what he had been doing, he would
answer, "A dream sent me away, and a dream brought me back."
And the neighbors would say, "Truly he must be blessed."
One night Hadji Ahmet went to the tree, provided with spade and pick, that
he had secured from an obliging neighbor. After digging a short time a
heavy case was brought to view, in which he found gold, silver, and
precious jewels of great value. Hadji Ahmet replaced the case and earth
and returned to bed, much lamenting that it had pleased God to furnish
women, more especially his wife, with a long tongue, long hair, and very
short wits. "Alas!" he thought, "If I tell my wife, I may be hung as a
robber, for it is against the laws of nature for a woman to keep a
secret."
Yet, becoming more generous when thinking of the years of toil and
hardship she had shared with him, he decided to try and see if, by chance,
his wife was not an exception to other women. Who knows, she might keep
the secret. To test her, at no risk to himself and the treasure, he
conceived a plan.
Crawling from his bed, he sallied forth and bought, found, or stole an
egg. This egg on the following morning he showed to his wife, and said to
her, "Alas! I fear I am not as other men, for evidently in the night I
laid this egg; and, wife mine, if the neighbors hear of this, your
husband, the long-suffering Hadji Ahmet, will be bastinadoed, bowstrung,
and burned to death. Ah, truly, my soul is strangled."
And without another word Hadji Ahmet, with a sack on his shoulder, went
forth to gather the cast-off shoes of horse, ox, or ass, wondering if his
wife would prove an exception in this, as she had in many other ways, to
other women.
In the evening he returned, heavily laden with his finds, and as he neared
home he heard rumors, ominous rumors, that a certain Hadji Ahmet, who had
been considered a holy man, had done something that was unknown in the
history of man, even in the history of hens: that he had laid a dozen
eggs.
Needless to add that Hadji Ahmet did not tell his wife of the treasure,
but daily went forth with his sack to gather iron and cinders, and
invariably found, when separating his finds of the day, in company with
his wife, at first one, and then more gold and silver pieces, and now and
then a precious stone.
