(no subject)

[etothepi]

"'In my country are houses wide and spacious and fruits ripe and delicious and waters sweet and viands savourous and of goodly use and meats fat and full of juice and flocks innumerous and all things pleasant and al the goods of life, the like whereof are not, save in the Paradise which Alah the Omnipotent hath promised to His servants pious.' Replied she, 'All this have I heard: but tell me, have ye a Sultan who ruleth over you and is tyrannical in his rule and under whose hand you are; one who, if any of you commit an offence, taketh his goods and ruineth him and who, whenas he will, turneth you out of house and home and uprooteth you, stock and branch?' Replied the man, "Indeed that may be'; and she rejoined, 'If so, by Allah, these your delicious food and life of daintyhood and gifts however good, with tyranny and oppression, are but a searching poison, while our coarse meat which in freedom and safety we eat is a healthful medicine. Hast thou not heard that the best of boons, after Al-Islam, the true Faith, are sanity and security?'"

-The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, "The Pilgrim Man and the Old Woman" (nights 434 - 436)