Zgodba o treh željah

Besedilo

Zgodba o treh željah

I have also heard of a man who had long wished to behold the Night of Power. One night he looked up at the sky and saw the angels and the gates of heaven standing open, and everything prostrate in its place. Seeing this, he said to his wife, “Wife, God has granted me a sight of the Night of Power. I vowed that, if I ever saw it, I would make three prayers that would be answered. Now I seek your counsel: what should I ask?” The woman said, “Say, ‘O God, make my cock bigger.’” He said this, and his member grew as large as a gourd, until he could scarcely stand beneath its weight. Whenever he tried to lie with his wife, she fled from him from place to place. “What are we to do?” he asked her. “Was this not what you wished for, to satisfy your lust?” She replied, “I certainly do not want it to remain so long.” The man raised his head to heaven and said, “O God, save me from this affliction and rid me of it!” At once his groin became smooth, with no member at all. When his wife saw him, she said, “I have no use for you now that you have no cock.” He answered, “All this comes of your ill-fated advice and foolish judgment. God had granted me three prayers by which I might have gained the blessings of this world and the next. Two have been wasted, and only one remains.” She said, “Pray to God Most High to restore you to what you were before.” So he prayed to his Lord and became as he had been. “All this, O King, came about through a woman’s poor judgment. I have told you this only so that you may understand how heedless women are, how shallow their minds, and how ill-considered their counsel. Do not, then, heed her words and kill your son, the darling of your heart, and wipe out the remembrance of your name after you are gone.” Thus the king refrained from killing his son. On the seventh day, the slave girl came shrieking before the king and kindled a great fire. They brought her before him, holding her by the arms, and the king asked her, “Why have you done this?” She replied, “Unless you give me justice against your son, I shall throw myself into this fire, for I have come to loathe life. Before coming here, I wrote my will and gave away my wealth in charity, and I have resolved to die. Then you will bitterly regret it, as the king regretted torturing the woman who kept the bathhouse.” The king asked her, “And how was that?”