Nevertheless, I cannot leave thee thus, but I must e'en set my
mark on thee, to spite yonder shameless baggage, who has kept
thee from me." Then she called out to the damsels and bade them
bind my feet with cords and sit on me. They did her bidding,
whilst I lay insensible, and she fetched a pan of copper and
setting it on a brazier, poured into it oil of sesame, in which
she fried cheese.[FN#139] Then she came up to me and unfastening
my trousers, tied a cord round my cullions and giving it to two
of her women, bade them pull at it. They did so, and I swooned
away and was for excess of pain in a world other than this. Then
she came with a steel scalpel and cut off my yard, so that I
remained like a woman: after which she seared the wound with the
boiling oil and rubbed it with a powder, and I the while
unconscious. When I came to myself, the blood had ceased to flow;
so she bade the damsels unbind me and gave me a cup of wine to
drink. Then said she to me, "Go now to her whom thou hast married
and who grudged me a single night, and the mercy of God be on thy
cousin Azizeh, who discovered not her secret! Indeed she was the
cause of thy preservation, for hadst thou not repeated those
words to me, I had surely slain thee. Rise and go to whom thou
wilt, for thou hadst nothing of mine, save what I have cut off,
and now I have no part in thee, nor have I any further care or
occasion for thee: so begone about thy business and bless thy
cousin's memory!" With that, she gave me a push with her foot,
and I rose, hardly able to walk, and went little by little, till
I came to the door of my wife's house I found it open, so I threw
myself within it and fell down in a swoon; whereupon my wife came
out and lifting me up, carried me into the saloon and found that
I was like unto a woman.
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