The Orphans' Cow

TELLER: Testify that God is One!

AUDIENCE: There is no god but He!

There was once a man who was married to a certain woman. The wife died, leaving behind a son and a daughter. The man said, "This cow is for the boy and the girl."

One day the man married again. His wife became pregnant, gave birth, and had a boy. She became pregnant again, gave birth, and had a girl. She fed her children only the best food, and the others nothing but bran.

The orphans used to roam with their cow in the countryside every day. When they were well out of town, they would say to her, "Open, O our cow!" The cow would open the space between her horns, meat and rice would come out of it, and the children would eat their fill. When they were fed bran at home, they would boil with anger.

When the children played together in the evening, the woman noticed that her children were sallow, while the orphans were like red apples. She said to her son, "Tomorrow you'll go out to the countryside with them and find out what they eat!" He said, "All right."

The next day he went roving with them. Early in the morning the children fed their pieces of bread to the cow. And what? Were they going to suffer from hunger all day? "Listen!" they said to their brother. "Do you promise not to tell our mother and father?"

"No. I won't say anything," he answered.

"Good," they said. "Open, O our cow! We want to eat."

The cow opened between her horns, the three of them ate till they were full, and then the cow dosed her horns again.

"Hanh!" snapped the mother when they came home. "What did you eat out there?"

"What did we eat?" he answered. "We ate the dry bread you gave us." He refused to tell. Not believing him, the woman then said to her daughter, "You go out with them in the morning, and whatever you see them eat, you must tell me."

The following morning, the girl went roaming the countryside with the orphans. "Do you promise not to tell?" they asked her, and she replied, "No, I won't tell." They said, "Open, I our cow! We want to eat." The cow opened between her horns, and what rice and meat there was! They ate until they had their fill; but the girl was putting one bite in her mouth and hiding the next in the front of her dress. When she came home, she said, "Mother, see! Here's what they eat! Their cow does such and such."

The woman brought some straw and boiled it until the water turned yellow, yellow. Then she bathed in this water, laid out her bed, and put her head down and went to sleep.

"What's the matter with your mother, children?" asked the father when he came home. The children said she was ill.

"Don't talk to me!" she said. "I'm not well."

"Woman, what's the problem? I'll take you to the doctor, just tell me what you need!"

"I was told no prescription would cure me, except that you slaughter for me the orphans' cow."

"O no, woman!" he said. "The children are having such a good time with her," and so on and so forth.

"Nothing else is possible," she answered. "I won't get well until you slaughter the orphans' cow for me."

So he caught the cow and slaughtered her, and they ate her, while the orphans wept and lamented.

Angry, they ran away, the sister with her brother. They walked and walked until a shepherd met them. The girl was the older, and the boy the younger.

"Sister, I'm thirsty," said the boy. "I want to drink."

"Uncle," she asked the shepherd, "do you happen to know where there's water for us to drink?"

"Listen, daughter," he replied. "You'll come upon two springs. Drink from the lower one, but the other one - don't drink from it! A gazelle has pissed in it, and whoever drinks from it now will turn into a gazelle."

"Thank you," said the girl.

They reached the springs, and quenched their thirst from the lower one.

"By Allah," insisted the brother. "I must drink from the other spring too, just to see what will happen."

"O brother, brother, please!"

He would not listen to her, and drank from the upper spring. When he drank, he turned into a gazelle. The girl led him away, her tears flowing into her mouth. She arrived by the walls of a palace and sat down. A servantgirl looked out and saw her.

"Sir," said the servant to her master, "down by the palace wall there's one so beautiful she'll take your mind away."

"Go call her for me!" he said. She went and called over to her, "Girl, come up and see my master," and the girl replied, "I have a gazelle with me." The king said to his servants, "Take the gazelle and tether him down below, and have her come up here!"

"No," said the girl. "This gazelle - wherever I stay, he stays with me."

"Very well," said the king. "Let him come up with her."

She led the gazelle up the stairs with her, and stayed. She stayed a month, perhaps two, Allah knows!

"Young woman," the king asked one day, "would you rather have me for a brother or for a husband?"

"No, by Allah [not as a brother]," replied the girl. "Marriage is shelter."

He married her. A day went and a day came, she became pregnant, and he set out on the hajj. But before leaving he said to the women of the house, "Take good care of so and so. And this lamb here - when she gives birth, have it slaughtered for her!"

"Yes," they said. But after he left, they whispered, "This one's so beautiful and well behaved, he'll sell us all for her sake when he comes back. What're we going to do with her?" They dropped her into a well, slaughtered her lamb, and ate it themselves, burying its skin under the floor of the house.

Now, the gazelle, whenever they fed him a mouthful of bread, would take it and drop it into the well.

The king returned from the hajj. "Where's my wife?" he asked.

"Allah have mercy on her soul!" they said. "She died. And, by Allah, since she was so dear to us, we've dug a grave for her fight under the floor here."

Looking the gazelle over, how thin the king found him! He said, "What use do we have for him now that she's gone? Let's feed him till he fattens up, then slaughter him."

But the gazelle still took the mouthful of bread and went away. The king thought, "By Allah, I've got to follow this gazelle and find out where he takes the food." He followed him, and behold! the gazelle carried the piece of bread in his jaws, went to the mouth of a well, dropped it in, and started calling out:

"O my little sister, O Bdur!

For me they've sharpened the knives

And raised the pots over the fire."

And she answered:

"O my little brother, O Qdur!

My hair's so long it covers me,

In my lap sits the son of the king,

And the whale has swallowed me."

Looking into the well, the king asked, "Are you down in this well?"

"Just as you see," she answered.

He had a young man like Mhammad Musa lowered into the well. The man went down and brought her and her child up. Then she told the king what had taken place. "My story is such and such and such," she said, "and so and so. We drank from the springs, this gazelle is my brother, and the women of your house dropped me into the well. This is exactly what has happened to me."

After she was out of the well, the king took her brother and made him drink from the same spring again, and he turned back into this youth that you should come and see.

He then brought together his mother, his sister, and his servantgirl and had it announced that he who loves the sultan must in the morning bring a lapful of wood and a burning coal to, you might say, the town's threshing grounds. He lit a fire and dropped his mother, his sister, and the servant into it, and burned them.

Then he lived happily with his wife, and he made her brother a sultan - and may you wake up to blessings in the morning!

8.