The Woman Whose Hands Were Cut Off

TELLER: May Allah bless the Prophet!

AUDIENCE: Allah bless him!

There was a man whose wife had given birth to a daughter and a son and then died. One day the man himself died, and the children remained alone.

They had a hen that laid an egg every day. They would eat the egg for breakfast and wait till the following day. It so happened one day that the hen stopped laying. "I must go check inside the coop," said the girl to herself. She went down into the coop to search the straw, and behold! she found a pile of eggs, and under it was all her father's money. Her father, it turned out, had been saving his money under the straw in the chicken coop. "Here, brother," she said when he came home, "I've found the new place where the hens been laying eggs." She did not tell him about the money. They brought the eggs out and ate one every day.

One day, when the boy had grown up a little, she asked him, "If someone were to show you the money saved by your mother and father, what would you do with it?"

"I'd buy sheep and cattle," he answered.

"Brother," she said to herself, "you're still too young."

Time passed, and she asked again, "If someone were to show you the money saved by your mother and father, what would you do with it?"

"I'd get married," he answered.

"Now you're older and wiser," she said, "and I want to get you married. Such and such is the story."

She took her brother with her, and they went searching in this world to find a bride. Before long they came upon a girl living in a house all by herself. The lad married her, and she became pregnant and gave birth first to a girl. In the middle of the night, the woman got up, devoured her daughter, and smeared the lips of her sleeping sister-in-law with blood. When they woke up in the morning, she said to her husband, "Your sister's a ghouleh, and she has eaten our daughter. Come take a look at her lips."

"Why did you eat the girl?" he went and asked his sister.

"By Allah, brother," she answered, "I didn't eat her."

The young man did not say anything. He just waited.

The following year, his wife gave birth to a boy, and she got up in the middle of the night and ate him, again smearing her sister-in-law's lips with blood. Becoming suspicious of his sister, the brother did not say anything to her. "I must kill her," he said in his mind.

In a few days he said to her, "Come, let's you and I go into the countryside." When they had gone some distance, he sat her down under a tree by a well and said, "So, this is how you treat me, eating my children!"

"By Allah, brother," she answered, "I didn't eat them."

Drawing his sword, he cut off her hands and her feet, and she called down a curse upon him: "Brother, may a thorn get stuck in your foot that no one can pull out." Allah heard her prayer, and a thorn got stuck in his foot on his way home. As he approached the house, he found his wife chasing after a rooster and realized she was a ghouleh. Not daring to go in, he ran back the way he had come.

Now we go back to his sister. As she was sitting by the mouth of the well, lo! a female snake came up to her panting and puffing with fear. "Hide me," she begged, and the girl hid her under her dress. In a while a he-snake showed up puffing and asked her, "Have you seen a she-snake?"

"Yes," she answered. "There, she's fallen into the well."

The male dropped himself into the well, and the female, coming out from under the girl, called after him, "Explode! Here I am!" The male burst and died. The female, meanwhile, rubbed like this on the girl's stumps, and her hands came back as before. She then rubbed the girl's legs, and her feet came back as they had been. Then the girl went her way. She found a husband, got married, and had children.

One day her brother, who had been wandering around looking for someone to pull the thorn from his foot, but without success, came to his sister's doorstep. He did not realize it was his sister's house, but the moment she saw him she recognized him, while he had not recognized her. She had in the meantime said to her children, "When a man who limps comes by here, keep asking me, 'Mother, tell us the story of the man who cut off his sister's hands and feet.'"

"What's your problem, uncle?" she asked, calling him over.

"There's a thorn in my foot," he answered, "and nobody's been able to pull it out."

"Come here and let me see," she said, and doing with the pin like this, behold! the thorn jumped over there. Rising to his feet, he kissed her hands.

"Stay and have dinner with us," she said.

He sat down to eat, and the children said again and again, "Mother, tell us the story of the man who cut off the hands and feet of his sister." The mother began to tell the tale, and at the end she said to them, "I'm the one whose hands and feet were cut off, and this man here's your uncle."

The moment he heard this, they all got up and hugged each other.

The bird has flown, and a good night to all!

32.