Original content

English translation

A youth named Salil, of noble lineage, who was renowned among the Arab tribes for his beauty and refinement, and in the thicket of lions and the battlefield of the brave was far from weakness and feebleness, had in his heart a longing for his paternal cousin and in his mind a madness from the temptation of love for her. For years he bore the hardship of seeking until he reached the desired one, and he was struck by love's blow until he beheld the beauty of the beloved.

He had not yet warmed his place at the feast of union, and had drunk no more than a single sip from the cup of union, when the resolve seized him to move from that dwelling to another place and take his rest in a fresher homeland. He seated that moon in a howdah and drove the howdah along the road his heart desired.

When he had traveled one stage, he came to a pleasant place and a charming halting-spot; he alighted and set down the howdah. Suddenly he saw thirty horsemen appear from one side. He rose, girded on his weapon, and mounted the saddle. When they drew near, he knew that they were his enemies and meant him harm. He set about confronting and fighting them and killed most of them, but he took mortal wounds. He returned to his cousin and said:

News has come of my being slain by the foe; Sit, that I may gaze upon you with longing. I will shed your blood, so that when they shed my blood, No other may take pleasure from your lips.

The girl said: By God, you shall not shed my blood; I will shed my own blood myself and mingle it with your blood — but it is better that you take the initiative and loosen this knot from your heart. Salil rose and began this song:

From the crooked turning of this rough wheel, Behold how my back was brought down to the dust! The one from whom this coin of life lies in my fist, Today, by my own hand, must be slain.

Then upon a throat that envied the collar-string of the shirt and over which he shed tears out of jealousy of the necklace's ornament, he drew a blade, and in a single instant put out that world-illuminating candle, and rubbed his dust-covered face in her blood; and with that red-facedness he turned once more against those black-fated ones, took the heads of several more men, and at last laid down his own head.

When Salil's people learned of this event, they hastened, rending their garments and wailing, and carried both slain ones to the tribe's graves and buried them in a single grave.

Both were borne beneath the earth in honor, That on the Day of Reckoning they might not rise abject and sorrowful; Under the dust they made them a place upon one bed, That they might sleep happily together and together rise.