“He’s certainly been behaving oddly,” Hakim agreed. “We don’t like such talk connected to a respectable family like ours.”
This was worse than usual. Abdullah said, “There is nothing wrong with my mind. I know just what I am doing. And my aim is to cease giving you any chance to criticize me, probably by tomorrow. Meanwhile, Hakim told me to come here because you have found the prophecy that was made at my birth. Is this correct, or was it merely an excuse?” He had never been so rude to his father’s first wife’s relations before, but he was angry enough to feel they deserved it.
Oddly enough, instead of being angry with Abdullah in return, all three of his father’s first wife’s relations began hurrying excitedly around the emporium.
“Now where is that box?” said Fatima.
“Find it, find it!” said Assif. “It is the very words of the fortuneteller his poor father brought to the bedside of his second wife an hour after Abdullah’s birth. He must see it!”
“Written in your own father’s hand,” Hakim said to Abdullah. “The greatest treasure for you.”
“Here it is!” said Fatima, triumphantly pulling a carved wooden box off a high shelf. She gave the box to Assif, who thrust it into Abdullah’s hands.
“Open it, open it!” they all three cried excitedly.
Abdullah put the box down on the purple cashier’s table and sprang the catch. The lid went back, bringing a musty smell from inside, which was perfectly plain and empty apart from a folded yellowish paper.
“Get it out! Read it!” said Fatima in even greater excitement.
Abdullah could not see what the fuss was about, but he unfolded the paper. It had a few lines of writing on it, brown and faded and definitely his father’s. He turned toward the hanging lamp with it. Now that Hakim had shut the main doors, the general purpleness of the emporium made it hard to see in there.
“He can barely see!” said Fatima.
Assif said, “No wonder. There’s no light in here. Bring him into the room at the back. The overhead shutters are open there.”
He and Hakim took hold of Abdullah’s shoulders and pushed and hustled him toward the back of the shop. Abdullah was so busy trying to read the pale and scribbly writing of his father that he let them push him until he was positioned under the big overhead louvers in the living room behind the emporium. That was better. Now he knew why his father had been so disappointed in him. The writing said:
These are the words of the wise fortune-teller: “This son of yours will not follow you in your trade. Two years after your death, while he is still a very young man, he will be raised above all others in this land. As Fate decrees it, so I have spoken.”
My son’s fortune is a great disappointment to me. Let Fate send me other sons to follow in my trade, or I have wasted forty gold pieces on this prophecy.
“As you see, a great future awaits you, dear boy,” said Assif.
Somebody giggled.
Abdullah looked up from the paper, a little bemused. There seemed to be a lot of scent in the air.
The giggle came again, two of it, from in front of him.
Abdullah’s eyes snapped forward. He felt them bulge. Two extremely fat young women stood in front of him. They met his bulging eyes and giggled again, coyly. Both were dressed to kill in shiny satin and ballooning gauze—pink on the right, yellow on the left one—and hung with more necklaces and bracelets than seemed probable. In addition, the pink one, who was fattest, had a pearl dangling on her forehead, just below her carefully fizzed hair. The yellow one, who was only just not fattest, wore a sort of amber tiara and had even frizzier hair. Both wore a very large amount of makeup, which was, in both cases, a severe error.
As soon as they were sure Abdullah’s attention was on them—and it was; he was riveted with horror—each girl drew a veil from behind her ample shoulders—a pink veil on the left and a yellow on the right—and draped it chastely across her head and face. “Greetings, dear husband!” they chorused from beneath the veils.
“What!” exclaimed Abdullah.
“We veil ourselves,” said the pink one.
“Because you should not look at our faces,” said the yellow one.
“Until we are married,” finished the pink.
“There must be some mistake!” said Abdullah.
“Not in the least,” said Fatima. “These are my niece’s two nieces who are here to marry you. Didn’t you hear me say I was going to look out for a couple of wives for you?”
The two nieces giggled again. “He’s ever so handsome,” said the yellow one.
After a fairly long pause, in which he swallowed hard and did his best to control his feelings, Abdullah said politely, “Tell me, O relatives of my father’s first wife, have you known of the prophecy which was made at my birth for a long time?”