Ismail was born fatherless, in a wretched house in a little village of the countryside, where he lived alone with his mother — and the flies!

But from the day he was born the world smiled upon his mother, and livelihood came to her, she knew not from where — as though with his coming there had risen in the sky of the house a star of good fortune that never set.

She took to buying a share in a calf, and the year would not come round before it had grown, filled out, conceived, and been sold for many times its first price.

And she took to buying chicks as others bought them; but of hers only a few would die, while of anyone else's only a few survived.

The house filled with ghee and laban, and life stirred in it with the lowing of the calf, the bleating of the ewe, and the clucking of the hens.

Ismail grew up, and the star of good fortune grew with him.

He would rent barren, salt-crusted land for the least money, and it would turn green for him and laugh, yielding under his hand and giving generously. Blights would spread through most of the village's fields, leaving the crops withered, stripped of flower and leaf; then they would pass over Ismail's field, touch it gently, and leave it, on the whole, ripe and blessed in its fruits.

And on the day he sold his harvest, prices would rise in the market.

He married... He asked neither money nor position, and thought of nothing but a partner for his life, to help him at his work in the field and to help his mother at her work in the house. But God would have nothing less than to complete His favor upon him, and He bestowed on him a shapely maiden of the village's maidens, whose uncle was the village headman, whose beauty was the talk of the people, whose good name was among the sweetest of names, and whose love for him was pure, unmixed with falseness or flaw.

The women used to ask her about her mother-in-law, and she would tell them: I have no mother-in-law.

Nor was Ismail blessed in livelihood alone; God blessed him in friends as well.

Ismail was loved by all the people of the village, and he loved them all, and helped them wherever he could find a way to help; he might even prefer them over himself in good things, without ever holding it over them. He was of contented temper, his soul clean of every stain; people were safe from his hand and his tongue; there was no coarseness in his word or in his deed; and if he was wronged without intent, he did good to the one who had wronged him.

He was a copy of his good mother.

And though the mass of the village folk were his dear ones and his friends, they never ceased talking of his lucky star. They did not begrudge him what God had given him; rather they kept interpreting his luck, going every which way about it — each singing of his own Layla.

One of his neighbors said it was a blessing from the prayers of his righteous parents.

Another said that Ismail was sworn brother to the jinn, and swore that every night he heard his jinn "sister" knocking at the door!

The marriage registrar said that Ismail prayed and fasted and gave alms from his money many times over, and helped people, so God blessed everything his hands touched — and that is the bounty of God, which He gives to whom He will.

A fourth man said that he had taken a pledge from a sheikh of the people of God in Zagazig. So the villagers vied with one

The New Chen Yu

CHEN YU

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