It is related from ʿAlī b. Jabala that he said: “I went from Samarra to Baghdad with Muḥammad b. Isḥāq b. Ibrāhīm on his barge. He had his morning meal and called for some date wine. Now this was one day after the Persian New Year's Day, and I said, ‘O emir, the Tigris is at its highest, and with these waves [262] the way they are we are risking disaster.’ But he paid no heed to my words and ordered a curtain to be hung in the middle of the vessel. Four slave-girls skilled in singing came out (but remained behind the curtain). Muḥammadcalled for a pint for himself and another for me. Then he cried, ‘O curtain, speak!’ At this, one of the slave-girls began to sing to the accompaniment of her lute:
O abandonment, leave love alone! Let love
be sweet for lovers, O abandonment!
What can you want from those whose eyelids are covered
with sores, whose breasts are filled with burning coals,
On whose cheeks the fast flowing tears
seem pearls falling like drops of rain,
Who are struck down on the bridge of passion by their distress,
with whose lives and souls fate plays its games?
“When she was done, Muḥammadexclaimed to her, ‘Well done!’ and downed his drink, [263] as I did mine. Then he called for another for each of us. ‘O curtain, speak!’ he cried again, and another slave-girl, accompanying herself on a ṭunbūr, began to sing:
Have pity on lovers!
I see no one to help them.
How often they are forsaken, reviled,
and beaten, yet they endure.
“‘What do lovers do?’ a slave-girl who was with her asked. Whereupon the girl who had just sung leapt towards the curtain, tore it apart, and appeared before us like the moon on the night it is full. ‘This is what they do,’ she said, and threw herself into the Tigris. Now standing by Muḥammadb. Isḥāq's head was a young Greek slave who was chasing the flies from him. When he saw her and what she had done, he cried:
It is you [who] have drowned me,
along with God's decree, if only you knew.
