blue fairy tale book

Chapter 31 The Forty Thieves (1)
In a city in Persia there once lived two brothers, one named Qasim and the other Ali Baba.

Qasim married a rich wife and lived a prosperous life, while Ali Baba had to support his wife and children by chopping firewood in the nearby forest and selling it in the city.One day, when Ali Baba was in the forest, he saw a group of men on horseback running towards him with clouds of dust.Fearing they were robbers, he climbed a tree for safety.They ran near him and dismounted, and he counted them and found forty of them.They unsaddled the horse and tied it to a tree.One of the most imposing men among them, Ali Baba decided that he was the leader, walked a few steps into the bushes, and then said, "Open the door, Zhima!" He said it so clearly that Ali Baba heard him.A door opened among the rocks, and he let the group in, followed him, and the door shut itself.They stayed there for some time, and Ali Baba was afraid that they would come out and catch him, so he stayed patiently in the tree.At last the door opened again, and the Forty Thieves came out.Because the leader was the last to go in, he came out first and let them all pass by him. Then he said: "Zhima, close the door!" and the door closed.Everyone saddled and mounted, the leader at the head of the procession, and they returned as they had come.

So Ali Baba climbed down from the tree, went to the door hidden in the bushes, and said, "Open, Sesame!" and the door opened.Ali Baba thought it must be a dark and depressing place, but he was very surprised to find that the inside had been hollowed out and turned into a cellar. The light came in from a gap in the top of the cellar, so it was spacious and bright.He saw bales and bales of goods—raw silk and satin all piled together, piles of gold and silver, and purses of money.He went in and the door closed behind him.He didn't even look at the silver ① Persia, the country in Southwest Asia, which is now Iran.

He brought out only as many sacks of gold as he thought his grazing donkeys could carry, loaded them on their backs, and hid the gold in bundles of fagots.Then he said: "Sesame, close the door!" After the door was closed, he went home.

He drove the donkey into the yard, shut the gate, carried the purses to his wife, and poured them out in front of her.He bade her keep the secret, and that he was going to bury the gold. "Let me measure the gold first," said his wife, "and I will borrow a measure while you dig." So she ran to Kasim's wife to borrow the measure.Knowing that Ali Baba was poor, the elder sister was very curious and wanted to know what kind of grain her sister wanted to measure, so she cleverly put some sheep oil on the bottom of the measuring tool.Ali Baba's wife went home and put the measure on the heap of gold, filling and emptying the measure with great joy.She then returned the measure to her sister, not finding a piece of gold stuck to it, which Qasim's wife noticed as soon as she turned her back.She was so amazed that when Qasim came back, he said to him: "Qasim, your brother is richer than you. His money is not counted but measured." He asked her to explain this embarrassing She was at a loss, so she showed him a piece of gold, and told him where she had found it.So Kasim was so jealous that he couldn't even sleep, and the next morning he came to his brother's house before the sun rose.

"Ali Baba," he said, showing him the piece of gold, "you are pretending to be poor, but you are actually measuring money with measuring instruments." The wife knew their secret, so he confessed everything and gave some to Kasim. "That's exactly what I was expecting," Kasim said. "But I must know where you found these treasures, or I will reveal all the secrets, and you will lose everything." Ali Baba, out of kindness and not fear, told him of the cave and the words used .Kasim left Ali Baba, intending to get the treasure himself before him.The next morning he got up early and set off with ten mules laden with large boxes.Before long he found the place and the door in the rock.He said, "Sesame, open the door!" The door opened and closed behind him.He should have had a good day looking at the treasures, but he was busy trying to get them together as fast as he could.But when he was about to go out, he couldn't remember how to say that sentence because he was thinking about making a fortune.He didn't say "sesame", but said: "Barley, open the door!" So the door was closed tightly.He said several names of different grains, but they were all wrong, and the door was still tightly closed.He was so frightened by the danger he was in that he forgot the words as if he had never heard them.

About noon the robbers returned to their cave and saw Qassim's mules going about with great boxes on their backs.This made them panic for a while, so they drew their sabers and went to the door. The leader said, "Open the door, sesame!" The door opened in response.Kasim heard their hooves and decided to fight them, so when the blue door opened, he jumped out and knocked the leader to the ground.But it was no use, and the robbers killed him at once with their sabers.When they entered the cave, they saw that all the bags were ready to be placed there, and they could not understand how anyone could break in when no one knew their secret.They cut Qasim's body into four pieces and nailed them inside the hole to frighten anyone who ventured in, and then they went off in search of more treasure.

As night fell Qasim's wife became so disturbed that she ran to her brother-in-law and told him where her husband had gone.Ali Baba comforted her as best he could, and set off into the forest to find Qasim.Entering the cave, he saw his dead brother at a glance.Filled with fear, he put the body on one donkey, put the gold sack on the backs of the other two, covered them with fagots, and went home.He drove the two donkeys laden with gold into his yard, and the other donkey to Qasim's house.The servant Morgiana opened the door, he knew she was brave and beautiful.As he unloaded the donkey, he said to her, "Here is the body of your master. He was killed, but we must bury him as if he were dead in his bed. I will tell you more about it." , now tell your mistress that I am coming." Qasim's wife burst into tears when she learned of her husband's death, but Ali Baba offered that if she would obey his advice and leave everything to Mogiya Na, let her live with their family.She agreed and wiped away her tears.

Meanwhile, Morgiana approached a pharmacist and asked him for some pills. "My poor master," she said, "neither eats nor speaks, and no one knows what ails him." She took the medicine home, and the next day went back to the apothecary weeping, and asked for some. A perfume for the dying.So at night no one was surprised when people heard Qasim's wife and Morgiana crying miserably and telling everyone that Qasim was dead.The next day Morgiana came to an old cobbler near the city gate, who had opened his shop early.She put a piece of gold into his hand, and told him to take his needle and thread and go with her.After blindfolding him with a handkerchief, she took him into the room where the body lay, removed the blindfold, and told him to sew the pieces together, then she blindfolded him again and put the He took it home.Then they went to bury Qasim, and the servant Morgiana followed to the cemetery, weeping and pulling her hair, while Qasim's wife stayed at home, wailing mournfully.The next day she went to live in Ali Baba's house, and Ali Baba gave Qasim's shop to his eldest son.

When the forty thieves returned to the cave, they were astonished to find Qasim's body and some of their purses missing. "We must have been discovered," said the chief. "If we don't find out who knows our secret, we will be ruined. There must be two people who know this secret. We have killed one and we must find the other." A. For this, one of you must be a daring and shrewd man dressed as a traveler, and go into the city to find out who is the man we killed, and whether people talk about his strange death. If the messenger sent fails He must die, lest we should be betrayed." One of the thieves stood up and offered to do the deed, and after the other thieves highly praised his courage, he disguised himself and, by chance, entered at daybreak. Out of town, just come to Baba?Next to Mustafa's shop.The thief greeted him and said, "Honest man, how can you see how to sew at your age?" "Although I am so old," replied the shoemaker, "I have a very fine pair of shoes. Eyes—will you believe me when I tell you I sewed together a dead body somewhere where the light was worse than it is now?"

(End of this chapter)