Story No. 13

In the mosque of Sanjar there was a man who gave the call to prayer as a volunteer, but he delivered it in a way that filled the listeners with disgust. The mosque belonged to an emir who was just and good-natured, and he did not want to wound the man's feelings. So he said: 'My good fellow, this mosque already has its old muezzins, and I have arranged five dinars for each of them. I will give you ten dinars if you go somewhere else.' They agreed on this, and the man left. After a while he came upon the emir again on a street and said: 'My lord, you did me wrong when you drove me out of that spot for ten dinars, for where I have gone now they offer me twenty dinars to move on to yet another place, and I still refuse!' The emir laughed until he could not stop, and said: 'Careful! Do not accept, for they will soon be glad to give you fifty!' No one scrapes clay from the face of solid granite with a pickaxe the way your harsh voice scrapes at the heart.