In one of the towers overlooking the Sea of Marmora and skirting the
ancient city of Stamboul, there lived an old junkman, who earned a
precarious livelihood in gathering cinders and useless pieces of iron,
and selling them to smiths.
Often did he moralize on the sad Kismet that had reduced him to the
task of daily laboring for his bread to make a shoe, perhaps for an
ass. Surely he, a true Mussulman, might at least be permitted to ride
the ass. His eternal longing often found satisfaction in passing his
hours of sleep in dreams of wealth and luxury. But with the dawning of
the day came reality and increased longing.
Often did he call on the spirit of sleep to reverse matters, but in
vain; with the rising of the sun began the gathering of the cinders
and iron.
One night he dreamt that he begged this nocturnal visitor to change
his night to day, and the spirit said to him: "Go to Egypt, and it
shall be so."
This encouraging phrase haunted him by day and inspired him by night.
So persecuted was he with the thought that when his wife said to him,
from the door, "Have you brought home any bread?" he would reply, "No,
I have not gone; I will go to-morrow;" thinking she had asked him,
"Have you gone to Egypt?"
At last, when friends and neighbors began to pity poor Ahmet, for that
was his name, as a man on whom the hand of Allah was heavily laid,
removing his intelligence, he one morning left his house, saying: "I
go! I go! to the land of wealth!" And he left his wife wringing her
hands in despair, while the neighbors tried to comfort her. Poor Ahmet
went straight on board a boat which he had been told was bound for
Iskender (Alexandria), and assured the captain that he was summoned
thither, and that he was bound to take him. Half-witted and mad
persons being more holy than others, Ahmet was conveyed to Iskender.
Arriving in Iskender, Hadji Ahmet roamed far and wide, proceeding as
far as Cairo, in search of the luxuries he had enjoyed at
Constantinople when in the land of Morpheus, which he had been
promised to enjoy in the sunshine, if he came to Egypt. Alas! for
Hadji Ahmet; the only bread he had to eat was that which was given him
by sympathizing humanity. Time sped on, sympathy was growing tired of
expending itself on Hadji Ahmet, and his crusts of bread were few and
far between.
Wearied of life and suffering, he decided to ask Allah to let him die,
and wandering out to the Pyramids he solicited the stones to have pity
and fall on him. It happened that a Turk heard this prayer, and said
to him:
"Why so miserable, father? Has your soul been so strangled that you
prefer its being dashed out of your body, to its remaining the
prescribed time in bondage?"
"Yes, my son," said Hadji Ahmet. "Far away in Stamboul, with the help
of God, I managed as a junkman to feed my wife and myself; but here am
I, in Egypt, a stranger, alone and starving, with possibly my wife
already dead of starvation, and all this through a dream."
"Alas! Alas! my father! that you at your age should be tempted to
wander so far from home and friends, because of a dream. Why, were I
to obey my dreams, I would at this present moment be in Stamboul,
digging for a treasure that lies buried under a tree. I can even now,
although I have never been there, describe where it is. In my mind's
eye I see a wall, a great wall, that must have been built many years
ago, and supporting or seeming to support this wall are towers with
many corners, towers that are round, towers that are square, and
others that have smaller towers within them. In one of these towers, a
square one, there live an old man and woman, and close by the tower is
a large tree, and every night when I dream of the place, the old man
tells me to dig and disclose the treasure. But, father, I am not such
a fool as to go to Stamboul and seek to verify this. It is an
oft-repeated dream and nothing more. See what you have been reduced to
by coming so far."
"Yes," said Hadji Ahmet, "it is a dream and nothing more, but you have
interpreted it. Allah be praised, you have encouraged me; I will
return to my home."
And Hadji Ahmet and the young stranger parted, the one grateful that
it had pleased Allah to give him the power to revive and encourage a
drooping spirit, and the other grateful to Allah that when he had
despaired of life a stranger should come and give him the
interpretation of his dream. He certainly had wandered far and long to
learn that the treasure was in his own garden.
Hadji Ahmet in due course, much to the astonishment of both wife and
neighbors, again appeared upon the scene not a much changed man. In
fact, he was the cinder and iron gatherer of old.
To all questions as to where he was and what he had been doing, he
would answer: "A dream sent me away, and a dream brought me back."