بخش 8 - گفتن زن کی او در بند جهاز نیست مراد او ستر و صلاحست و جواب گفتن صوفی این را سرپوشیده

She (the wife) said, ‘I gave such an excuse, but she said, No, I am not one who seeks (worldly) means.

We are sick and surfeited with possessions and gold; we are not like the common folk in regard to coveting and amassing (wealth).

Our quest is (for) modesty and purity and virtue: truly, welfare in both worlds depends on that.’

The Súfí once more made the excuse of poverty and repeated it, so that it should not be hidden.

The wife replied, ‘I too have repeated it and have explained our lack of household goods;

(But) her resolution is firmer than a mountain, for she is not dismayed by a hundred poverties.

She keeps saying, What I want is chastity: the thing sought from you is sincerity and high- mindedness.’

The Súfí said, ‘In sooth she has seen and is seeing our household goods and possessions, (both) the overt and the covert—

A narrow house, a dwelling-place for a single person, where a needle would not remain hid.

Moreover, she in (her) guilelessness knows better than we (what is) modesty and purity and renunciation and virtue.

She knows better than we (all) the aspects of modesty, and the rear and front and head and tail of modesty.

Evidently she (our daughter) is without household goods and servant, and she (the lady) herself is well-acquainted with virtue and modesty.

It is not required of a father to dilate on (his daughter's) modesty, when in her it is manifest as a bright day.’

I have told this story with the intent that thou mayst not weave idle talk when the offence is glaring.

O thou who art likewise excessive in thy pretension, to thee (in thy case) there has been this (same hypocritical) exertion and (vain) belief.

Thou hast been unfaithful, like the Súfí's wife: thou hast opened in fraud the snare of cunning,

For thou art ashamed before every dirty braggart, and not before thy God.