The Adventures of Hajji Baba

[first lines]

[eyeing a bevy of beautiful slave girls]

Merchant:
When is the auction?

Auctioneer:
These girls will be sold in Masharif. They go today in Osman Aga's caravan.

Chief Executioner's Aide:
Why are you not satisfied to be like your father, Hajji? You are a good barber.

Hajji Baba:
True. But why, I ask myself, must I remain a barber? Take the sheik's chief favorite, Ismail asa Gul - is he better spoken than I?

Chief Executioner's Aide:
But he *is* the favorite.

Hajji Baba:
Well, then, the famous Lord Treasurer, who fills the king's coffers with gold, yet does not forget his own. What was he? The son of a grocer!

Chief Executioner's Aide:
Surely someone as handsome as you has no trouble with the beauties.

Hajji Baba:
I have no trouble with - I have trouble getting to.

Hajji Baba:
Nay, laugh not. I may have the instruments of a barber, but I have the desires of a prince.

Caliph:
I fear for you. You are so innocent.

Princess Fakzia:
Who fault is that? Here I am 17 and unwedded. My sisters and cousins were married at 14! I have wasted three years and I will waste no more!

Hajji Baba:
What has happened to you? Where is your caravan?

Akim:
Captured in the Great Pass on the short route to Nashed. We were set upon by the Turkoman women.

Hajji Baba:
Your tale is difficult to believe my friend. I hear these escaped harem girls are creatures of delicate beauty.

Akim:
Do not be misled, young man. They're beautiful, yes, and enchanting, but they're sirens - cold. Their hearts are full of hatred. They rose up out of the hills like demons and rode us down! Those of us who were not killed in the fighting were hung up for the vultures.

Hajji Baba:
I thirst for adventure as some do for wine... especially if it's profitable.

Hajji Baba:
Complaints flow from your lips like water from the springs of Al Baqir.

Princess Fakzia:
But I am a princess and my skin is soft. I am not used to such hard ways.

Hajji Baba:
You are no princess as long as we are on this desert.

Hajji Baba:
You know, if your father's men catch us, they'll take you gently back to Ispahan. Me - they'd leave my body in one place and my head in another. I like them stuck together.

[disguised as an apprentice barber, Princess Fakzia is forced to listen as Hajji and his friends discuss her failings]

Hajji Baba:
But I hear the Princess Faksia...

Osman Aga:
...Is beautiful, eh? I hear so, too, but as you yourself said this morning, she's cruel and selfish.

Caoush:
And I have it from one of her handmaidens that she's not even beautiful. Her mouth is large, she has no salt in her complexion, her teeth are crooked and, as for her waist, it is as fat as an elephant's. Her feet - a camel has smaller.

Princess Fakzia:
That's a lie!

Princess Fakzia:
Barber, you are fortunate we are not in Ispahan or I would have...

Hajji Baba:
...me flogged? That is your answer to all but flattery. You wish to silence everyone by threats. Is that what it is to be a princess?

Princess Fakzia:
There is some love you cannot buy.

Hajji Baba:
Only in legend.

Princess Fakzia:
Perhaps you are right. Perhaps legends are for barbers and love for princesses.

Banah:
To women of courage we give a choice. Stay with us or we will sell you in Bokara to the highest bidder.

Hajji Baba:
My name is Hajji. I am from Ispahan. I have the skills of a barber. I bleed, poultice, set limbs. You have need of me. I can heal you.

Banah:
I do have a need for you.

Hajji Baba:
And my apprentice, Shir Ali?

Banah:
If you heal me, I will spare you both. If not...

[Banah glances at her victims dangling by their wrists in the scorching sun]

Banah:
I prefer to choose rather than be chosen.

Banah:
Where are the others? They rot in the sun. When their ardor cools...

Hajji Baba:
...Mine will increase with each passing day.

[Nurel-Din abandons Hajji in the desert]

Princess Fakzia:
Leave him a horse.

Nurel-Din:
A bargain is a bargain. You promised him an emerald, not a horse.

Hajji Baba:
Once I thought she loved me.

Osman Aga:
Then take her!

Hajji Baba:
From Norel-Din?

Osman Aga:
Why not?

Hajji Baba:
He's a prince; a great and powerful prince. I-I am a barber.

Osman Aga:
Aw, I despair for you. Without courage, one can neither be a merchant nor a prince.

Nurel-Din:
I do not need love if I have possession.

Nurel-Din:
I intend to possess all of Persia. My armies have gone as far south as Karwan and as far north as Samarkand. Ispahan lies across the trade route from Basra to Baghdad and Tehran. Ispahan I must and shall have!

Princess Fakzia:
You say must; I say never!

Caliph:
Do you love my daughter?

Hajji Baba:
Love her? I am a barber's son.

Caliph:
Mohammed himself was not born a prince. And it is he who said, "The greatest power in the world is love." Nurel-Din's strength can crumble and fade away, but the power of love remains. I say to you, if you love my daughter, you have that power. Win her.

Princess Fakzia:
I will see you are amply rewarded.

Osman Aga:
I have an ancient prejudice against promises.

[last lines]

[Hajji and Fawsia embrace in their wedding bed]

Princess Fakzia:
Ow!

Hajji Baba:
What's the matter?

Princess Fakzia:
The ring.

[Hajji removes the emerald ring and douses the lamp]