Part 7

“Thank you, good Tiridates.” replied Nishan. “I deeply regret disturbing you so suddenly, but lately there have been strange goings on, such that I may not now speak of. I shall presently inform you of everything.”
The next morning Nishan arose intending to walk to the palace as he usually did. That morning, however, soon proved to be divorced from regular occurrences. As he stepped out of the door, a man of great girth, leading a number of intimidating dogs, approached him. The fat man seemed to be in a towering rage, and accosted Nishan: “Sir! You have stolen every one of my noble hounds’ individual chew toys! I cannot imagine how or why you did it, but as I have personally known all who live on this street for most of my life, I am certain it was you! Naturally I am extremely angry with you, but I am a hunter who believes in the sanctity of life, and therefore will permit you to run before my hounds overtake and dismember you.”
When the fat hunter finished his sadistic declaration, Nishan calmly ran as fast as he could and climbed into a sufficiently lofty olive tree. The slobbering canines gathered below him, growling and barking with as much ferocity as if they had never been more furious at their prey. After a few minutes of fearfully strangling the tree, Nishan observed Tiridates emerge from his house and walk over to the cantankerous fat man. Tiridates berated the generously proportioned hunter until he sulkily withdrew his dogs. Nishan then descended from the tree and renewed his effort to reach the palace. Sadly, while he was walking down one of the main avenues, another misfortune befell him. On either side of the street were multitudes of fruit shops packed side-by-side. Unexpectedly, men appeared behind every shop front, carrying armfuls of fruit. Then, without warning, they started to fling the fruit at each other as hard as they could. While they were engaged in this, those on the left harassed those on the right, and vice versa, with fervent exclamations, such as: “We have poisoned our fruits! You all shall die!” from the left, and “Hah! We have concealed razor blades in our fruits! You shall die first!” from the right.