It was something he had read about. In popular mythology, a man died only after he had made a total of 400 mortal errors. It was an idea that had grown out of the commentary on the 1,019th verse of the Song of the Beloved Angkhdt: “Sweet friend, how long have I known you? How many days have I sensed you near me, sleeping, waking, your body within reach. Without you, I would have made myself a hell long ago and furnished it with lies, and memories of four hundred women left unsatisfied. Dear love, you have taken these things into yourself. Love, you have saved me . . .” The text was obscure, but it had led to this, that blameless men with nothing left to sell would sell their blamelessness. A sick man would come in, afraid of death and damnation, the weight of his mistakes suddenly intolerable. And the confessor would take them on himself, one by one, a few at a time, into his own body, according to a simple ritual. The sick man would sit down and try to capture in his mind all the particulars of the sin that he wanted to expunge. On his lap he held a box of colored powders—black for bitter thoughts, red for evil actions, green for harmful words. He would make a selection, and holding some powder in the pouch of his lip, he would begin to talk about his sin, every aspect of it, germination and result, everything that weighed upon his conscience. Besides its foul taste, the drug was a powerful expectorant, and by the time the man had finished talking, he would have filled a stone basin with colored spit. Then he would rinse his mouth out with sweet water, and his confessor, after prayers and exhortations, would drink down the contents of the basin. And at the end, the sick man would have stepped back from the grave, and the healthy man would have taken one step towards it.

Abu had read about this ritual, but he had never seen it. There in the dark room, by the light of a single candle, he saw a fleshless, toothless, bald old man and a pale young one. They sat opposite each other on wooden chairs, leaning over a stone pot set on the floor between them. Both were too absorbed in what they were doing to notice the prince standing in the doorway.

The old man had almost filled the basin with black juice. “It was wrong, I know,” he mumbled. “But it wasn’t my fault. My wife hired her when I was gone from home. I wouldn’t have objected, not that, but still, there was something unnatural about her. Something wicked in the way she disturbed my sleep. I couldn’t sleep. I thought about her constantly. I neglected my business. It wasn’t natural, not for a girl like her. A serving girl, from the lowest family . . .” He spat a jet of juice into the bowl and then continued more distinctly. “She wasn’t good looking. It wasn’t that. She looked . . . vulnerable. Weak. It maddened me. She was a witch, I tell you. It wasn’t my fault.” The juice ran down his chin.