Having caparisoned and furnished him
with implements, he led Yussuf into the apartment where was the
reservoir of hot water, and desired him to wait for a customer. Yussuf
had not long sat down on the edge of the marble bath, when he was
summoned to perform his duties on a hadji who, covered with dust and
dirt, had evidently just returned from a tedious pilgrimage.
Yussuf set to work with spirit; seizing the applicant with one hand, he
stripped him with the other, and first operated upon the shaven crown
with his razor. The hadji was delighted with the energy of his
attendant. Having scraped his head as clean as he could with an
indifferent razor, Yussuf then soaped and lathered, scrubbed and sponged
the skin of the pilgrim, until it was as smooth and glossy as the back
of a raven. He then wiped him dry, and taking his seat upon the backbone
of his customer, he pinched and squeezed all his flesh, thumped his
limbs, twisted every joint till they cracked like faggots in a blaze,
till the poor hadji was almost reduced to a mummy by the vigour of the
water-carrier, and had just breath enough in his body to call out,
"Cease, cease, for the love of Allah--I am dead, I am gone." Having said
this, the poor man fell back nearly senseless. Yussuf was very much
alarmed; he lifted up the man, poured warm water over him, wiped him
dry, and laid him on the ottoman to repose, covering him up. The hadji
fell into a sound slumber, and in half an hour awoke so refreshed and
revived, that he declared himself quite a new man.
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