Note 351 — THE CAIRENE YOUTH, THE BARBER, AND THE CAPTAIN.

[The MS. has: “Yá Gháratí a-Zay má huná Rájil;” “Yá Gháratí” will recur presently, p. 256, along with “yá Musíbatí” = Oh my calamity! I take it therefore to be an exclamation of distress from “Ghárat” = invasion, with its incidents of devastation, rapine and ruin. It would be the natural outcry of the women left helpless in an unprotected camp, when invaded by a hostile tribe. In “a-Zay má” the latter particle is not the negative, but the pronoun, giving to “a-Zay” = “in what manner,” “how?” the more emphatical sense of “how ever?” In the same sense we find it again, infra, Night 754, “a-Zay má tafút-ní” = how canst thou quit me? I would therefore render: “Woe me, I am undone, how ever should there be a man here?” or something to that purpose—St.]