Given below is a story of the tailor who has been known for his skills in cheating and stealing. Read in groups of four or in pairs. You may discuss the events and incidences of the story with your friends and write them in a sequential manner. The Trader and the Tailor There was a tailor who was known for beating others in the art of being light-fingered and thievery.
A trader swore that even with a hundred attempts, the tailor would not be able to take a coil of thread from him without his knowledge. The trader was told that many others, more intelligent than him, had been beaten by the tailor. They said he should not imagine himself so great, for his ego would only give him worse troubles in competition with the tailor.
Still, the trader became more competitive and made a wager that the tailor would not be able to rob him of anything. He wagered an Arab horse with those who taunted him. If the tailor failed to steal, then they would have to give him a horse instead. That night, the trader lay awake troubled by the situation and could not sleep a wink. In the morning,
he put a piece of satin cloth under his arm and went to the bazaar and entered the shop and saluted the cunning rogue warmly. The tailor sprang up from his seat and welcomed the trader, inquiring about his health with cordiality exceeding even that of the trader, planting in his heart great feelings of affection for him. When the trader heard these songs of sweetness from the tailor,
he flung down the piece of silk saying, “Cut this into a coat for me and make it wide below my navel so as not to hamper my legs and tight about it to show off my figure.” The tailor answered, “O! kindly man, I will do you a hundred services,” and accepted the order. He measured the satin and inspected the working surface and all the time chatted away to the trader in idle gossip, about other amirs and of bounties and gifts he had received from them,
and about misers and their mean ways, and made the trader laugh with hysterics. During this beguiling talk, he was snipping away with his scissors rapidly, cutting as fast as his lips moved. The trader was laughing, the tailor was cutting, the trader closed his eyes in joy, the tailor cut extra pieces, tucking them under his thighs, hidden away from all but God. From his delight at the tailor’s tales, the trader’s former boast went out of his mind. What satin? What boast?
What wager? The trader was drunk on the jokes told by the tailor. Then the tailor told such an incredible story that the trader fell over on his back with laughter. The tailor swiftly stitched a swatch of the satin to the hem of his underpants while the trader was paying no attention at all, greedily sucking with every guffaw at the jests the tailor told. The tailor continued to tell funnier and funnier tales and jokes until the trader was completely within his power. With his eyes shut and his reason vanished, the bewildered and boastful trader was drunk with joy
