He took it all down in his notebook as the exploit of a Jewish traveller.

He was the Heavy One.' The last remark was in allusion to an Arabic proverb of which Suleyman was very fond: 'When the Heavy One alights in the territory of a people there is nothing for the inhabitants except departure.' Which, in its turn, is an allusion to the following story: A colony of ducks lived on an island in a river happily until a certain day, when the carcase of an ox came drifting down the current and stuck upon the forepoint of that island.

They tried in vain to lift it up or push it off; it was too heavy to be moved an inch by all their efforts.

They named it in their speech the Heavy One.

Its stench infected the whole island, and kept on increasing until the hapless ducks were forced to emigrate.
Many Heavy Ones fell to the lot of Suleyman as dragoman, and he was by temperament ill-fitted to endure their neighbourhood.