It is related that there was once a well-intentioned man who had passed all his life in eager expectation of that miraculous night, which the Book promises to Believers of burning faith, the Night of Possibility, when a pious man may realize his every wish. On one of the last nights of Ramadan the saint, who had fasted strictly all day, felt himself suddenly visited by divine grace. He called his wife and said to her: “This evening I feel pure before the Eternal and am persuaded that this is my Night of Possibility. As my wishes will be granted by the Rewarder, I wish to consult with you as to what I should ask, for I have sometimes benefited from your advice.” “How many wishes will you have?” asked the wife, and, when he told her that he might have three, she continued: “You know that the perfection of man and his delight are rooted in his manhood; no man may be perfect who is chaste or impotent or a eunuch. It follows that the larger a man’s zabb, the greater his manhood and the further he has gone upon the road to perfection. Therefore, bow humbly before the face of the Highest and beg for your zabb to grow in magnificence.” Straightaway the man bowed himself and, turning his palms towards the sky, prayed: “O Benefactor, O Generous, enlarge my zabb even to magnificence!”

The wish was no sooner expressed than granted. At once the saint saw his zabb swell and magnify until it looked like a calabash lying between two mighty pumpkins. And the weight of all that was so considerable that he had to sit down again when he would rise, and, when he would lie, get up. His wife was so terrified by what she saw that she fled away each time that the holy man brought his new treasure to the business. She wept and cried out: “How can I dare this mighty instrument, whose very jetting would pierce a rock through and through?” At last the poor man said: “O execrable woman, what am I to do with this thing? The fault is yours.” “The name of Allah upon me and around me!” she exclaimed. “Pray for the Prophet, old empty-eye! As Allah lives, I have no need of all that; I did not ask for so much. Pray for it to be lessened. That will be your second wish.” The saint lifted his eyes to heaven, saying: “O Allah, I beg you to rid me from these too bountiful goods and deliver me from the trouble of them!” Even as he framed the words, his belly became quite smooth, with no more sign of zabb and eggs than if it had been the belly of a little impubic girl.

Needless to say, this complete disappearance did not satisfy the good man and was even more distasteful to his wife, who began to curse him and accuse him of cheating her. Then the holy man’s displeasure knew no bounds, and he cried: “See what comes of your foolish counsels, O witless woman! I had three wishes and might have chosen great riches in this world or the next. Now two of them have gone to nothing, and I am even in poorer case than I was before. As I have still a third wish, I will ask the Lord to restore that which I had in the beginning.” His wish was granted and he obtained just such a zabb as he had had before. The moral of this tale is that a man should be contended with what he has.

From The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol. III, London and New York: Routledge, 1964, pp. 27-28.