Word: beggars
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...BEGGAR, by F. M. Esfandiary. The injustice of justice and the crime of punishment are shrewdly displayed in this fiercely ironical parable, composed by an Iranian-in-exile, that demonstrates how the devil takes the hindmost when men play...
...Estate. When the child became a man, he was fit to be nothing but a beggar. So Ali, with the help of his neighbors, made a little platform on wheels, rolled himself down to the marketplace, and sat there miserably day after day, holding a tin cup. The villagers both pitied and feared this monstrosity of their own making, and continued to maintain his misery as a sort of public convenience...
...beggar nevertheless made one pathetic attempt to live like a man. He undertook, in so far as he could, to support a poor widow and her daughter, and in return for his kindness was occasionally permitted to share the widow's bed. Unhappily, others were sometimes permitted the same pleasure. One night when two young villagers pushed his platform up the long steep hill to the widow's isolated hut, the beggar found Ahmad the woodcutter there...
...save her. But his body, weakened by a lifetime of socially induced inactivity, was so feeble that it took him half an hour to cover less than 30 feet. When the villagers came running up the hill, they found Ahmad and the widow dead in bed and the beggar lying in the mud a few feet from...
...Fate. Outraged, the villagers haled the cripple into court and told the judge that Ahmad and the widow were dead because the beggar, in a jealous fury, had refused to rescue them. The beggar tried to explain. "Do you take me for a fool?" the judge bellowed indignantly. "All your life we've been kind enough to carry you everywhere, and now do you mean to tell me that you couldn't go the short distance between the shed and her hut?" Somebody screamed, "Cut off his hands!" The villagers roared in approval. "What will...