espiers

There was once, in time of old, a merchant hight Abd al-Rahmán, whom Allah had blessed with a son and daughter, and for their much beauty and loveliness, he named the girl Kaubab al-Sabáh and the boy Kamar al-Zamán. 376 When he saw what Allah had vouchsafed the twain of beauty and loveliness, brilliancy and symmetry, he feared for them the evil eyes377 of the espiers and the jibing tongues of the jealous and the craft of the crafty and the wiles of the wicked and shut them up from the folk in a mansion for the space of fourteen years, during which time none saw them save their parents and a slave-girl who served them.

The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006