One Thousand and One Nights / The Charitable Woman

This is a fragmentary prose narrative, apparently from a classical Persian literary tradition, depicting a scene of extreme hardship. A woman travels in a state of weeping, lamentation, hunger, and thirst while carrying a child on her back. When she finally reaches a stream and kneels to drink, the child slips from her shoulders into the water. The fragment breaks off at that moment. The source text is too brief and incomplete to establish authorship, title, period, or broader significance.