Gorlem And Zoufra by Aleksandr Karamazov

Khan summoned a servant and hit him in the face with a whip.  Although the servant swayed, he did not fall, but hiccupped and seemed to became dormant.  Khan hit him again: the servant coughed, but still resisted.
Then the khan decided to withdraw.  He summoned a slave girl and hit her with a whip in the face.  The slave did not fall, but wept.  Then the khan hit her again.  The slave was already thinking about pleading for mercy, but then a servant arrived.  The servant's name was Gorlem.  Gorlem turned to the khan and hit him in the face.  Khan fell and lay breathless for a long time.
The weeping slave Zoufra stopped crying and looked affectionately from under embarrassed eyelashes at Gorlem.  They fell in love.
For Gorlem, Zoufra gave birth to a girl and two boys. The boys were twins, and the girl's name was Zosia.  Zosia looked like her mother Zoufra, and the boys looked like their father Gorlem.
The Khan also had a daughter and son Fiodor.  It happened that Fiodor found out the story of his father and decided to go for revenge.  He took out a whip and one evening hide to wait for Zosia on a deserted path leading to a pool.  When Zosia approached, Fiodor jumped out from behind the bushes and brandished his whip.  Zosia was not frightened, but smiled at Fiodor.  They fell in love.
When the girl Moora was born to them, the khan suspected something and began to summon an army on order to go to war against the hated clan of Gorlem.  However, with God's clemency, this campaign was a failure: the khan suddenly departed.  Since then, Gorlem and Zoufra have lived even happier, having produced many children.  Zosia and Fiodor gave birth to large offspring, and the Gorlem family began to flourish for centuries.  However, later it was slaughtered by the bloodthirsty Turks, who unexpectedly attacked the clan from the north, where no one expected them.


transl. by Ed. Labintzeff