Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange (Hardcover Classics)

by Malcolm C (Tr Lyons

  When dawn broke next day, the prince got up and called to the lodging keeper, telling him to go and sell his ring in the market. When the man got there he was told that this was a prince’s ring, worth a hundred dinars. He sold it, but only passed on a fraction of the money to the prince, and as the prince was of noble stock and of an honourable nature he said nothing to him about it. After a few days he had spent the money and nothing was left to him from the sale of the ring. He then started to unpick the braiding of his belt, one piece each day, giving it to the lodging keeper to sell. The man would spend the purchase money exactly as he wanted, while the prince would get no more than two qirats for each dinar. He knew this well enough, but was prevented by shame from saying anything.

  This went on until there was no more of the belt left, after which he broke off his sword ring and sold that, followed by the sword strap. At last all he had left were the clothes he was wearing; he had no money left to spend while the lodging keeper had made a sizeable profit. When the prince had become penniless the man came to him and asked: ‘What spending money have you got for today?’ ‘I have nothing at all,’ the prince told him, but the man said: ‘Master, haven’t you heard what the poet says:

  Young men strip naked and they then are clothed;

  Only base-born strip naked with regret.

  You are wearing a new satin gown that is worth a lot and if you sell it I can buy you another coarser one, and the same is true of your turban band, your chest protector and everything else you have on.’ ‘Do what you think will be best,’ the prince told him.

  The man started to sell and spend, stealing half the price he got, until the prince was left with nothing at all. He stayed pounding the ground, with his face covered with dust. His shirt had lost its warp and weft, the patches that had been used to widen it, its sleeves, its collar and its lower section. The turban band had no cushioning, centre or edges, and the trousers were fixed to the waistband.

  Knowing that he had no money left to spend and nothing to sell he approached the lodging keeper who said to him: ‘Sir, you know that I run this lodging and I owe the sultan rent for it. Five days from tomorrow it will be a new month, and what are you going to give me?’ ‘By God, I have nothing at all left to give you,’ the prince told him and he replied: ‘You have five days left but after that you must leave me and go on your way.’ The prince silently cursed, saying: ‘He sold my clothes for whatever he wanted and I didn’t hold him to account, but every man acts according to his own background.’

  He got up and left his lodging, choked with tears, and wandering distractedly, not knowing where he was going. He told himself: ‘If I sleep by a shop, it may be that ill luck will see that a hole is made in it and something is taken from it. Then people will say that this was taken by the stranger who is sleeping there.’ He walked a little further and said: ‘Shall I beg from the people? No, never!’ He then recited these lines based on those of ‘Ali son of Abi Talib, may God ennoble him:

  To carry piles of rocks and harvest thorns without a scythe,

  To plunge into the sea and weigh the sands,

  And put cooked wheat back into the ear of grain,

  To wear tight fetters and to gnaw leather,

  And drive away the lions from their cubs,

  All this is easier than to beg as a poor man.

  By God, I shall never do that, even if I die miserably of hunger!’

  He started to wander around until he came to an open mosque which he entered, thinking that he might pass the night there until morning, waiting for whatever God might decree. He had only been there for an hour when the muezzin came and asked who he was. ‘A poor stranger,’ the prince told him, ‘but the lord of the poor is Muhammad, may God bless him and give him peace.’ The muezzin refused to accept him and said: ‘Get up and leave the house of the Great and Glorious God. Don’t try to argue with me unless you can produce a tradition of the Prophet, and if you don’t go, I’ll break your head open with this wooden clog.’

  The prince got up, his eyes brimming with tears, and said: ‘My Lord, You have driven me from my kingdom and brought this fate on me. Praise be to You for Your decree.’ He walked on a little and came to the door of a furnace room, which he entered. A black man was sitting there stoking the furnace and the prince greeted him submissively and asked him whether he would allow him to spend the night there as he was a stranger. ‘Sit down,’ the man said, and when the prince had done this, he asked what his job was. ‘Tell me, are you a con man, a flayer of the dead or a crooner?’ ‘By God, I know nothing about these things,’ the prince told him. ‘How do you get anything to eat, then?’ the furnace man asked, and the prince told him that he had eaten nothing for two days. ‘And what are you going to eat tomorrow?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘What about working with me?’ ‘What would I have to do?’ ‘Fetch dry dung, wipe the sweat away from me, rake out the ashes, stir up the dung and buy us something from the market.’

  The prince agreed to this and after passing the night there he started on his work, fetching the dung and removing the ashes. This went on for a whole year after which the furnace man said to him: ‘What a dull fellow you are! After a year you still are no good at all with furnaces.’ ‘What do you want, sir?’ the prince asked and the man told him: ‘The brother of the senior con man has invited me to one of their feasts and I would not want to refuse, lest they accuse me of haughtiness and say: “He couldn’t bring himself to come to our feast.” ’ The prince told him to go and promised to look after the furnace for him. The man showed him what to do and went off, leaving him.

  He sat stoking the furnace from dawn to dusk and on into the first third of the night. Just then he heard a loud commotion and there were four men with drawn swords standing behind him. One of them was about to strike off his head when another shouted: ‘Don’t kill him.’ One of them then took the startled prince out of the furnace room while the other three threw on the fire something that looked like a chest made of willow. ‘Are you the furnace man?’ they asked the prince. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but I am his servant.’ ‘Well, tonight your blood has been spared,’ they said, ‘but keep to what you have and don’t quit. Stick to working with your furnace, for we know you but you don’t know us.’ After promising to give him some money next day they left him and went away.

  The prince’s heart was fluttering in fear at what he had seen but as he sat stoking, with his eyes on the furnace, he could see that the flames had no effect on the chest that had been thrown into it but merely encircled it. This was in spite of the fact that, had a mountain been put in there, it would have been dissolved. He got up and looked outside the furnace to right and left but there was no one to be seen. He went to the rake that he used for the ashes and putting it into the furnace he drew the chest out of the fire, looking as though it had never been in the flames at all.

  He found it shut but opened it up to find clothes such as had never been seen, woven with gold and dazzling the furnace with their jewels. When he unwrapped them he discovered a most beautiful, shapely and deep-bosomed girl, straight as a spear, with a forehead bright as dawn, oval cheeks, dark eyes and heavy buttocks. Praise be to God Who created her from the vile drop, as the poet has said:

  Created as she would have wished herself,

  Well formed in beauty’s mould,

  Neither too tall nor yet too short.

  She was drugged and unconscious and the prince said to himself: ‘If I take the clothes and hide them, when she recovers I can say that the people who brought her here removed them.’ He then took them, together with the ornaments and robes that she was wearing and dug a hole for them at the side of the furnace, before going back to his place and starting to stoke.

  Not long afterwards, the girl came to her senses and called out the names of her servants, leaving the prince to think that she must be mad or deranged. He asked her what had happened, at which she opened her eyes and found herself in the furnace room. ‘What is this?’ she asked the prince. �
�What brought me here and where are my clothes?’ ‘I didn’t see any,’ he said and he went on to tell her the whole story from start to finish, how she had been thrown into the fire and not burned and how he had pulled her out and lifted her up. ‘That is true,’ she acknowledged and she got to her feet. This was in the last third of the night and the girl was the queen of the city.

  Next morning she told one of her servants to take one of the duty mules and go to such-and-such a furnace, taking the most splendid set of clothes from the store, and to bring back the furnace-man with all speed. The servant went to the furnace where the black furnace-man had returned and the prince had gone off on some errand. When the queen’s servant came in he said: ‘Sir, this is no proper place for you; you should not be doing this, so get up.’ The furnace-man was startled and said: ‘I’m not the man,’ but the servant repeated ‘get up,’ and went out with him to where the mule was waiting. There was a robe of honour and other clothes and when the man had been dressed in these and mounted on the mule, the servant took him to the queen’s palace and after asking permission he brought him to the queen.

  When she caught sight of him she called out: ‘What are you?’ ‘I am a son of Adam,’ he told her, adding: ‘and I said that I was not the man.’ The servant agreed with this and the queen said: ‘Wretched slave, where did you get this man from?’ He told her: ‘From such-and-such a furnace,’ and she asked the man whether there was anyone there apart from him. ‘Yes, my boy,’ he told her, and she instructed her servant to go off with him and fetch her the boy, while she would not take back what she had given to the furnace-man.

  The servant went off with this black man, who went ahead of him to the young prince, after he had come back from the market. He went up and slapped him, saying: ‘How many times have I told you, you miserable fellow, to serve me until you prosper and I bring you wealth and make something of you, but all I hear is “no!” Get up now, get up and go.’

  The prince did as he was told and mounted the mule, after which the servant took him to the baths, where he was cleaned up and put to rights, with his long hair being trimmed. When he left the baths he was dressed in a robe worth five hundred dinars and he rode off with the servant to the queen’s palace where he dismounted from the mule. He was about to go in when behind him came the furnace-man. ‘Damn you, where are you going?’ the servant asked, to which the man replied: ‘I’m going in with my boy.’ The servant shouted at him and struck him, after which he went back and left the prince, who went on.

  Permission was asked for him to enter the queen’s presence and when this had been granted he went into a long hall crowded with retainers and servants. The luxury and wealth that he saw made him forget his father’s realm as well as the shame and humiliation to which he had been reduced. The servant led him on until the curtain was removed and he saw what he had not seen the first time. It was as the poet says:

  She came out from behind the curtains and I said:

  To God be glory, Who created forms.

  I used to think that the sun was unique,

  Until I saw its sister amongst men.

  He was robbed of his wits and reduced to confusion as the queen had taken over his whole heart.

  She made him sit beside her and then called for food. When it had been brought she started to feed him with mouthfuls, jumping on to his knees and kissing him until they had both eaten enough. The food was then removed and wine produced, from which they drank until evening. The queen got up and went to a closet where she slept, while the prince slept where he was until morning.

  For three days they went on like this, eating and drinking and enjoying friendly conversation. On the fourth she summoned him and said: ‘You see what luxury you are experiencing but for my part I want my clothes.’ ‘I didn’t see them,’ the prince assured her, ‘for when you were brought in, you were just as you saw yourself later.’ ‘Which would you prefer,’ she asked, ‘your present luxury and the fact that you can enjoy looking at me, or clothes worth five hundred dinars? If you bring them to me I shall present you with ten thousand dinars.’ On hearing that he said: ‘They are buried beside the furnace.’ ‘Go off,’ she said, ‘and bring them back quickly, after which you can have what I promised.’

  The prince went to the furnace room and dug up the clothes. When he returned them to the queen, her face lit up with joy and she said: ‘I knew that you had them because you had told me that the fire had had no effect on me when you took me out, for I realized that had I not been wearing them I would have been nothing more than a lump of black charcoal. You must know that in this pocket is a pearl that commands the services of a hundred jinn tribes and I shall show you some of what it can do.’ She unfastened her collar and removed a small necklace from which she took a pearl on which were lines of writing. She put it on the ground and said: ‘Servants of these Names, I conjure you by the Greatest Name of God, engraved on this pearl, to come here obediently.’

  Immediately three jinn were standing there, each eleven cubits tall, with ugly shapes, eyes set lengthwise, hooves like those of cattle and talons like those of wild beasts. The prince was horrified and bitterly regretted that he had not known about the pearl. They asked the queen for her orders and she said: ‘Go at once and bring me the four men who wanted to burn me, whether they are up in the sky or down in the earth.’ The three jinn left for a time and then came back with four men chained and shackled in the worst of states. The queen looked at them and said: ‘Damn you, what harm did I do to you to prompt you to repay me like that? Cut off their heads.’ The prince saw the heads flying through the air and the queen ordered that the bodies should be carried away and thrown into the sea. When this had been done she dismissed the three.

  The prince said: ‘She turned to me and said: “I had taken these as boon companions, eating and drinking with them. They enjoyed my youth but all they wanted was vile fornication. I was a virgin, and had there not been four of them they would have got what they wanted, but they were jealous and schemed against each other until they all agreed to throw me into the furnace. God protected me from their evil thanks to the blessing of this pearl and the Greatest Name inscribed on it.”

  ‘She then looked at me and said: “My clothes are worth a thousand dinars”, and she told her maid to fetch the money. Twenty purses were brought each containing a thousand dinars and she told me to take these and open a shop. I was to eat and drink with her and she said: “If you need a horse, all of them are yours and the house is handed over to you and is under your authority, but it is only occasionally that I will come back to drink with you.” ’

  The prince said: ‘Lady, no kingdom on the face of the earth is worth a single clipping from your nails. Am I to open a shop and not see your lovely face again?’ ‘I swear that I shall not cut you off from me,’ she answered and, calling for a copy of the Qur’an, she was about to take an oath on this when he told her: ‘This is on condition that you swear to let me stay with you for forty days, not leaving you and carrying on as we have been doing.’ She agreed and, calling on God, she swore to his condition, before making him swear that he would not betray her as long as he was with her. They exchanged these oaths confidently, trusting one another, and then resumed the sportive pleasures that they had enjoyed before, coupled with wine drinking.

  They continued to enjoy the most pleasant of lives until thirty-five of the forty days had passed, but the prince’s heart was consumed by an unquenchable fire. Of the two reasons for this, one was the torment inflicted by his love for the queen, a love that he could not bring to its conclusion, while the second was her pearl. As he had only five days left, he began to think of some trick that he might play. He had a druggist friend with whom he sometimes used to sit when he left the queen, and he told her one day that he was going to go out and walk in the market. ‘God be with you,’ she said and he went to the man’s shop and talked with him for a time. Then he said: ‘Sir, there is something I want to tell you but I feel embarrassed.’ ‘What
is it?’ asked the man, ‘and why are you embarrassed?’ ‘I have married a formidable-looking girl,’ the prince said, ‘and every time I come hoping to uncover her face she stops me and there is nothing I can do with her.’ The druggist agreed to help and the prince took out two dinars and gave them to him. At the sight of the gold the man reached out for a small box from which he removed a number of things which he put in a twist of paper, saying: ‘The dose is one qirat and no more, or else she won’t wake up for three days.’ The prince agreed to this and took the drug which he put down under his collar, after which he left and returned to his palace.

  When he went in, he found the girl seated and she got up and seated him beside her on the couch. They started to eat and drink and went on until evening. He distracted her attention for a time pretending to be drunk. He filled a glass and gave it to her after which he filled another and drank it himself. Then, after having filled yet another, he pretended to scratch behind his ear. From this he removed a quarter of a dirham’s weight of banj which he put in the glass and handed it to her. No sooner had it passed her lips than it went to her head. The prince took her in his arms and laid her on the bed, where he started to kiss her, using his hands to strip her clothes from her breast. He saw that her waistband was fastened with twenty knots and he started to untie them one after the other. When he had undone ten, he saw the pearl fastened in the eleventh but as he was about to undo it he received a blow on the back of his neck that knocked him down on to his face. Standing over his head was an old woman like a vulture, who was saying: ‘You boor, what about the oath you took? You have betrayed it together with the covenants you made. Didn’t you see how the four kidnappers lost their heads but not to a sword. Did you think that you would get off unscathed after uncovering her face?’