The lady of the house asked what the noise was about and the porter got up and said to her: ‘My lady, these people would like you to tell them the story of the two bitches and how you come to beat them and then to weep and kiss them. They also want to know about your sister and why she has been beaten with rods like a man. These are their questions to you.’ ‘Is it true what he says about you?’ the lady of the house asked the guests, and all of them said yes, except for Ja‘far, who stayed silent. When the lady heard this, she told them: ‘By God, you have done us a great wrong. We started by making it a condition that if any of you talked about what did not concern him, he would hear what would not please him. Wasn’t it enough for you that we took you into our house and shared our food with you? But the fault is not so much yours as that of the one who brought you in to us.’
Then she rolled her sleeve back above the wrist and struck the floor three times, saying: ‘Hurry.’ At this, the door of a closet opened and out came seven black slaves, with drawn swords in their hands. ‘Tie up these men who talk too much,’ she said, ‘and bind them one to the other.’ This the slaves did, after which they said: ‘Lady, give us the order to cut off their heads.’ She replied: ‘Let them have some time so that I may ask them about their circumstances before their heads are cut off.’ ‘God save me,’ said the porter. ‘Don’t kill me, lady, for someone else’s fault. All the rest have done wrong and have committed a fault except me. By God, it would have been a pleasant night had we been saved from these dervishes who entered a prosperous city and then ruined it.’ He recited:
How good it is when a powerful man forgives,
Particularly when those forgiven have no helper.
By the sanctity of the love we share,
Do not spoil what came first by what then follows it.
When the porter had finished reciting these lines, the girl laughed…
Morning now dawned and Shahrazad broke off from what she had been allowed to say. Then, when it was the eleventh night, she continued:
I have heard, O auspicious king, that the girl laughed in spite of her anger. She then went up to the men and said: ‘Tell me about yourselves, for you have no more than one hour to live, and were you not people of rank, leaders or governors among your peoples, you would not have been so daring.’ ‘Damn you, Ja‘far,’ the caliph said. ‘Tell her about us or else we shall be killed by mistake, and speak softly to her before we become victims of misfortune.’ ‘That is part of what you deserve,’ replied Ja‘far, but the caliph shouted at him: ‘There is a time for joking, but now is when we must be serious.’ The lady then went to the dervishes and asked them whether they were brothers. ‘No, by God,’ they said, ‘we are only faqirs and foreigners.’ She next asked one of them whether he had been born one-eyed. ‘No, by God,’ he said, ‘but I have a strange and wonderful story about the loss of my eye, which, were it written with needles on the inner corners of the eyeballs, would serve as a warning to those who take heed.’ The second and the third dervish, when asked, made the same reply, and they then said: ‘By God, lady, each of us comes from a different country and each is the son of a king and is a ruler over lands and subjects.’
She turned to them and said: ‘Each of you is to tell his story and explain why he came here and he can then touch his forelock and go on his way.’ The first to come forward was the porter, who said: ‘Lady, I am a porter and this girl, who bought you your provisions, told me to carry them from the wine seller to the fruiterer, from the fruiterer to the butcher, from the butcher to the grocer, from the grocer to the sweetmeat seller and the perfumer, and then here. You know what happened to me with you. This is my story, and that’s all there is.’ The girl laughed and said: ‘Touch your forelock and go.’ ‘By God,’ he said, ‘I am not going to leave until I have heard the stories of my companions.’ THE FIRST DERVISH THEN CAME FORWARD AND SAID:
Lady, know that the reason why my chin is shaven and my eye has been plucked out is that my father was a king, who had a brother, also a king, who reigned in another city. His son and I were born on the same day. Years later, when we had grown up, I had got into the habit of visiting my uncle every so often, and I would stay with him for some months. My cousin treated me with the greatest generosity, and would kill sheep for me and pour out wine that he strained for me. Once, when we were sitting drinking and were both under the influence of the wine, he said to me: ‘Cousin, there is something that I need from you. Please don’t refuse to do what I want.’ ‘I shall obey you with pleasure,’ I said. After binding me with the most solemn of oaths, he got up straight away and left for a short while. Back he came then with a lady, veiled, perfumed and wearing the most expensive of clothes, who stood behind him as he turned to me and said: ‘Take this woman and go ahead of me to such-and-such a cemetery’ – a place that I recognized from his description. ‘Take her to the burial enclosure and wait for me there.’
Because of the oath that I had sworn, I could not disobey him or refuse his request and so I went off with the woman and we both went into the enclosure. While we were sitting there, my cousin arrived with a bowl of water, a bag containing plaster, and a carpenter’s axe. Taking this axe, he went to a tomb in the middle of the enclosure and started to open it up, moving its stones to one side. Then he used the axe to prod about in the soil of the tomb until he uncovered an iron cover the size of a small door. He raised this, revealing beneath it a vaulted staircase. Turning to the woman, he said: ‘Now you can do what you have chosen to do,’ at which she went down the stairs. My cousin then looked at me and said: ‘In order to complete the favour that you are doing me, when I go down there myself, I ask you to put back the cover and to replace the soil on top of it as it was before. Use the mortar that is in this bag and the water in the bowl to make a paste and coat the circle of the stones in the enclosure so that it looks as it did before, without anyone being able to say: “The inner part is old but there is a new opening here.” I have been working on this for a full year and no one but God knows what I have been doing. This is what I need from you.’ He then took his leave of me, wishing me well, and went down the stairs. When he was out of sight, I got up and replaced the cover and followed his instructions, so that the place looked just as it had before.
I then went back like a drunken man to the palace of my uncle, who was away hunting. In the morning, after a night’s sleep, I thought of what had happened to my cousin the evening before and, when repentance was of no use, I repented of what I had done and of how I had obeyed him. Thinking that it might have been a dream, I started to ask after my cousin, but nobody could tell me where he was. I went out to the cemetery, looking for the enclosure, but I could not find it. I kept on going round enclosure after enclosure and grave after grave until nightfall, but I still failed in my search. I returned to the palace, but I could neither eat nor drink, for my thoughts were taken up with my cousin, as I did not know how he was, and I was intensely distressed. I passed a troubled night until morning came, when I went for a second time to the cemetery, thinking over what my cousin had done and regretting that I had listened to him. I went round all the enclosures but, to my regret, I still could not find the right one or recognize the grave.
For seven days I went on with my fruitless quest, and my misgivings increased until I was almost driven mad. The only relief I could find was to leave and go back to my father, but as soon as I reached the gate of his city, I was attacked by a group of men who tied me up. I was astonished, seeing that I was the son of the city’s ruler and they were my father’s servants, and in my alarm I said to myself: ‘What can have happened to my father?’ I asked my captors why they were doing this. At first they did not answer, but after a time one of them, who had been a servant of mine, said: ‘Your father has fallen victim to the treachery of Time. The army conspired against him and he was killed by the vizier, who has taken his place. It was on his orders that we were watching out for you.’
I was stunned by what I heard about my father and f
earful because I had a long-standing quarrel with the vizier, before whom my captors now brought me. I had been passionately fond of shooting with a pellet bow and the quarrel arose from this. One day when I was standing on the roof of my palace, a bird settled on the roof of the palace of the vizier. I intended to shoot it, but the pellet missed and, as had been decreed by fate, it struck out the eye of the vizier. This was like the proverb expressed in the old lines:
We walked with a pace that was decreed for us,
And this is how those under fate’s control must walk.
A man destined to die in a certain land
Will not find death in any other.
When the vizier lost his eye, he could not say anything because my father was the king of the city, and this was why he was my enemy. When I now stood before him with my hands tied, he ordered my head to be cut off. ‘For what crime do you kill me?’ I asked. ‘What crime is greater than this?’ he replied, pointing to his missing eye. ‘I did that by accident,’ I protested. ‘If you did it by accident,’ he replied, ‘I am doing this deliberately.’ Then he said: ‘Bring him forward.’ The guards brought me up in front of him, and sticking his finger into my right eye, the vizier plucked it out, leaving me from that time on one-eyed, as you can see. Then he had me tied up and put in a box, telling the executioner: ‘Take charge of him; draw your sword and when you have brought him outside the city, kill him and let the birds and beasts eat him.’
The executioner took me out of the city to the middle of the desert and then he removed me from the box, bound as I was, hand and foot. He was about to bandage my eyes before going on to kill me, but I wept so bitterly that I moved him to tears. Then, looking at him, I recited:
I thought of you as a strong coat of mail
To guard me from the arrows of my foes,
But you are now the arrow head.
I pinned my hopes on you in all calamities
When my right hand could no longer aid my left.
Leave aside what censurers say,
And let my enemies shoot their darts at me.
If you do not protect me from my foes,
At least your silence neither hurts me nor helps them.
There are also other lines:
I thought my brothers were a coat of mail;
They were, but this was for the enemy.
I thought of them as deadly shafts;
They were, but their points pierced my heart.
The executioner had been in my father’s service and I had done him favours, so when he heard these lines, he said: ‘Master, what can I do? I am a slave under command.’ But then he added: ‘Keep your life, but don’t come back to this land or else you will be killed and you will destroy me, together with yourself. As one of the poets has said:
If you should meet injustice, save your life
And let the house lament its builder.
You can replace the country that you leave,
But there is no replacement for your life.
I wonder at those who live humiliated
When God’s earth is so wide.
Send out no messenger on any grave affair,
For only you yourself will give you good advice.
The necks of lions would not be so thick
Were others present to look after them.’
I kissed his hands, scarcely believing that I had escaped death, in comparison with which I found the loss of my eye insignificant. So I travelled to my uncle’s city and, after presenting myself to him, I told him what had happened to my father, as well as how I had come to lose my eye. He burst into tears and said: ‘You have added to my cares and my sorrows. For your cousin disappeared days ago and I don’t know what has happened to him, nor can anyone bring me news.’ He continued to weep until he fainted and I was bitterly sorry for him. He then wanted to apply some medicaments to my eye, but when he saw that it was like an empty walnut shell, he said: ‘Better to lose your eye, my boy, than to lose your life.’
At that, I could no longer stay silent about the affair of my cousin, his son, and so I told him all that had happened. When he heard my news, he was delighted and told me to come and show him the enclosure. ‘By God, uncle,’ I said, ‘I don’t know where it is. I went back a number of times after that and searched, but I couldn’t find the place.’ Then, however, he and I went to the cemetery and, after looking right and left, to our great joy I recognized the place. The two of us went into the enclosure and, after removing the earth, we lifted the cover. We climbed down fifty steps and when we had reached the bottom, we were met by blinding smoke. ‘There is no might and no power except with God, the Exalted, the Omnipotent,’ exclaimed my uncle – words that can never put to shame anyone who speaks them. We walked on and found ourselves in a hall filled with flour, grain, eatables and so on, and there in the middle of it we saw a curtain hanging down over a couch. My uncle looked and found his son and the woman who had gone down with him locked in an embrace, but they had become black charcoal, as though they had been thrown into a pit of fire.
On seeing this, my uncle spat in his son’s face and said: ‘You deserve this, you pig. This is your punishment in this world, but there remains the punishment of the next world, which will be harsher and stronger.’
Morning now dawned and Shahrazad broke off from what she had been allowed to say. Then, when it was the twelfth night, SHE CONTINUED:
I have heard, O auspicious king, that the dervish said to the lady of the house, to Ja‘far and the caliph and the rest of the company that were listening: ‘My uncle struck his son with his shoe, as he lay there, burned black as charcoal.’ HE WENT ON:
This astonished me and I was filled with grief for my cousin and at the fate that had overtaken him and the girl. ‘By God, uncle,’ I said, ‘remove rancour from your heart. My heart and mind are filled with concern; I am saddened by what has happened to my cousin, and by the fact that he and this girl have been left like charcoal. Is their fate not enough for you that you strike your son with your shoe?’ He said: ‘Nephew, from his earliest days this son of mine was passionately in love with his sister. I used to keep him away from her and I would tell myself: “They are only children,” but when they grew up they committed a foul sin. I heard of this and, although I did not believe it, I seized him and reproached him bitterly, saying: “Beware of doing what no one has done before you or will do after you and which will remain as a source of disgrace and disparagement among the kings until the end of time, as the news is carried by the caravans. Take care not to act like this or else I shall be angry with you and kill you.”
‘I kept him away from her and kept her from him, but the damned girl was deeply in love with him and Satan got the upper hand and made their actions seem good to them. When my son saw that I was keeping him from his sister, he constructed this underground chamber, set it in order and provisioned it, as you see. Then, taking me unawares when I had gone out hunting, he came here, but the Righteous God was jealous of them and consumed them both with fire, while their punishment in the next world will be harsher and stronger.’
He then wept and I wept with him, and he looked at me and said: ‘You are my son in his place.’ I thought for a time about this world and its happenings and of how my father had been killed by his vizier, who had then taken his place and who had plucked out my eye, and I thought of the strange fate of my cousin. I wept and my uncle wept with me. Then we climbed back up and replaced the cover and the earth and restored the tomb as it had been, after which we returned to the palace. Before we had sat down, however, we heard the noise of drums, kettledrums and trumpets, the clatter of lances, the shouting of men, the clink of bridles and the neighing of horses. The sky was darkened by sand and dust kicked up by horses’ hooves and we were bewildered, not knowing what had happened. When we asked, we were told that the vizier who had taken my father’s kingdom had fitted out his troops, collected men, hired Bedouin, and come with an army like the sands that could not be numbered and which no one co
uld withstand. They had made a surprise attack on the city, which had proved unable to resist and which had surrendered to them.
After this, my uncle was killed and I fled to the edge of the city, saying to myself: ‘If I fall into this man’s hands, he will kill me.’ Fresh sorrows were piled on me; I remembered what had happened to my father and to my uncle and I wondered what to do, for if I showed myself, the townspeople and my father’s men would recognize me and I would be killed. The only way of escape that I could find was to shave off my beard and my moustache, which I did, and after that I changed my clothes and went out of the city. I then came here, hoping that someone might take me to the Commander of the Faithful, the caliph of the Lord of creation, so that I might talk to him and tell him the story of what had happened to me. I got here tonight and was at a loss to know where to go when I came to where this dervish was standing. I greeted him and told him that I was a stranger, at which he said: ‘I too am a stranger.’ While we were talking, our third companion here came up to us, greeted us, introducing himself as a stranger, to which we made the same reply. We then walked on as darkness fell and fate led us to you. This is the story of why my beard and moustache have been shaved and of how I lost my eye.
The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights: Volume 1 Page 11
