One Thousand and One Nights

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  Happy Shahzaman embraced the Vizier, replying that he too had missed his brother, and that he would prepare to leave at once.

  In no time everything was ready: troops, horses and camels, and sheep to be slaughtered for food. Shahzaman was filled with happiness and excitement, for he was going to see his brother, so he set out at once, not wanting to delay one minute longer as he heard the beat of the tambourine and the blowing of the trumpets. He rushed to his wife’s quarters to bid her goodbye, but to his horror he found her lying in the arms of one of the kitchen boys. The world blackened and spun, as though he was caught in a hurricane.

  “I am the sovereign King of Samarkand and yet my wife has betrayed me, but with whom? With another king? A general in the army? No—with a kitchen boy!”

  In his fury, he drew his sword and killed his wife and the kitchen boy, then dragged them by the heels and threw their bodies from the very top of the palace into the trench below. Then he left his kingdom with his brother’s Vizier and entourage, his heart bleeding with sorrow and grief.

  As they travelled, the change of scenery and the beauty and solitude of the ravines and mountains failed to provide distraction, but only heightened Shahzaman’s sense of loss and misfortune. He reached India and embraced his brother King Shahrayar, who placed his guest palace at his disposal.

  As the days passed, Shahzaman grew ever paler and lost his appetite. King Shahrayar noticed his brother’s decline and assumed that he must be missing home and kingdom.

  Finally, one morning King Shahrayar asked Shahzaman: “Dear brother, would you like to hunt with me? We shall track the roaming deer for ten days and return when you are due to set out for your kingdom.”

  But Shahzaman said, “I am unable to accompany you this time. I am too depressed and preoccupied. I have a wound on my soul.”

  King Shahrayar persisted. “Maybe the excitement and action of the hunt will revive you, my brother, and heal your wound.”

  King Shahzaman refused, saying, “No, you must leave me here, and go with God’s blessing and protection.”

  Not wishing to pressure his brother, King Shahrayar embraced Shahzaman and with his entourage went out to hunt. Shahzaman remained alone in his quarters, moving from one chair to another as if wishing to escape himself, deeply depressed. He heard a bird cry and opened his shutters to look out, wishing this creature would lift him away into the sky, where he might forget the sorrow that had befallen him on Earth. He heard a commotion below him and to his bewilderment saw a private gate from his brother’s palace opening, from which his brother’s wife emerged, swaying like a dark, kohl-eyed deer. She was followed by a train of twenty slave girls, ten as white as the jasmine flower, and ten as dark as ebony, their bodies built to conquer, their lips luscious, as though stung by a hundred bees. As he observed unseen, they chatted, sang and laughed around the fountain below his window. Gradually they began to undress in a leisurely fashion, with a complete lack of inhibition, and Shahzaman nearly cried out in surprise when he realised the ten black slave girls were in fact men, who stood with their penises erect like bayonets, their firm buttocks jutting out as though a cup and saucer might balance on them. Shahzaman looked to see how his brother’s wife would react; but she nonchalantly laughed and laughed, stopping only to call out lustily, “Mas’ud … Mas’ud!” Another black slave jumped over a wall and fell on her, like a coconut fruit falling to the ground. Again Shahzaman tried not to cry out in mortification as she spread her legs for the slave, lifting them until the soles of her feet faced the sky. At this, the ten white slave girls and the black slave men paired off and began to make love as though they had each been waiting for a signal from their Queen, while Mas’ud made love to her in the centre, and the sounds of their ecstasy and pleasure rose up to where Shahzaman stood hidden.

  Shahzaman threw his hands up to his face and rushed from the window, but he couldn’t stay away. He peeked again and again, watching as the couples disported themselves over and over, until midday, when everyone washed at the fountain, splashing each other with water, before putting on their clothes. The ten black men became ten black slave girls and disappeared behind the gate. Mas’ud jumped over the garden wall and disappeared.

  Seeing the grounds empty, as if nothing had happened, Shahzaman cried out, “Oh brother of mine, you are the ruler of the entire world, length and width, the towering knight, the implacable, the pious; and yet your wife seems to find delight only with the slave Mas’ud between her thighs. And to add insult to injury, they were at it in your own home. If only it was just your wife, but all your concubines and slaves too … as if to them your status is little more than an onion skin. What treacherous world is this, which fails to distinguish between a sovereign king and a nobody?”

  When Shahrayar came back from his hunting trip, Shahzaman greeted him with great joy and vigour. Shahrayar noticed that his brother had regained colour in his cheeks and life in his eyes. The brothers sat down to eat, and Shahrayar saw how Shahzaman fell upon his food with great alacrity and relish and sighed with relief. “How delighted I am to come back and find you brimming with energy, cheerful and happy. So tell me what had made you so miserable when you arrived … and what has brought about this speedy recovery?”

  “I had a great wound to my soul and my heart was set on fire, for I caught my wife in the arms of one of the kitchen boys in her quarters before I set out to come to you. My anger took control and I avenged myself by slaying both of them and hurling their bodies in a trench, like two dead cockroaches,” Shahzaman answered.

  At this Shahrayar exclaimed, “Shame, shame, I am filled with horror at this revelation of the deceit and wickedness of women. But how fortunate you were, my beloved brother, in killing your wife for betraying you; she who was the cause of your misery and malaise. She was a snake hiding in the grass, waiting to strike the hand which fed her. And how fortunate, too, that you killed this kitchen boy who dared to disrespect a king. Never have I heard of such a thing! Had I been in your place I should have lost my mind, gone insane and slaughtered with my own sword hundreds, thousands of women. Let us celebrate and praise God for saving you from this turmoil. But now you must explain to me how you have managed to rise above your calamity and sorrow.”

  “I beg you, my brother, in God’s name, to forgive me for not answering this question,” Shahzaman replied.

  “But you must tell me. I am bewildered by the ease with which you overcame your grief in just ten days, as if what you had suffered was but a minor injury, when it takes centuries to recover from cuckoldry,” said Shahrayar.

  “My King, I fear that if I tell you, you will suffer greater devastation and desolation than my own,” said Shahzaman.

  Shahrayar pressed him. “How, brother, could that be? Now I must insist that I hear your explanation.”

  “I witnessed your misfortune with my own eyes,” said Shahzaman. “The day that you set out on the hunt, I looked out upon the garden to enjoy the beauty of your estate and saw the palace gate open and your wife emerge with her twenty slave girls in train, ten white and ten black. As I watched, they disrobed, and the ten black girls were men in disguise, and as I stood hidden they fell upon one another and began to make love. Your wife called out the name ‘Mas’ud’ and another black slave appeared, jumping over the wall, and leaping upon your wife, in your own garden …”

  “In my garden?”

  “Yes, beneath my window. They must all have thought that I had accompanied you on the hunt. And so, as I watched your own misfortune unfold, I told myself that my brother was King of all the world, and yet this had happened, even to him. What he had suffered was far worse. I had been betrayed by my wife, but I alone knew of the indignity I had suffered, whereas my poor brother was betrayed even by his concubines, in broad daylight and in his own palace garden. And so in no time at all I began to eat and drink again and forgot my strife and sorrow.”

  Shahrayar was overcome by fury and there was murder in his eyes. “I will not, I cannot,
believe one word of what I have heard, until I have seen it with my own eyes,” he stammered.

  When Shahzaman saw his brother’s rage, he said, “If you cannot believe in your misfortune unless you have witnessed it for yourself, why don’t you announce that you intend to go on another hunting trip tomorrow? Then you and I will sneak back to my quarters in disguise under the cover of darkness and you shall see for yourself everything that I have described.”

  Shahrayar agreed with his brother’s plan and ordered his Vizier to arrange a hunting trip with his brother. The news of the journey spread through the palace like wildfire and with the beat of tambourines, the blowing of trumpets and great commotion, the hunting party departed. As they’d planned, the two Kings snuck back, disguised, to Shahzaman’s quarters.

  Shahrayar tossed and turned on his bed all night long, as if it was made of burning coals. When day broke, he lay listening to the chirrup of birds and water tumbling from the fountain, which he heard each morning, and couldn’t help thinking that his brother had hallucinated and imagined it all. But then he heard the gate open, and he hurried with Shahzaman to the window.

  Shahrayar’s wife appeared, followed by twenty slave girls, ten white, ten black, exactly as Shahzaman had described. The entourage strolled in the garden under the trees and stopped beneath Shahzaman’s window. As the two Kings watched, they undressed, revealing the ten black slave men, who immediately paired up with the girls, embracing and kissing them. Shahrayar’s wife again called “Mas’ud, Mas’ud!” and a solid, heavily built black slave jumped from the tree to the ground, saying, “What do you want, you slut? Allow me to present Sa’ad al-Din Mas’ud.” He pointed to his prick and Shahrayar’s wife giggled and fell on her back and opened her thighs, ready for him.

  As Mas’ud began to make love to her, the ten black slaves mounted the girls.

  Shahrayar almost cried out, like a lion fatally wounded by an arrow to the eye. Quick as a bolt of lightning, he reached the garden with his sword in his hand, thirsty for revenge. All of a sudden the moans of pleasure and ecstasy in the garden became screams and yelps, piercing cries and wails, as Shahrayar cut off his wife’s and Mas’ud’s head, in one stroke. And then, like an insane gardener, he severed every other head and body, as if he was chopping every stem in the garden, leaving the heads to fall and roll into the earth.

  Seeing that no head was left on its body, Shahrayar threw his sword on to the ground, took off his stained robe and walked with heavy steps until he reached a rock, sat on it and rested his head in his hands. The next day Shahrayar stood at the heart of his palace and decreed a new law. “I, Shahrayar, shall each night marry a virgin, kissed only by her mother. I shall kill her the following morning and thereby protect myself from the cunning and deceit of women, for there is not a single chaste woman on the face of this earth!”

  Shahrayar sat upon his throne and ordered his Vizier (the father of Shahrazad and Dunyazad) to find him a wife among the daughters of the princes of his lands. As soon as the Vizier found him a princess, Shahrayar spent the night with her, deflowered her, and then when dawn broke ordered his Vizier to put her to death. The Vizier did as he was told. The next night he took the daughter of one of his army officers, slept with her and sent her to her death the following morning. On the third night it was the turn of the daughter of a merchant.

  Soon, many girls had perished, and their families mourned their losses, amidst growing anger and stirrings of revolt, praying to the creator who hears and answers prayers to strike King Shahrayar down with a fatal disease. But the bloodbath continued, night after night. Then one day Shahrazad, the elder daughter of the Vizier, a woman of great intelligence and refinement, went to her father and said, in the presence of her younger sister Dunyazad: “Father, I want you to marry me to King Shahrayar, so that I may either succeed in saving the girls of the kingdom, or perish and die like them.”

  The Vizier couldn’t believe his ears. She was so wise, so intelligent, so learned, versed in the great texts of philosophy, medicine, literature, poetry and history, and so delicate of bearing and graceful of manners. He said to her, “Foolish one, are you not aware that if I give you to the King he will sleep with you for one night only and then have me put you to death in the morning? And are you not aware that I shall have to carry out his wishes, since I am unable to disobey him?”

  But Shahrazad was not to be deterred. “Father, you must offer me to him, even if it will result in my death.”

  The Vizier sought to understand her motivation, in order that he might discover how to change her mind. “What has possessed you that you wish to endanger your life in this way?”

  “You must give me to him, father,” Shahrazad answered.

  The Vizier, unable to comprehend his daughter’s foolishness, grew furious with rage and shouted, “He who misbehaves ends up in trouble and he who considers not the end of the world is not his own friend. I am afraid that you will meet the same fate as that of the bird who encountered a group of apes.”

  Shahrazad asked, “Father, tell me what happened to the bird and the group of apes.”

  And so the Vizier said, “A bunch of apes mistook a passing firefly for an ember. They threw wood on it and huffed and puffed, trying to ignite it. A bird tried to tell them it was a firefly, but the apes ignored the bird. A man, who was passing, said, ‘Listen, bird, you cannot endeavour to bring into line something which has been forever wayward, or to enlighten those who cannot see, so listen to what I am telling you.’ But the stubborn bird wouldn’t give up, until one of the apes smote the bird to the ground, killing it.”

  But Shahrazad said to her father, “Your tale will not change my mind, and if you do not take me to the King, I will go to him in secret myself, and tell him that you refused to give me to one such as him, and that you would begrudge your Master one such as me.”

  The Vizier appealed to her one last time. “Must you really do this, my beloved daughter?”

  And Shahrazad answered, “Yes, father, it is final.”

  The Vizier said, “Always remember that I offer advice only out of love and compassion for you.”

  “I know, my beloved father,” she replied.

  So the agonised Vizier forced himself to go before the King, who asked, “Have you brought me what I want?”

  The Vizier kissed the ground before his sovereign and replied, “My daughter Shahrazad.”

  And the King, astonished and bewildered, said, “Vizier, but how, when you know more than anyone else what will be the fate of your daughter tomorrow morning, and that if you refuse to put her to death, I will, by God, the creator of heaven, put you to death as well!”

  The Vizier replied, “I tried to explain to her, but in vain, she is determined to come and be with you tonight.”

  King Shahrayar, astonished but delighted, ordered his Vizier, “Then go and prepare her and bring her to me early in the evening!”

  The Vizier went back to Shahrazad and asked her to ready herself. Then, leaving her, he said, “May God not deprive me of you.”

  Shahrazad called to her younger sister Dunyazad, saying, “Beloved sister, listen to what I am telling you very carefully. I am going as you know to King Shahrayar tonight and I plan to send for you. When the King has finished with me, I want you to plead with me, and say, ‘Sister, since you’re not sleepy, tell us a story, so that we may pass the waking part of this night.’ Then I shall tell you a tale in the hope that it will engage the King fully, keep me alive, and cease his actions, thereby saving both my own life and those of all the girls who remain in the kingdom.”

  Soon afterwards, the Vizier came to collect Shahrazad, saying to her once again before he departed, “I pray to God not to deprive me of you.”

  Shahrazad was taken to Shahrayar’s quarters, where the King led her at once to his enormous, terrible bed. He began to undo her dress, which had many tiny buttons. Shahrazad wept and the King asked her, “Why are you crying, Shahrazad?”

  “I weep for my
younger sister Dunyazad and so I should like to say farewell to her before daybreak.”

  The King sent for Shahrazad’s sister. Dunyazad hurried into the chamber and the two girls embraced. Then Dunyazad climbed under the King’s bed and waited while Shahrayar deflowered her older sister and satisfied himself. As the night wore on, Dunyazad cleared her throat and spoke into the silence.

  “Sister, tell us one of your lovely stories before I must bid you goodbye, for I do not know what will happen to you tomorrow.”

  “If the King gives his permission,” Shahrazad replied.

  Shahrayar, lying restless, waiting for dawn to break, welcomed the idea, saying, “Yes, go ahead.”

  Shahrazad was overjoyed. She began. “It is said, oh wise and happy King, that a very poor fisherman …”

  The Fisherman and the Jinni

  t is said, oh wise and happy King, that a very poor fisherman who swore by Almighty God that he would only cast his net three times each day, went down to the sea late one afternoon as usual, waited until he saw the moon shining above him, and then threw his net very carefully into the water. He sat there for a time, and then, when he pulled on his net and felt that it had grown heavy, he sang to himself:

  “Glide over to me, my magnificent fish

  And slither into my waiting net

  So that someone asleep on his soft silken bed

  Will awaken and buy you with his silver bread.”

  He opened his net and there, to his horror, found a dead donkey. “A donkey?” he cried out. “My wretched luck. You send me a donkey when you know that my family and I are starved out of our brains?” He managed to free it from his net with one hand while pinching his nose with the other to block out the horrible smell.