One Thousand and One Nights

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  Then I threw the sword on the ground and cried out, “Demon, how can you let a man kill a woman who has refused to kill him without a valid reason? How could I live with such a deed on my conscience? And why don’t you leave her be? I beg you: take a look at this woman and tell me if I am mistaken that her soul will be leaving her any minute due to the torture you’ve inflicted on her. Why don’t you leave her be?”

  But my words only made the demon angrier.

  “I knew it,” he shouted. “You two are conniving against me. You insult my intelligence and my powers and at the same time you ignite my jealousy!”

  He drew his sword and cut off the girl’s arm and then hacked at the other one until it flew off like a shooting star and landed on the floor.

  The young woman then bade me one final farewell before he struck at her head and she drowned in her own blood. I fainted and lost consciousness and when I came to my senses, I got to my feet, ready for the demon, crying out, “Go ahead and kill me! Release me from this agony once and for all.”

  But the demon said, “No, I will not kill you, human being, for I am not sure that it was with you that she deceived me. Just let me check your hands.”

  He grabbed my hands, tilted his head and examined them carefully. I was mortified—perhaps the demon could read the truth in the lines on my palm? But the demon muttered to himself, in a voice which shook the walls, “But these hands are rough, chapped and swollen, as if they are familiar only with ploughing, working in a smithy, building or chopping wood.”

  When he mentioned woodcutting I tried to control the trembling of my hands lest they give me away.

  “I am sure that the axe and rope must belong to you,” he muttered.

  At these words I saw myself falling into the raging sea of death, but then he pulled me clear by continuing, “But how could a woodcutter be a calligrapher? Where are his long, flexible fingers?”

  He dropped my hands and took from his belt the paper on which I had written that single phrase. “Go ahead, take hold of it,” he said, shoving it at me.

  I grasped it and held it upside down. At this his face grew dark with rage and fury. He turned the paper the right way around. “Go ahead and read what is written here, and if you can do so then your life shall be spared.”

  “But this is a drawing, not writing,” I answered.

  He sighed, long and loud, revealing his frustration and confusion. I saw my chance and pleaded with him.

  “Let me go! Please be assured, demon, that I have never set eyes on your mistress before today.”

  “I’m not sure that it was with you that she deceived me, but at the same time I find myself unable to let you go without inflicting some harm.”

  He threw the piece of paper on the ground and stamped upon it, watching me carefully lest I betray my sadness and regret. I realised that he knew that whoever had written that phrase must have felt great desire and passion for his mistress. So I pretended to be confused and puzzled by his actions, although I felt as though he was stamping upon my heart.

  Suddenly the demon stopped and said, “Perhaps you are a woodcutter who loves calligraphy? I wonder if I should put out your eye or cut off your hand?”

  I pleaded once more, telling him, “But my work is really washing the dead.”

  But the demon brought the quill pen and a knife and pushed his face close to mine, saying, “I’ll put out your eye so you can no longer write. I could choose to end your life while making you watch your own, slow death, but with your plucked eye you will frighten away children and be a curse upon adults.”

  “You must believe me, please,” I cried out.

  “Maybe your eye didn’t guide your hand as it crafted that calligraphy, but it did see my mistress!” was his reply.

  He came towards me with the quill pen and I screamed out in terror, but he poked out my eye. The blood of my heart and my brain poured out and drained from my eye along with my tears and I screamed again and again, as if my screams might lift me in the air and throw me back into the forest.

  I screamed and stretched my arms wide. “Oh my life! For what reason was I separated from my father, mother and my homeland, attacked by bandits who killed my companions and my camels and looted everything, and then made a woodcutter who became the cause of the death of the only woman I have ever loved? And as if all of this was not enough a demon has taken out my eye!”

  I walked and walked aimlessly until I discovered that I had lost not only my eye, but my ears and my tongue; all my senses had died.

  I shaved my hair and my eyebrows and wore a black woollen cloak and set out to roam the world, seeking to forget that I had caused the death of a young woman who was the light of the sun and the moonlight. She had died in great suffering because of my greed and selfishness, and because I carried not even a tiny speck of compassion or wisdom in my heart, not even when the girl had pleaded with me not to touch the talisman. She had warned me that if I touched it I would destroy us both, and I hadn’t even seen the damage I would do when she uttered those words to me:

  “Unless you seek separation,

  I beg you hold back,

  Stay, jealousy destroys the very thing it loves

  And such betrayal is condemned by Heaven above.”

  I heard more than once on my travels that Haroun al-Rashid, the Commander of the Faithful, was always ready with great compassion to listen to those who had suffered misfortune. So I decided to visit Baghdad and find a way to be in his presence and tell him my life story.

  And so I reached Baghdad only today, where I met a dervish with one eye who told me that he too was a visitor to the city, and after we had talked for a while we met a third dervish, also with one eye. Then the three of us walked together, seeking a place to spend the night, and the fate of God brought us to your beautiful house.

  The mistress of the house said to him, “Stroke your head and go.”

  But the dervish said, “Would my gracious lady permit me to remain and hear the tales of the others?”

  “Yes, you may,” said the mistress of the house.

  The third dervish hurried to the middle of the room, bowed to the mistress of the house, paused to reflect for a moment before sighing, wiping tears from his eyes, and beginning in a trembling voice.

  The Third Dervish

  h how I wish my story was similar to those of the two dervishes who have gone before me. But I have learned, as the days have passed, that there is nothing to be gained from regret; it changes nothing, leaves us melancholy and in pain for ever.

  I was born, ladies and gentlemen, not to a sovereign who reigns over a vast kingdom, not to a merchant, but to a father who was a sailor, who had a passion for the sea and travelling. Until I was eighteen, he used to take me with him everywhere he went but my mother asked him not to take me with him any more but to leave me behind in Baghdad. She wanted me to marry and have children before I sailed again. My father obeyed her and left without me, while I rejoiced, for I had always imagined myself in the company of women, many, many women; young girls, young women, women in the prime of life, boasting to my friends that I lived with as many women as there are pebbles on the shores. Only their creator knows how many there are. My mother found me a beautiful bride whose father was a merchant. Though I had never seen her before, I fell for her instantly as I lifted the veil off her face and saw her shyly lowering her eyelashes and then, when I heard her soft voice, I fell more deeply in love with her. So we lived in peace and harmony and I took a job in a carpet store which belonged to a Persian merchant, looking after his shop when he was there and when he was not, for he used to travel for weeks and months before he came back loaded with many different kinds of silk and woollen carpets. Soon my wife became pregnant and in time gave birth to a son, whom I named after my father, and then she gave birth to another boy and she became busy with him and we continued living together, just as pigeons lived, serenading one another, playing and kissing.

  Then one day she fell ill and kept
tossing in bed like a serpent’s tongue, in pain and unable to sleep. She drank boiled herbs and massaged her stomach with oils and placed scalding stones upon it, but her health did not improve. Then one night she woke me, saying that she was craving apples. I told her that I had heard of apples but I had never seen one. So the next day, on my way to work, I passed by the market and looked for apples, but found none. When I came home and told my wife, she sighed and turned away. “How I wish I could crunch one bite from an apple or even just smell it. Then it wouldn’t matter if I died.”

  When I heard my wife’s wish, I decided I would find her an apple, even if I had to go to Paradise itself, and I began asking here and there where I might find apples. But every fruit seller and farmer I asked assured me that I would find what I wanted only in Mousel, in the orchards of Haroun al-Rashid, the Commander of the Faithful himself. His orchards produced apples of every kind and shape, big and small, sugary and sharp in taste. I rushed to hire a mule and the journey took me several nights and days until I arrived and someone pointed out to me where Haroun al-Rashid’s orchards were. I saw the apples dangling from trees as if they were precious stones. I carefully selected three apples and paid for each one of them a whole dinar! I wrapped them with more than one cloth, away from the rays of the sun or the wind, and then put them in a safe place in the saddle pocket as if I was hiding treasure. I rode back home immediately, without taking even a few minutes’ rest, spurred on by an image of my wife running from her bed when she saw the apples in my hand. I imagined that she would hug herself with delight, and that the colour would return to her cheeks as she took the first bite. But when I finally placed the apples close to her face, instead of leaping with joy as I had imagined, she merely opened her eyes for a second, smiled at me and took the apples, laid them on the table next to her and went back to sleep.

  I worried that my journey had taken too long. Then I promised myself that I would be patient and that in the evening I would help her to eat at least one of the apples. As soon as the time came to close the shop, I hurried home. My wife kissed me, thanking me as she pointed to the apples and then went back to sleep. There and then, I pleaded to Almighty God to save her, for it seemed that now only He could.

  Next day, I again left for work, which distracted me from my pain and anxiety about my wife’s health. While I was outside the shop spreading the carpets in the sun, a black slave, as tall as a bamboo reed, and as wide as a rowing boat, walked by, holding a single apple in his hand. I found myself hurrying after him.

  “How did you get this apple, my good slave?” I asked him.

  The man winked at me. “From my sick mistress. Her husband, whom she detests, travelled for two whole weeks in order to get her three apples. She gave me one—she would rather that I had one than eat it herself. This is what I call love, don’t you agree with me?”

  I nearly fell to the ground, but the echo of his words made me rush to the house, hallucinating, as I repeated over and over, “Oh God chase the devil off my back, and let me see three apples! Let me see three apples!”

  Then another idea came to me. “Could it be that my wife tricked me by demanding the apple so that I would go away and leave her alone with her lover?”

  I entered my house, touching my eye as I said to myself, “I swear by this eye that if I don’t see three apples I will slice my wife open from one jugular vein to the other.”

  I entered her room and to my shock and ill-fortune and tragedy, I found that there were two apples instead of three. In my anger and frustration I nearly shook my wife awake, but instead I controlled myself, asking, “Wife, where is the third apple? I can only see two.”

  “I don’t know,” she said in a dull voice, without opening her eyes.

  Her answer assured me that everything the black man had told me must be true. Very calmly I entered the kitchen, fetched a sharp knife and cut off her head. Then, as though I was a rabid animal, I cut her into nineteen pieces, wrapped her in a cloak, tied the four corners as if I was wrapping up dates, put everything beneath a carpet in a basket of palm branches, and sewed it in tight with red woollen thread. As if I was carrying a carpet, I bore it to the edge of the Tigris on my shoulders and threw it into the river. I stood and watched it sink to the bottom. Bending down again to the river, I washed my hands, as if I was cleaning off her deceit, and returned back home.

  At this one of the merchants cried, “Oh God, speedy deliverer,” but everyone else in the room couldn’t decide if it was a cry of bewilderment or disgust or disturbance. The three merchants whispered to each other and then the third dervish went on with his tale.

  Each time the horror of what I had done overcame me, I thought of the black slave, and then breathed a sigh of relief, and congratulated myself on my actions.

  But when I saw my eldest son standing on the steps weeping, I choked with guilt and pity, for he loved his mother. But again this thought ignited my fury—how could she have deceived me and her two boys, in our own home?

  Then my son spoke, and I realised he didn’t yet know that his mother was dead. “Father, I’m afraid to enter the house. How I wish to God that you would forgive me. I stole one of my mother’s apples to show to my friends. But a black slave snatched it from my hand. I hurried after him and pleaded with him to give it back, but he brushed me off. I tried to snatch it back from him, but his arm was too high. ‘Please, respectable good man, give me back this apple. My father travelled nearly two weeks to get the apple for my sick mother.’ But the man just walked away, throwing the apple in the air and catching it either in his hands or his mouth. I followed him, pleading with him until he stopped, slapped me on the face and threatened to drag me by the hair and tie me to a tree. Oh father, please forgive me, and ask my mother to forgive me as well.”

  Hearing this, I realised I had killed my wife in error. I yelled so loudly in agony that the pigeons trembled in their cages. I struck my face with all my might and threw myself in my son’s lap, wailing and weeping as if I was a woman. My son, overwhelmed by my behaviour, asked, weeping, “Will my mother die, because she did not eat all three apples?”

  His question made me weep even harder. I howled so loud that my father, who lived nearby, came rushing to see what was happening; he found me still at the entrance of our house. When I related to him what I had done he wailed, too, thanking God that my mother was already dead because she would have taken her own life on hearing this, for she adored my wife.

  The three of us huddled in each other’s arms, weeping; my younger son came in and joined us without asking what we were doing. We stayed as we were for three days. From time to time one of us would shout that we must take revenge on the accursed slave who had lied and slandered my wife but my father led me at last by the hand, as if I was a child, to the house. When I entered the house and saw the two apples still next to my wife’s empty bed, I decided to kill myself. I waited until dark descended. Then I held the same knife up to strike it with all my might into my heart, but I stopped myself when I realised my selfishness. I was running away from my responsibility towards my two boys and fleeing from my awful crime. I had become obsessed with revenge, rather than a seeker of the truth. Now my two sons had ceased their crying and fallen silent, but they avoided meeting my evil eye. Realising this, I found myself plucking out my right eye, upon which I had sworn that if I did not see three apples I would kill my wife. I screamed in pain, soon all was dark and my consciousness left me.

  When I came round I went to blind my other eye, but my elder son had hidden the knife.

  “That’s enough; you’ve avenged our mother,” he said.

  My sons went to live with my father. I left home to roam around Baghdad, atoning for my sins by helping the needy.

  Today I met these two dervishes and sighed in relief as they talked about spreading goodness and how they had renounced everything to become Sufis. Their words made me feel at peace and secure.

  When they told me that they had come to Baghdad to seek out the
Commander of the Faithful, Haroun al-Rashid, in order to tell him their life stories and share their misfortunes, I nearly told them about my tragedy, but kept quiet since they didn’t share with me what had happened to them.

  When the dervishes decided to look for a place to spend the night, I found myself knocking at your door. Now, I thank you for your generosity and sympathy.

  He bowed to the mistress of the house, who told him, “Stroke your head and go.”

  But the third dervish said, “By God, mistress of the house, grant me permission to stay and hear the tales of these merchants.”

  “You may stay, I have no objection,” she told him.

  A few seconds passed, and then minutes, and not one of the three merchants came into the middle of the room, but instead whispered among themselves. When the mistress of the house cleared her throat impatiently, one of them came forward.

  The First Merchant

  have been sitting here, listening to the dervishes spilling, much like a running stream, their life stories with great honesty, and I have decided to remove my mask and reveal my true identity. I have never been a merchant, nor have I ever lived in Mosul, as I claimed to the honourable lady who opened the gate to the three of us, inviting us to be guests in this house. Exactly nine days ago, we walked disguised through the city, so my Master could witness the welfare of his subjects with his own eyes and hear the complaints of those treated unjustly. We saw an old man carrying a fishing net in his hand and a basket on his head, sighing a deep sigh which had no beginning and no end.

  My Master asked him, “What has happened, old man?”

  “I am a fisherman, sir, fed up with life and living. I’ve been trying my luck since midday but my net has caught nothing but water. For God’s sake, sir, can you tell me what I can do for my hungry family? I return home each night and see them with open mouths.”

  Hearing this, my Master said to the fisherman, “Come with us to the river and try your luck once more. I will give you one hundred dinars for any catch you get, even if it is only small fry.”