One Thousand and One Nights

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  But I laughed, saying, “Don’t worry, no one will put them on and try to fly with them.”

  “No human could fly with them, but as I told you, the feathers are my power and my soul. If even one feather is damaged, all of them would be broken and then I would lose my power to fly and …”

  I interrupted him. “Then I will be the one who will interfere with your feathers, so you will stay with me for ever and ever.”

  He smiled as he hugged me and with great patience he said, “What I mean is that if I lose my power of flight, I will lose my power as a jinni, and I will lose my power to be a man. Then I would soon disintegrate into ashes.”

  “Let us hide them in the safest place so you won’t become ashes,” I said playfully, since I was certain that what he feared would never happen. I pointed to a closet. “My father’s closet, where I hide everything which once belonged to our parents, as I fear that my sisters will lose things.”

  I took a golden bracelet from my wrist and straightened it and the bracelet became a key. Azraq was so surprised that I said to him, “You see, Azraq, humans can be inventive too!”

  We laughed as I opened the closet with the key, and then together we laid the feathers inside, wrapped in one of my coats. We locked it and twisted the key until it became a bracelet once more and I put it on my wrist.

  Azraq then climbed out of the window and, after a short time, there was a knock at our door. One of the maids rushed to tell us, we five sisters, of our visitor. I was the last one to appear. Azraq asked about our parents, I wept and so did my two younger sisters while the elder two sat, poised and steely, looking at Azraq with great suspicion. Azraq then asked who was the oldest of us, and asked for my hand in marriage. I interrupted and asked for a moment with my four sisters. When we were alone, I said: “This man seems to be from a good family, serious, capable and honest. I would like to marry him.”

  My two elder sisters weren’t surprised at all; they didn’t even remind me that I had changed my mind about marriage and men, while the two younger sisters exclaimed, “Oh, sister, how happy we are for you! We had a feeling that you would never agree to marry and live with a man, but this beautiful man has changed your mind in one second.”

  So I married Azraq Blue according to the rule of God and his Prophet. I wore a dress my bridegroom had presented me with, decorated with so many precious stones that I needed several maids to help me to walk.

  My two elder sisters asked why we had never heard of such jewels on our trips to Basra, while my younger sisters said, “Your dress is a slice of heaven.”

  Days and nights passed, as I plucked one honeycomb after another, meaning that I was completely immersed in passion and love. But other things did not go as smoothly as our love, because my husband’s brothers never ceased trying to woo him back to them. They appeared at dusk each day and flew around until midnight, shrieking and screeching the loudest cries, which made Azraq weep.

  “I am between two fires,” he would say, “your love and their love. My brothers and sisters insist that I should return to them, fearing that in time I will become a human being and lose my powers as a jinni.”

  I felt great pity for him, and I offered him the chance to leave with them, putting my grief and heartache aside. But his answer to me was instant: “I cannot be away from you and so I have decided not to see them again, because being with them causes me sorrow rather than joy.”

  My two elder sisters, meanwhile, were eaten up with envy because I had found the man of my life. They never ceased to show their dissatisfaction with everything around them and their unhappiness, blaming me for preferring the company of my husband and resenting him for taking me away from them. I decided to accompany them on a business trip to Basra, but Azraq told me that he could not bear even the distance of a tiny strand of hair to fall between us. My elder sisters threw a tantrum, accusing me of being selfish, and so I advised them to go and look for husbands themselves; this time perfect husbands who would love and care for them, adding that maybe they’d be lucky the third time. My sisters searched high and low for husbands, asking matchmakers, going to the public baths every day, but nobody would marry them. I became accustomed to hearing them cry and sob at night, mingled with the shrieks and strange cries of Azraq’s brothers.

  How I wish that my elder sisters had kept on lamenting their luck and weeping instead of plotting and scheming to destroy my love for Azraq Blue! And how I wish that Azraq’s brothers had not lost their senses and become violent! They began to throw mud and stones at our house; they would attack anyone in sight, even our gazelles and cats. We all became prisoners in our own home, and my two elder sisters complained, while my younger sisters looked everywhere for their nests, assuming that the birds’ violent behaviour was because they were protecting their eggs.

  Azraq Blue finally agreed to go and be with his brothers for one night, to try to calm them. He pleaded with me to accompany him. I refused, insisting I had no doubts whatsoever in my heart but that he would return to me. In the first hour of the morning, when everything was asleep, we hurried to the pond and before he entered his feathers he kissed me three hundred kisses. Then he flapped his wings, and flapped them even harder. For a moment I thought that he had forgotten how to fly, or he was changing his mind, but like a raging beast he kept trying and then searching his feathers, swearing in the way I had only heard him when he dreamed that he could no longer fly. Now that day had come to pass: Azraq couldn’t fly. He took off the feathers, yelling, “I can’t fly, I can’t fly, someone must have damaged my feathers. I have lost the power to fly.”

  “Try, try again,” I urged him. “No one knows about your feathers, and the key is always around my wrist.”

  He tried once more and then he took my hand and hurried towards the house, panting and cursing until we reached our bedroom. There, he rushed to the closet and started to inspect it, from the outside, very carefully, as if he was trying to find a flea on the back of a camel. Then, with all his might, he pulled the closet away from the wall. To our horror and agony, we saw that the whole back of the closet had been removed.

  “I knew it! Your two sisters have interfered with my feathers. They must have heard me that night, when I flew to your room and hit the window; they heard me tell you about my feathers and how I could lose my power. Oh God Almighty, help me.”

  Then, still holding my hand, he led me to my elder sisters’ room, flung the door open, and when they saw Azraq they screamed, mortified that he was still alive.

  “Give me back the feather you have plucked. Now!” he demanded.

  But my two sisters kept hugging each other and screaming.

  I pleaded with them, crying, “Please, give him the feather and we will forgive you.”

  “What do you mean? What feather are you talking about?” asked one of my sisters.

  Azraq spoke again, and this time with the greatest fury: “Give me back what you took from my wings.”

  “Come on, you ungrateful sisters, give him back the feather you have,” I shouted.

  My sisters looked at the door, desperate to escape, and Azraq spoke again, only now his voice was weaker.

  “Do what your sister is asking of you, or you will regret it.”

  One of them spoke, saying, “This is the first time that we have seen your feathers and we don’t know what they are for!”

  I grabbed both of them by their shoulders and shook them, weeping. “For the love of our parents, give him the missing feather. Don’t you realise how much I love him, how I cannot live without him? Do you want me destroyed?”

  “But you have us. We will live, all five of us together, like we did before he came.”

  “I love you more and I’ll always love you no matter what happens,” my husband said, drawing me to him. Then he turned to my sisters and said in a shaking voice, “This is the last time I will ask you. Return the feather, or I’ll cast a spell which will transform you into two dogs.”

  “I don’t think you’
re able to do anything, you have lost your power,” one of my sisters said.

  He began to murmur some words in his language and then he spoke.

  “You two ungrateful sisters, I am going to spare your wretched lives for the sake of your sister. But now leave your human form and become two black bitches.”

  “No, Azraq Blue, no! Wait! Let them give you the feather first, please don’t despair.”

  But it was as though my sentence helped his power, because my two sisters were transformed into two barking dogs.

  I threw myself at his feet, pleading with him, “But they have to give us the feather.”

  “They must have destroyed it and I can’t afford to waste more time. Now, my love, you must give them three hundred lashes with a whip each night, and if you don’t they will die.”

  Then my man, my bird, my jinni, fell down on the floor and didn’t move.

  “But you’re a jinni, you must survive. How can I send a message to your brothers?” I beseeched him.

  My Azraq Blue whispered, “Not without my missing feather and not without me.”

  I tried to take him out of his feathers, in the hope that he might survive as a man, but inside I found nothing but ashes.

  I fainted, and when I came back to my senses I found my two young sisters beside me and the two dogs licking my hands and barking. They scampered to the cupboard in the hall and lay on their backs, their four legs in the air, then came back and licked my hands once more, barking violently while nosing their heads in Azraq’s feathers.

  I stood and took the feathers, cradling them in my arms, to the pond, wishing that Azraq’s brothers would come and return him to life, even if it were only as a bird. I called in my loudest voice and then in my softest, but there was no answer. I laid the feathers down and searched the pond for another feather or something of his or his brothers which might help, but found only his footprints. I sat by the feathers in the stillness of the pond until early evening, when his nine brothers landed and circled around him. Then, instead of reviving him, they took him by their beaks and flew away with him.

  I felt like a dead tree. How I wished I could live in the cave which had witnessed our first love. I dragged myself to the house to find my two bewitched sisters still barking and trying to jump up at the cupboard door in the hall. My two younger sisters were in great distress because they couldn’t calm them; they had offered them food and water and a mattress to sleep on. When they saw me, the dogs started to howl, now attacking the cupboard.

  I thought that perhaps my poor bewitched sisters were terrified, knowing that as soon as night descended, I would lash them with the whip that was in the cupboard. But when the cursed time came, and I flogged them, forcing my hand time and time again so that I would complete the three hundred lashes, instead of collapsing from the pain and the wounds inflicted on them, the two dogs yelped and howled and once again jumped at the cupboard.

  Perplexed, we three sisters opened the cupboard door wide, and began taking out its contents: bottles of rose water, a lute … Soon one of us held up a fan made from peacock feathers, and the two dogs produced the strangest yelps, now driven almost to insanity. It didn’t take us long to find, hidden among the feathers, one single feather belonging to Azraq: the feather which killed him and destroyed our love.

  My two sisters were trying to give the feather back, so they might be forgiven and become human again, not realising that it was too late!

  I removed the feather from the strong thread which bound it to the fan’s handle and held it to my breast. Then, clutching it, I opened the window, calling at the top of my voice, “Azraq, Azraq, brothers of Azraq, here is the feather!”

  I called, weeping and wailing, for hour after hour, until I lost my voice.

  Eventually I let my two younger sisters take me to bed, clasping the feather in both hands, before resting it on my pillow. From that night onwards, the feather and I have never been parted.

  “Here is my complete story, Oh Commander of the Faithful. You’ve witnessed the whipping of my two sisters until they bleed. I carry on doing that every night, fearing that if I disobey Azraq’s orders they will die. That’s why you saw me weeping when they wept, drying their tears for them with my handkerchief, asking their forgiveness. I am certain that they are aware I have no choice but to inflict this pain and torture on them.”

  The Caliph was both shocked and amazed at the tale of the mistress of the house. He turned to the flogged girl.

  “Now tell us the cause of the marks on your chest and sides,” he asked her.

  And the young woman came forward and began.

  “Oh Commander of the Faithful …”

  The Doorkeeper’s Tale

  h Commander of the Faithful, I was living quietly and peacefully with my two sisters, the mistress of the house and the youngest one, and also, of course, my two elder sisters, who had by this time been turned into dogs by the jinni.

  One day, an old woman came to the door of our house, kissed the ground before me, and said, “I am a stranger to Baghdad and I have moved with my orphaned granddaughter to your neighbourhood. We have no one to invite to her wedding tonight, and so I implore you to honour us by accepting our invitation and thereby mend our broken hearts, for a wedding celebration without guests is like heaven without people.”

  She wept, and I felt sorry for the old woman and her granddaughter. “Let me assure you, my lady,” she said, “all the ladies of this city will attend if they hear that you are going to be there.”

  “I too am an orphan,” I said, “and so I will attend the wedding for the sake of the orphaned bride, and the Creator.”

  The old woman bent and kissed my feet. “Don’t trouble yourself, my lady, I shall come and fetch you around suppertime.”

  I dressed myself for the celebration in one of my elaborate gowns, which cost one thousand dinars, put on my pearls and gold jewellery and then made up my face, and sprinkled myself with musk and perfume from head to toe.

  The old woman arrived to find me waiting with my maids. She smiled broadly, kissing my hands. “Every lady I invited has accepted, and now they are all waiting for you,” she told me.

  I smiled back. What the old woman had said was true: I was famed throughout Baghdad for my enormous inheritance and prosperous lifestyle. For when our parents died, they left us five sisters a great deal of money, and my sister, the mistress of the house, who looked after my other sister and me, had capitalised on our inheritance through her success in taking over the family business.

  We set out, the old woman leading the way, while my maids walked behind me. Soon we stopped at a clean, swept alleyway, shimmering like a mirror, with a golden lamp above a grand door. The old woman knocked at the door and a slave opened it; silk carpets were laid everywhere and candles lit from the door to the hall. The sumptuous furniture was encrusted with precious stones. And yet I was puzzled to hear no clamour of a wedding; neither the beating of tambourines, nor singing, nor the melody of the oud.

  A beautiful young lady approached and greeted me, and I noted that she was not dressed as a bride. Seeing my puzzlement, she spoke at once. “I have a brother who is far more handsome than me. He noticed you on several occasions and admired your beauty and so he made enquiries and learned that you were the daughter of a great merchant, now dead. He is the head of our clan and he has decided to seek your hand in marriage. What do you say?”

  I had fallen into a trap and I was completely alone. “But then who is the old woman?” I asked.

  “She is the one who raised my brother. I hope you will forgive her for playing this trick on you, for she adores him.”

  The girl clapped her hands and a door opened and a handsome man emerged, dressed in clothes fit for a prince. I was attracted to him immediately, but as we sat together and talked, I was captivated. Seeing our harmony, and that we were in love, his sister clapped her hands once more, and a witness and a judge came through the same door. The marriage contract was drawn up and sig
ned.

  “Now, I want you to take a solemn oath never to look or talk to another man, under any circumstances,” the young man said to me.

  He handed me the divine Qur’an and I swore to obey his wish, thinking all the while, why would I give another man even a glance, when I had such a handsome and sweet husband?

  I sent my maids back to my two sisters to give them the happy news, while we spent the best of sensual nights together. If anything, his behaviour became more ardent with each day that passed. He showered me with love and favours. We lived in happiness for a whole month, until one day I asked his permission to go to the market and he consented, on condition that the old woman accompanied me.

  The old woman suggested we go to a shop owned by a young man who had every fabric one could desire. Once inside, I asked the old woman to have him show us his best stock.

  “Ask him directly,” the old woman said.

  “Have you forgotten that I have sworn and promised my husband not to look at or utter a word to another man?” I whispered.

  “Show us the best fabrics you have,” the old woman said to the young man. The owner immediately brought out, from a wooden box, sequined fabrics of such splendour and beauty that I gasped in amazement.

  I whispered to the old woman to ask the price of three which I most desired.

  To my mortification, he answered, “These three cloths are priceless. I will not sell them, for either silver or gold, but only for one kiss on this lady’s cheek.”

  At this I took a few steps back in horror, exclaiming, “Oh, God forbid!”

  “Your husband forbade you to look at or to speak to a man, and you won’t be doing either. Just turn your face to him and he will kiss it. That’s all, unless you’ve really changed your mind about having these beautiful fabrics,” the old woman whispered in my ear.

  I yielded to temptation and turned my face to him. But the man sank his teeth into my cheek, with all his might, and bit off a piece of flesh. I screamed and passed out.

  When I opened my eyes, I found myself clasped to the bosom of the old woman, outside the closed fabric shop. Seeing that I’d come to my senses, she said sadly, “Oh my lady, God has saved you from something even more horrible. Get up, let us hurry home.”