The third tells how my life and patience waste away;
The fourth says: ‘All the passion still remains.’
The fifth asks: ‘When shall my eyes rest on you?’
And the sixth: ‘On what day shall we meet?’
At the end of the letter he wrote: ‘This letter comes from the captive of desire, held in the prison of longing, whose only chance of freedom lies in union and a meeting that follows after remoteness and separation. Parting from loved ones has left him to endure the pain and torture of passion.’ With tears pouring from his eyes, he then wrote these lines:
I have written to you as my tears flood down,
Falling from my eyes in ceaseless streams.
But I am not one to despair of the grace of God;
A day may come on which we two shall meet.
He folded the letter, sealed it and gave it to the old woman, saying: ‘Take this to Princess Dunya.’ ‘To hear is to obey,’ she said, and he then handed her a thousand dinars, saying: ‘Accept this as a friendly gift from me, mother.’ She took the money, blessed him and left, walking back to Princess Dunya, who, when she saw her, said: ‘Nurse, what did he ask for, so that we can fulfil his request?’ ‘Lady,’ the old woman replied, ‘he sent me with this letter, but I don’t know what is in it.’ She handed the letter to Dunya, who took it, read it and, after having understood its meaning, exclaimed: ‘What are things coming to when this trader sends me messages and writes to me?’ She slapped her own face and said: ‘With my position, am I to have connections with the rabble? Oh, Oh!’ and she added: ‘Were it not for my fear of God, I would have him killed and crucified over his shop.’
‘What is in the letter that has upset and disturbed you?’ asked the old woman. ‘I wonder whether it is some complaint about injustice and whether he is asking payment for the material.’ ‘Damn you,’ said Dunya, ‘it is not about that. There is nothing in it but words of love. This is all thanks to you, for otherwise how could this devil have known about me?’ ‘Lady,’ answered the old woman, ‘you sit in your high palace and no one, not even the birds of the air, can reach you. May you and your youthfulness be free from blame and reproach. The dogs may bark, but this means nothing to you, who are a princess and the daughter of a king. Don’t blame me for bringing you the letter, for I had no idea what was in it. My advice is that you should send him a reply, threaten him with death and tell him to give up this wild talk. That will finish the matter for him and he will not do the same thing again.’ Princess Dunya said: ‘I’m afraid that if I write to him, this may stir his desire for me.’ ‘When he hears the threats and warnings, he will draw back,’ said the old woman.
The princess told her to fetch an inkstand, paper and a brass pen. When these had been brought, she wrote the following lines:
You make a pretence of love and claim sad sleeplessness,
Talking of passion and your cares;
Deluded man, do you seek union with the moon?
Has anyone got what he wanted from the moon?
I advise you to give up your quest;
Abandon it, for in it there is danger.
If you use words like these again,
You will be punished harshly at my hands.
I swear by Him Who created man from sperm
And caused the sun and the moon to spread their light,
If you should dare to talk of this again,
I shall have you crucified upon a tree.
She folded the letter, gave it to the old woman and said: ‘Hand this to him and tell him to stop talking in this way.’ ‘To hear is to obey,’ replied the old woman, who took the letter joyfully and went to her house, where she spent the night. In the morning she set off for Taj al-Muluk’s shop and found him waiting for her. When he saw her, he almost flew up into the air for joy, and when she approached, he rose to meet her. He made her sit beside him, and she produced the note, handed it to him and told him to read it. ‘Princess Dunya was angry when she read your letter,’ she said, ‘but I humoured her and joked with her until I made her laugh. Her feelings towards you softened and she wrote you a reply.’ Taj al-Muluk thanked her for that and told ‘Aziz to give her a thousand dinars, but when he read the note and understood what it meant, he wept bitterly. The old woman felt sympathy for him and was grieved by his tears and complaints. ‘My son,’ she said, ‘what is in this paper that has made you weep?’ ‘She threatens to kill me and to crucify me,’ he answered, ‘and she forbids me to write to her, but if I do not, then it would be better for me to die than to live. So take the answer to her letter and let her do what she wants.’ ‘By your youthful life,’ said the old woman, ‘I must join you in risking my own life in order to get you to your goal and to help you reach what you have in mind.’ ‘I shall reward you for everything you do,’ said Taj al-Muluk, ‘and you will find it weighed out in your favour on the Day of Judgement. You are experienced in the running of affairs and you know the various types of intrigue. All difficulties are easy for you to overcome, and God has power over all things.’
He then took a piece of paper and wrote these lines on it:
She threatened me with death, alas for me,
But this would bring me rest; death is decreed for all,
And it is easier for a lover than long life
When he is kept from his beloved and oppressed.
Visit a lover who has few to help him, for God’s sake;
I am your slave, and slaves are held captive.
My lady, pity me in my love for you.
All those who love the nobly born must be excused.
After writing the lines, he sighed deeply and wept until the old woman wept too. She then took the paper from him and told him to be of good cheer and to console himself, for she would bring him to his goal.
Morning now dawned and Shahrazad broke off from what she had been allowed to say. Then, when it was the one hundred and thirty-fourth night, SHE CONTINUED:
I have heard, O fortunate king, that Taj al-Muluk wept, but the old woman told him to be of good cheer and to console himself, for she would bring him to his goal. She left him on fire with anxiety and set off for the princess. Dunya had been so enraged by Taj al-Muluk’s letter that the old woman found that her colour had changed, and when she was given the second note, she grew even angrier. ‘Didn’t I tell you that he would desire me?’ she said to the old woman. ‘What is this dog that he should do such a thing?’ the woman replied. ‘Go to him,’ ordered Dunya, ‘and tell him that if he sends me another letter, I shall have his head cut off.’ The old woman said: ‘Write this down for him in a letter and I shall take it with me, to make him even more frightened.’ Dunya then took a piece of paper on which she wrote these lines:
You who are heedless of the blows of fate,
You race for union, but are bound to fail.
Do you suppose, deluded man, that you can reach a star?
The shining moon remains outside your grasp.
How is it that you set your hopes on me
Hoping for union, to embrace my slender form?
Give up this quest of yours for fear I force on you
A day of gloom to whiten the parting of the hair.
She folded the letter and handed it to the old woman, who took it off to Taj al-Muluk. When he saw her, he got to his feet and said: ‘May God never deprive me of the blessing of your coming.’ The old woman told him to take the reply to his letter and when he had taken it and read it, he burst into tears. ‘I would like someone to kill me now so that I might find rest, for to be slain would be easier for me to bear than my present position.’ He then took the inkstand, pen and paper and wrote a note with these lines:
You who are my wish, seek no harsh parting;
Visit a lover drowning in his love.
Do not think this harshness will allow me life;
The breath of life will leave with the beloved.
He folded the letter and gave it to the old woman, saying: ‘Don’t reproach me
for putting you to trouble without reward.’ Telling ‘Aziz to pay her a thousand dinars, he then said to her: ‘Mother, this note will lead either to complete union or to a final break.’ ‘My son,’ she replied, ‘by God, all I want is your good and I would like you to have her, for you are the radiant moon and she is the rising sun. If I fail to bring you together, then my life is of no use. I have reached the age of ninety, having spent my days in wiles and trickery, so how can I fail to unite a pair in illicit love?’ She then took her leave of him and went off, having encouraged him.
When she came into the presence of Princess Dunya, she had hidden the paper in her hair. When she sat down there, she scratched her head and asked the princess to examine her head for lice, saying that it was a long time since she had been to the baths. The princess rolled back her sleeves to the elbow, let down the old woman’s hair and started to search. The note fell out and when the princess saw it, she asked what it was. ‘It must have stuck to me while I was sitting in the trader’s shop,’ the old woman said. ‘Give it to me so that I can take it back to him, as there may be a bill there which he will need.’ The princess opened it up and read it, and when she had seen what was in it, she said to the old woman: ‘This is one of your tricks and but for the fact that you brought me up, I would strike out at you here and now. God has plagued me with this merchant, and everything that he has done to me has been thanks to you. I don’t know from what land he has come; no one else has been able to take such liberties with me, and I am afraid lest this become public, especially since it concerns a man who is not of my race and is not one of my equals.’ The old woman turned to her and said: ‘No one will dare talk about it for fear of your power and the awe in which your father is held. There can be no harm in sending him back an answer.’ ‘Nurse,’ the princess said, ‘this man is a devil. How has he dared to talk like this? He doesn’t fear the king’s power, and I don’t know what to do about him. If I order him to be killed, that would not be right, but if I let him be, he will grow even more daring.’ ‘Write him a note,’ said the old woman, ‘so that he may be warned off.’
The princess asked for paper, an inkstand and a pen, after which she wrote these lines:
You have long been censured, but too much folly leads you astray;
How many verses must I write to hold you back?
The more you are forbidden, the more you covet;
If you keep this secret, that is the only thing I shall approve.
Conceal your love; never let it be known;
For if you speak, I shall not listen to you,
And if you talk of this again,
The raven of parting will croak your death-knell.
Death will soon swoop down on you,
And you will rest buried beneath the earth.
Deluded man, you will leave your family to regret your loss,
Mourning that you have gone from them for ever.
She then folded the paper and gave it to the old woman, who took it and set off to Taj al-Muluk. She gave it to him and, having read it, he realized that princess was hard-hearted and that he would not be able to reach her. He took his complaint to the vizier, asking him to devise a good plan. The vizier told him that the only thing that might be of use would be for him to write her a letter calling down a curse on her. Taj al-Muluk said: ‘ ‘Aziz, my brother, write for me, as you know what to say.’ So ‘Aziz took a piece of paper and wrote:
Lord, by the five planets I ask You, rescue me
And lead the one who torments me to taste my grief.
You know I suffer from a burning passion;
She treats me harshly and is pitiless.
How long must I be tender in my sufferings?
How long will she oppress me in my feebleness?
I stray through endless floods of misery
And find no one to help me, oh my Lord.
How often do I try to forget her love!
It has destroyed my patience; how can I forget?
You keep me from the sweet union of love;
Are you yourself safe from the miseries of Time?
Are you not happy in your life, while, thanks to you,
I am an exile from my country and my kin?
‘Aziz then folded the letter and handed it to Taj al-Muluk, who read it with admiration and handed it to the old woman. She took it and went to Princess Dunya, to whom she gave the letter. When Dunya had read it and digested its contents, she was furiously angry and said: ‘This ill-omened old woman is responsible for all that has happened to me.’ She called to her slave girls and eunuchs and said: ‘Seize this damned scheming old creature and beat her with your slippers.’ They fell upon her and beat her until she fainted. When she had recovered consciousness, the princess said to her: ‘By God, you wicked old woman, were it not for my fear of Almighty God I would kill you.’ She then told the servants to beat her again, which they did until she fainted, after which on her orders they dragged her off face downwards and threw her outside in front of the door of the palace.
When she had recovered, she got up and moved off, walking and sitting down at intervals, until she reached her house. She waited until morning and then got up and went to Taj al-Muluk, to whom she told everything that had happened to her. Finding this hard to bear, he said: ‘I am distressed by this, mother, but all things are controlled by fate and destiny.’ She told him to be of good heart and to take comfort, adding: ‘I shall not stop trying until I have brought the two of you together and fetched you to this harlot who has me beaten so painfully.’ Taj al-Muluk then asked her what had caused the princess to hate men, and when he was told that this was because of a dream that she had had, he asked what the dream had been.
The old woman replied: ‘One night when the princess was asleep she saw in a dream a hunter spreading out a net on the ground and scattering wheat around it. He sat down close by and all the birds there came to the net, among them being a pair of pigeons, male and female. While she was watching the net, the male pigeon got caught in it. It started to struggle and all the other birds took fright and flew off, but the female pigeon came back. She circled over him and then came down to the part of the net where her mate’s foot was trapped, pulling at it with her beak until the foot was freed, after which the two of them flew off. The hunter, who had not noticed what was happening, came up and readjusted the net before sitting down at a distance from it. Within an hour, the birds had come down again, and this time it was the female pigeon that was trapped. All the birds took fright, including the male, who did not return for his mate, and so, when the hunter arrived, he took her and cut her throat. The princess woke from her dream in alarm and said: “All males are like this; there is no good in them, and no men are of any good to women.” ’
When she had finished her tale, Taj al-Muluk said: ‘Mother, I want to look at her once, even if this means my death, so think of some way for me to do this.’ The old woman said: ‘Know that beneath her palace she has a pleasure garden to which she goes once a month from her postern door. In ten days, it will be time for her next visit, and when she is on the point of going out, I shall come and tell you so that you can go and meet her. Take care not to leave the garden, for it may be that if she sees how handsome you are, she may fall in love with you, and love is the most potent motive for union.’ ‘To hear is to obey,’ said Taj al-Muluk, and he and ‘Aziz then left the shop and, taking the old woman with them, they went back to their house, which they showed to her. Taj al-Muluk said to ‘Aziz: ‘Brother, I don’t need the shop any more. I have got what I wanted from it and so I give it to you, with all its contents, as you have come with me to a foreign country, leaving your own land.’
‘Aziz accepted the gift and the two sat talking, with Taj al-Muluk asking ‘Aziz about the strange circumstances in which he had found himself and about his adventures, while ‘Aziz gave him an account of everything that had happened to him. After that they went to the vizier and told him what Taj al-Muluk had determined to do, and asked him
how they should set about it. ‘Come with me to the garden,’ said the vizier, and they each put on their most splendid clothes and went out, followed by three mamluks. They made their way to the garden, where they saw quantities of trees and many streams, with the gardener sitting by the gate. After they had exchanged greetings, the vizier handed the man a hundred dinars and said: ‘Please take this money and buy us something to eat, as we are strangers here. I have with me these sons of mine and I want to show them the sights.’ The gardener took the dinars and told them: ‘Go in and look around, for it is all yours. Then you can sit down and wait for me to bring you food.’
He then went off to the market, and the vizier, Taj al-Muluk and ‘Aziz entered the garden. After a while he brought back a roast lamb and bread as white as cotton, which he placed in front of them. They ate and drank, and he then produced sweetmeats, which they ate, and after this they washed their hands and sat talking. ‘Tell me about this place,’ the vizier then said to the gardener. ‘Do you own or rent it?’ ‘It’s not mine,’ replied the gardener. ‘It belongs to the king’s daughter, Princess Dunya.’ ‘What is your monthly pay?’ asked the vizier. ‘One dinar, and no more,’ replied the man. The vizier looked at the garden and saw that it contained a high pavilion, but that this was old. He then said to the gardener: ‘Shaikh, I would like to do a good deed by which you may remember me.’ When the man asked him what he was thinking of, by way of reply he said: ‘Accept these three hundred dinars.’ When the gardener heard him talk of gold, he said: ‘Master, do whatever you want.’ The vizier gave him the money and said: ‘If it is the will of Almighty God, we shall achieve something good here.’
The three then left the gardener and went back to their house, where they passed the night. The next day, the vizier summoned a house painter, an artist and a skilled goldsmith, and he produced for them all the tools they would need. He took them into the garden and told them to whitewash the pavilion and to decorate it with various kinds of pictures. He had gold and lapis lazuli fetched and he told the artist to produce on one side of the hall a picture of a hunter who had spread a net into which birds had fallen, with a female pigeon entangled by its beak. When the artist had painted this, the vizier told him to repeat the motif on the other side of the hall, with the pigeon alone captured by the hunter, who had put a knife to its throat. Opposite this there was to be the picture of a great hawk which had seized the male pigeon and sunk its claws into it. The artist completed the painting and when all three had finished the tasks set them by the vizier, he paid them their wages and they went off, as did the vizier and his companions. After taking leave of the gardener, they went home and sat talking.
The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights: Volume 1 Page 72