The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights: Volume 1
Page 81
If I do not fight for you, sister, I would wish
To be struck down and left as a prey for birds.
While I can, I shall fight to do you honour,
And afterwards this story will fill books.
When he had finished his poem, he said: ‘Sister, listen to what I have to say to you and the advice I am going to give you.’ ‘Willingly,’ she replied. ‘If I die,’ he went on, ‘do not allow anyone to possess you.’ At that, she struck herself on the face, saying: ‘God forbid, brother, that I should see you dead and then allow myself to be taken by our enemies.’ The youth then put out his hand to her and removed the veil from her face, so that she appeared to us like the sun coming out from below a cloud. He kissed her between her eyes and said goodbye, after which he turned to us and said: ‘Riders, are you here as guests or do you want to fight? If you are guests, I can give you good news of guest provisions, but if it is the shining moon that you want, come out one by one on to this battlefield.’
A brave rider then rode out and the youth said: ‘What is your name and the name of your father, for I have sworn not to kill anyone whose name is the same as mine and whose father’s name is the same as that of my father; if this is the case with you, I will hand the girl over to you.’ ‘My name is Bilal,’ the man said, and the youth replied with these lines:
What you say is a lie* and you have come
Acting with falsehood and with trickery.
If you are hardy, listen to my words,
For I am one who throws down heroes on the battlefield,
And my sharp sword is like a crescent moon.
Be ready for a thrust that makes the mountains shake.
The two riders charged each other and the youth struck Bilal on the breast, with the spear point coming out from behind his back. When the next man rode out, the youth recited:
You filthy dog, can the highly priced be equal to the low?
The noble lion pays no heed to his own life in battle.
With no delay, the youth left his opponent drowning in his own blood, and he then called for another challenger. One of us rode out against him, reciting:
There is fire in my heart as I come out to you,
Calling to my companions in the fight.
You have killed Arab chiefs, but not today
Will you escape from those who seek revenge.
When he heard this, the young man replied with these lines:
You evil devil, you have lied,
Coming with falsehood and untruth.
Today upon the battlefield
The deadly spear point is what you must face.
He then struck his opponent on the breast so that the spearhead came out from his back. At his challenge, a fourth rider came out, and when asked for his name, he replied: ‘Hilal.’ The youth recited:
You plunged mistakenly into my sea,
Carrying with you falsehood and all ills.
I am the one whose verses you can hear;
But before you know it, I shall snatch away your life.
The two then charged each other and exchanged blows, but the youth struck first and killed his opponent. He continued to kill all who came against him, and when I saw that my companions were dead, I said to myself: ‘If I fight, I shall be no match for him, but if I run away I shall be disgraced among the Bedouin.’ The youth allowed me no time to think. He pounced on me, seized me and dragged me from my saddle. I fell fainting, but when he raised his sword and was about to cut off my head, I clung to the skirt of his robe and he carried me off in his hand as though I were a sparrow.
When the girl saw that, she was delighted by what her brother had done and, coming up to him, she kissed him between the eyes. He handed me over to her, saying: ‘Look after this man and treat him well, for he is now under our control.’ She took me by the collar of my mail coat and started to lead me as one leads a dog. She then unfastened her brother’s breastplate, clothed him in a robe and set out an ivory chair for him. After he had taken his seat, she said: ‘May God whiten your honour and use you as a defence against misfortune.’ He replied to her with these lines:
My sister says on seeing me in battle,
With my horse’s blaze gleaming like the sun’s rays:
‘How splendid as a champion you are,
Whose prowess humbles lions in their coverts!’
I say: ‘Ask heroes about me,
When warriors take to flight.
I am known for good fortune and my resolution soars aloft.
Hammad, you have come out against a lion,
Who shows you death, that strikes you as a snake.’
On hearing these lines, I was confused and, looking at my situation and the captivity into which I had fallen, I cringed, but when I saw the beauty of the young man’s sister, I said to myself: ‘She is the cause of the trouble.’ I shed tears as I wondered at her loveliness and I recited these lines:
Friend, give up scolding and rebuking me,
For I shall pay no heed to any blame.
I am the captive of a young girl, to whose love
I was called when I first set eyes on her.
While I love her, her brother watches me,
A man of high ambition and of power.
The girl produced food for her brother and I was glad when he invited me to eat with him, feeling sure that I would not be killed. When he had finished, she brought him a jug of wine and, applying himself to this, he drank until the wine went to his head and his face grew red. He turned to me and said: ‘Damn you, Hammad, do you know me or not?’ ‘By your life,’ I replied, ‘the only thing that I have in quantity is ignorance.’ He said: ‘I am Hammad, son of ‘Abbad, son of Tamim, son of Tha‘laba. God has granted you your life and spared you so that you can marry.’ He then drank a toast to me, followed by a second, a third and a fourth. I drank all these down, and he drank with me and made me swear that I would never betray him. I swore by fifteen hundred oaths that I would never do this and that I would act as his helper, at which he told his sister to bring me ten robes of silk. She did this and spread them over me, among them being the one that I am wearing now. He then told her to bring me one of the best she-camels, and she brought one that was laden with treasures and provisions. The sorrel stallion was the next thing that he told her to fetch for me, and after that he presented all these things to me as a gift.
I stayed with them for three days, eating and drinking, and I still have the presents that I was given. After the three days, my host said to me: ‘Hammad, my brother, I need a little sleep to rest myself. I can trust you with my life, and if you see galloping riders, don’t be afraid of them, for you must know that they will be from the Banu Tha‘laba, coming to fight me.’ So saying, he put his sword beneath his head and dozed off. When he was sound asleep, the devil prompted me to kill him and so I got up quickly, drew out his sword from beneath his head and struck him with a blow that severed the head from his body. When his sister realized what I had done, she sprang out from the tent, threw herself on her brother, tore her clothes and recited these lines:
Bring to my family this unhappiest of news:
No man escapes the decrees of God, the Judge.
My brother, you are thrown down on the ground;
Your face in beauty matched the circle of the moon.
You met them on a day of evil omen
And your straight spear was broken.
Now you are dead, no one will ride with pleasure,
Nor shall a mother bear a son like you.
Hammad killed you today, breaking his oaths.
He has betrayed his covenant to reach his goal,
But Satan is false in all that he commands.
When she had finished her poem, she said: ‘You child of accursed stock, why did you betray and kill my brother? He was going to send you back to your own lands with provisions and gifts and he had also intended to marry me to you at the beginning of the month.’ She then drew a sword that she had with her and, se
tting its hilt in the ground and its point on her breast, she fell on it until it emerged from her back and she collapsed, dead. I grieved for her and repented tearfully, when repentance was of no use. Then I went quickly to the tent and took whatever valuables could easily be carried, after which I went on my way. Because I was afraid and in a hurry, I paid no attention to any of my companions and I didn’t bury the girl or the young man. This story of mine is more remarkable than my first tale of the servant girl whom I kidnapped from Jerusalem.
When Nuzhat al-Zaman heard what the Bedouin had to say, the light became dark in her eyes.
Morning now dawned and Shahrazad broke off from what she had been allowed to say. Then, when it was the hundred and forty-fifth night, SHE CONTINUED:
I have heard, O fortunate king, that when Nuzhat al-Zaman heard what the Bedouin had to say, the light became dark in her eyes. She got up, drew a sword and struck Hammad the Bedouin on the shoulder, so that the blade came out through the tendons of his neck. When the people there asked why she had been in such a hurry to kill him, she exclaimed: ‘Praise be to God, Who has permitted me to live until I could avenge myself with my own hand.’ She then told the slaves to drag away the corpse by the legs and throw it to the dogs.
The kings then turned to the remaining two robbers, one of whom was a black slave. ‘What is your name?’ they asked him, adding, ‘and tell us the truth.’ ‘My name is Ghadban,’ he said, and he told them of his encounter with Princess Abriza, the daughter of Hardub, king of Rum, and how he had fled after killing her. Before he had finished speaking, King Rumzan had cut off his head with his sword, calling down praises on God Who had allowed him to avenge his mother with his own hand, and telling the others what he had learned about the slave from his nurse, Marjana. They then turned to the third man, who turned out to be the camel driver who had been hired by the people of Jerusalem to carry Dau’ al-Makan to the hospital at Damascus, but who, instead, had taken him and thrown him down by the bath-house furnace, before going off on his way. ‘Tell us your story truthfully,’ they instructed him, and so he told them of his encounter with the sick Dau’ al-Makan and how he had been hired by the people of Jerusalem to take him to the hospital at Damascus. He went on to explain how he had taken the money and fled, after having thrown his patient on the dunghill next to the furnace of the bath house. When he had finished his account, King Kana-ma-Kana took a sword and struck off his head, saying: ‘Praise be to God, Who allowed me to live until I could repay this treacherous man for what he did to my father, for this is the very same account that I heard from my father, King Dau’ al-Makan.’
The kings now said to one another: ‘There only remains now Shawahi, the old woman known as Dhat al-Dawahi. She is the cause of all these troubles, for it was she who plunged us into disaster. Who will fetch her for us so that we can take vengeance on her and clear away this disgrace?’ King Rumzan, Kana-ma-Kana’s uncle, said: ‘She must be brought here,’ and immediately he wrote a letter which he sent to her, she being his great-grandmother. In this letter he told her that he had conquered the lands of Damascus, Mosul and Iraq, destroying the army of the Muslims and capturing their leaders. He added: ‘I would like you to join me, bringing with you Queen Sophia, the daughter of Afridun, the emperor of Constantinople, and any of the Christian leaders you want. Do not bring any troops, for the lands are secure and under our control.’
When the letter reached Shawahi, she read it and recognized the handwriting of King Rumzan. In her delight she made immediate preparations for the journey, taking with her Queen Sophia, Nuzhat al-Zaman’s mother, together with an escort. When her party reached Baghdad, a messenger went forward to tell the kings of her arrival. ‘What we should do,’ said Rumzan, ‘is to go to meet her dressed as Franks so that we may be secure from her trickery and wiles.’ The others agreed to this and put on Frankish dress. ‘By the truth of the Lord we worship,’ exclaimed Qudiya-fa-Kana, ‘if I did not know you, I would say that you were Franks.’ Rumzan went ahead of them as they started out to meet the old woman with an escort of a thousand riders. When they saw each other, Rumzan dismounted and hurried towards Shawahi. On seeing him and recognizing him, she dismounted and embraced him, but he squeezed her ribs so hard that he almost cracked them. ‘What is this, my son?’ she said, but before she had finished speaking, Kana-ma-Kana and the vizier Dandan came up to them, and with a shout the riders rode at her escort of slaves of both sexes, captured them all and then returned to Baghdad. On Rumzan’s orders, the city was adorned with decorations for three days and then Shawahi was brought out wearing a red conical cap of palm leaves, covered with donkey’s dung, preceded by a herald who called out: ‘This is the reward of those who dare to attack kings and the children of kings.’ She was crucified on the gate of Baghdad, and when her companions saw what had happened to her, they all embraced Islam.
Kana-ma-Kana, Rumzan his uncle, Nuzhat al-Zaman and the vizier Dandan all expressed their wonder at this remarkable sequence of events and they gave orders for the scribes to write it down in books so that it could be read in later times. They passed the rest of their lives in great pleasure and happiness until they were visited by the destroyer of delights and the parter of companions. So ends the story of the vicissitudes of Time experienced by King ‘Umar ibn al-Nu‘man, his sons Sharkan and Dau’ al-Makan, Kana-ma-Kana his grandson, Nuzhat al-Zaman his daughter and her daughter Qudiya-fa-Kana.
King Shahriyar now told Shahrazad: ‘I want you to tell me a story about birds.’ Her sister said to her: ‘In all this time, it is only tonight that I have seen the king looking happy, and I hope that your affair with him will turn out well.’ The king then fell asleep.
Morning now dawned and Shahrazad broke off from what she had been allowed to say. Then, when it was the hundred and forty-sixth night, SHE SAID:
I have heard, O fortunate king, that once upon a time, in an earlier age, a peacock and his mate sheltered by the seashore in a place that was full of lions and other wild beasts, but which had many trees and streams. At night, for fear of these beasts, the peacock and the peahen would take refuge in one of the trees, coming out in the morning to look for food. They carried on like this until they became so afraid that they started to look for some other place of shelter. In the course of their search, they caught sight of an island full of trees and streams. They flew down there and ate from its fruit and drank from its streams, but while they were doing this, a duck came up in a state of great alarm, rushing on until it came to the tree on which the two of them were perched, after which it became calm. The peacock was sure that there must be a strange story attached to this duck and so he asked her about herself and the reason for her fright. She told him: ‘I am sick with worry and it is the son of Adam whom I fear. Beware, beware of the sons of Adam!’ ‘Now that you have come to us, there is no need to be afraid,’ said the peacock. ‘Praise be to God,’ said the duck, ‘Who has dispelled my cares and worries! I have come to you hoping for your friendship.’
When she had finished speaking, the peahen came down, welcomed her warmly and said: ‘Don’t be afraid. How can the son of Adam reach us when we are on this island in the middle of the sea? He cannot get to us by land and he cannot reach us by sea. So cheer up and tell us what has happened to you and what you have experienced at his hands.’ TO WHICH THE DUCK SAID:
Know, peahen, that I have lived all my life in safety on this island without seeing anything unpleasant. Then, one night as I slept, a son of Adam appeared to me in a dream and spoke to me and I spoke to him. I heard a voice saying: ‘Duck, beware of the son of Adam! Don’t be deceived by what he says or by what he suggests to you, for he is full of wiles and trickery. Beware, beware of his guile, for he is a deceiver and a trickster, as the poet says:
He will offer you sweetness on the tip of his tongue,
But then he will trick you like a fox.
Know that the son of Adam works his wiles against the fish, taking them out of the sea; he shoots birds with clay pellets an
d brings down elephants with his cunning. Nothing is safe from the evil that he does and neither bird nor beast can escape from him. I have now told you what I have heard about the son of Adam.
I woke up from my dream in terror and up till now I have not been able to relax for fear of the son of Adam, lest he surprise me by means of some trick and catch me in his nets. By the end of the day, my strength had weakened and my spirits had failed. I wanted to eat and drink and so I went away, troubled and gloomy, and reached a mountain, where at the entrance of a cave I found a tawny lion cub who was delighted to see me, admiring my colour and my delicate shape. He called out to me and told me to come up to him. When I did, he asked me my name and what kind of creature I was. ‘My name is Duck,’ I replied, ‘and I am a bird.’ Then I asked why he kept on sitting there, and he said: ‘The reason is that my father, the lion, has been warning me for days about the son of Adam, and last night in a dream this son of Adam appeared to me.’
The lion cub then told me the same story that I have told you, and having heard it, I said: ‘Lion, I come to you for refuge and I implore you to make up your mind to kill the son of Adam. He has filled me with great fear for my life, and I am even more afraid because you are afraid of him, although you are the king of the beasts.’ So it was, sister, that I continued to warn the lion cub about the son of Adam, advising him to kill him, until he suddenly got up and walked off with me following behind him, as he lashed his back with his tail. We went on until we came to a fork in the road and we saw rising dust which cleared away to show beneath it a stray donkey, with no trappings, galloping and running at times and at times rolling in the dust. When the lion cub saw him, he roared at him and the donkey came up submissively. ‘You feeble-witted animal,’ said the lion cub, ‘what kind of creature are you and why have you come here?’ ‘Son of the sultan,’ replied the donkey, ‘I am a donkey and I have come here in flight from the son of Adam.’ ‘Are you afraid that he may kill you?’ asked the lion cub. ‘No, prince,’ said the donkey, ‘but I’m afraid that he may trick me and mount me. He has a thing called a pack saddle, which he puts on my back; things called girths, which he ties around my belly; a so-called crupper, which he sticks beneath my tail; and what he calls a bridle, which he puts in my mouth. He makes a goad for me with which he pricks me; he forces me to run more than I can; when I stumble he curses me; and if I bray he heaps abuse on me. When I grow old and cannot run, he will make a wooden pack saddle for me and hand me over to the water carriers. They will load water from the river on to my back in water skins or other containers such as jars, and I’ll be degraded, humiliated and weary until I die, when they’ll throw me on a rubbish dump for the dogs. What greater distress can there be than this and what greater misfortune?’