Arabian Nights

by Richard Burton

  So he rose, leaned on his staff, staggered toward the damsel, and gave her a kiss. Right after that he gave her the jewels and ornaments, whereupon she rejoiced and they all went on their way laughing at him.

  The next day they came again to the garden, and they found him seated in the same place with more jewels and ornaments than before spread before him.

  “Oh sheikh,” they asked him, “what are you going to do with all this jewelry?”

  “I want to wed one of you again,” he answered, “just as I did yesterday.”

  So the princess said, “I’ll marry you to this damsel.”

  And the prince went up to her, kissed her, and gave her the jewels, and they all went their way.

  After seeing how generous the old man was to her slave girls, the princess said to herself, “I have more right to these fine things than my slaves, and there’s surely no danger involved in this game.” So when morning arrived, she went down by herself into the garden dressed as one of her own damsels, and she appeared all alone before the prince and said to him, “Old man, the king’s daughter has sent me to you so that you can marry me.”

  When he looked at her, he knew who she was. So he answered, “With all my heart and love,” and he gave her the finest and costliest of jewels and ornaments. Then he rose to kiss her, and since she was not on her guard and thought she had nothing to fear, he grabbed hold of her with his strong hands and threw her down on the ground, where he deprived her of her maidenhead. Then he pulled the beard from his face and said, “Do you recognize me?”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Behram, The King of Persia’s son,” he replied. “I’ve changed myself and have become a stranger to my people, all for your sake. And I have lavished my treasures for your love.”

  She rose from him in silence and did not say a word to him. Indeed, she was dazed by what had happened and felt that it was best to be silent, especially since she did not want to be shamed. All the while she was thinking to herself, “If I kill myself, it will be senseless, and if I have him put to death, there’s nothing that I’d really gain. The best thing for me to do is to elope with him to his own country.”

  So, after leaving him in the garden, she gathered together her money and treasures and sent him a message informing him what she intended to do and telling him to get ready to depart with his possessions and whatever else he needed. Then they set a rendezvous for their departure.

  At the appointed time they mounted racehorses and set out under cover of darkness, and by the next morning they had traveled a great distance. They kept traveling at a fast pace until they drew near his father’s capital in Persia, and when his father heard about his son’s coming, he rode out to meet him with his troops and was full of joy.

  After a few days went by, the king of Persia sent a splendid present to the princess’s father along with a letter to the effect that his daughter was with him and requested her wedding outfit. Al-Datma’s father greeted the messenger with a happy heart (for he thought he had lost his daughter and had been grieving for her). In response to the king’s letter, he summoned the kazi and the witnesses and drew up a marriage contract between his daughter and the prince of Persia. In addition, he bestowed robes of honor on the envoys from the king of Persia and sent his daughter her marriage equipage. After the official wedding took place, Prince Behram lived with her until death came and sundered their union.

  No sooner had Scheherazade concluded her tale than she said, “And yet, oh king, this tale is no more wondrous than the tale of the three apples.”

  The Tale of the Three Apples

  One night the Caliph Harun al-Rashid summoned his vizier Ja’afar and said to him, “I want to go down into the city and question the common folk about the conduct of those charged with carrying out my laws. If the commoners complain about any of my officers, we will dismiss them, and those they praise, we will promote.”

  “As you wish,” replied Ja’afar.

  So the caliph went with Ja’afar and the eunuch Masrur to the town and walked about the streets and markets, and as they were passing through a narrow alley, they came upon a very old man with a fishing net and crate for carrying small fish on his head. In his hand he held a staff, and he walked at a leisurely pace and chanted a song about poor people.

  When the caliph heard his verses, he said to Ja’afar, “I’m sure that this man’s verses are about his own sorry state.” Then he approached him and asked, “Tell me, oh sheikh, what do you do for a living?”

  “My lord,” he answered, “I’m a fisherman with a family to support, and I’ve been out between midday and this time, and Allah hasn’t granted me a thing to feed my family. I can’t even pawn myself to buy them a supper, and I hate and am disgusted by my life and I hanker after death.”

  “Listen to me,” said the caliph. “If you return with us to the banks of the Tigris and cast your net, I’ll pay you a hundred gold pieces for whatever turns up.”

  The man rejoiced when he heard these words and said, “Fine with me!”

  Upon arriving at the river he cast his net and waited awhile. Then he hauled in the rope and dragged the net ashore, and in it was a heavy chest with a padlock on it. The caliph examined the chest and found it to be very heavy. So he gave the fisherman two hundred dinars and sent him about his business.

  In the meantime, Ja’afar and Masrur carried the chest to the palace, set it down, and lit some candles. Then the caliph told them to break it open, and they found a basket of palm leaves tied with red worsted. After cutting this open, they saw a piece of carpet, which they lifted out of the chest. Then they saw a woman’s mantilla folded in four, which they also pulled out, and at the bottom of the chest they came upon a young lady, fair as a silver ingot, who had been slain and cut into nineteen pieces. When the caliph gazed upon her, he cried out, “Alas!” and soon tears ran down his cheeks as he turned to Ja’afar and said, “Can we allow folk to be murdered in my realm and cast into the river? This woman is our burden and responsibility! By Allah, we must avenge her, find the murderer, and make him die the worst of deaths!” After a brief pause, he added, “Now, as surely as we are descended from the sons of Abbas, if you don’t bring me the murderer so I can bring him to justice, I’ll hang you at the gate of my palace, you and forty of your kith and kin by your side.”

  Since the caliph was furious and fuming, Ja’afar requested three days to find the murderer, and the caliph granted his request. So Ja’afar returned to his own house, full of sorrow, and said to himself, “How shall I find the man who murdered this damsel? If I bring the caliph someone other than the murderer, the Lord will hold it against me. In truth, I don’t know what to do.”

  Ja’afar stayed in his house for three days, and on the fourth the caliph sent one of the chamberlains for him, and when Ja’afar arrived before him, he asked, “Where is the murderer of the damsel?”

  “Oh, Commander of the Faithful,” Ja’afar replied, “I haven’t been able to find the murderer. It’s never been my duty to track down murderers, and I don’t even know where to begin looking.”

  The caliph was furious at his answer and ordered his executioners to hang his minister in front of the palace gate. Before the hanging was to take place, however, he commanded that a crier be sent to announce the execution throughout the streets of Baghdad.

  The people flocked from all quarters of the city to witness the hanging of Ja’afar and his kinsmen, even though they did not know why they were to be hung. After the gallows were erected, Ja’afar and the others were made to stand underneath to be ready for the execution, but while every eye looked for the caliph’s signal and the crowd wept for Ja’afar and his cousins, a young man suddenly appeared and began pushing his way through the people until he stood immediately before the vizier. He had a fair face and dressed neatly and looked like the radiant moon with bright black eyes, white brow, rosy cheeks, fluff instead of a beard, and a mole like a grain of ambergris. As the vizier looked at him, the young man
said, “I’ve come to rescue you, my lord, for I am the man who slew the woman you found in the chest! So hang me, and let justice be done in her name!”

  When Ja’afar heard the youth’s confession, he rejoiced, but he was sorry for the handsome young man. Just then, while they were still talking, another man, much older, pushed forward through the crowd of people until he came to Ja’afar and the youth. After saluting the vizier, he said, “Don’t believe the words of this young man, my lord! I am the one who murdered the damsel. So take her vengeance out on me. I demand this before Almighty Allah!”

  “Oh vizier,” the youth intervened, “this old man has become senile, and he doesn’t know what he’s saying. I’m the one who murdered her. So take her vengeance out on me!”

  “My son,” said the old man, “you’re young and can still appreciate the joys of the world. I’m old and weary and have had enough of the world. I want to offer my life as a ransom for you and for the vizier and his cousins. No one murdered the damsel but me. So, by Allah, I want you to hang me right away! There’s no life left in me now that hers is gone.”

  The vizier was astonished by this strange exchange of words, and he brought the young man and the old man before the caliph. After kissing the ground seven times, he said, “Oh Commander of the Faithful, I bring you the murderer of the damsel!”

  “Where is he?” asked the caliph.

  “The young man says that he’s the murderer,” replied the vizier, “but this old man says that he’s lying, and maintains that he’s the murderer. So I have brought you both of them, and they are now standing before you.”

  The caliph looked at the old man and the young man and asked, “Which of you killed the girl?”

  The young man responded, “No one slew her but me.”

  The old man answered, “The truth is that I’m the murderer.”

  Then the caliph said to Ja’afar, “Take the two, and hang them both.”

  But Ja’afar replied, “It would be an injustice to do that, my lord, since one of them is certainly the murderer.”

  “By Allah,” cried the youth, “I’m the one who slew the damsel,” and he went on to describe the way she was murdered and the basket, the mantilla and the bit of carpet, and, in fact, all that the caliph had found with her.

  So the caliph was sure that the young man was the murderer, and he was puzzled why he had killed the maiden. “Tell me,” he said, “why have you confessed without the bastinado? What brought you here to surrender your life, and what made you say, ‘Take her vengeance out on me’?”

  “My lord,” the youth answered, “this woman was my wife and the mother of my children. She was also my first cousin and the daughter of this old man here, my paternal uncle. When I married her, she was a virgin, and Allah blessed me with three male children by her. She loved me and served me, and I saw no evil in her, for I also loved her with a great deal of affection. Now on the first day of this month, she fell ill with a terrible sickness, and after I had the physicians attend her, she recovered but very slowly. When I wanted her to go to the Hammam bath, she said, ‘There is something I long for before I go to the bath, and I have a tremendous longing for it.’ ‘You only need to ask,’ I responded. ‘What is it?’ Then she said, ‘I have a great craving for an apple, to smell it, and to bite a bit of it.’ ‘Oh,’ I replied, ‘Even if you had a thousand longings, I’d try to satisfy them all.’ So I went straight into the city and looked for apples, but I couldn’t find any. Even if they had cost a gold piece each, I would have bought them. Naturally, I was extremely disturbed by this and went home and said, ‘By Allah, I haven’t been able to find any.’ She was most distressed by this, and since she was still very weak, her sickness increased that night, and I felt anxious and alarmed about her condition. As soon as morning dawned, I went out again and made the rounds of the gardens, one by one, but found no apples anywhere. At last I encountered an old gardener, who said to me, ‘My son, this is a rare fruit in these parts and can only be found in the garden of the Commander of the Faithful at Bassorah, where the gardener keeps the apples for the caliph’s table.’ Troubled by my lack of success, I returned home, and my love for my wife moved me to undertake the journey to Bassorah. So I got ready and traveled two weeks back and forth and brought her three apples, which I bought from the gardener for three dinars. But when I went to my wife and set them before her, she did not take any pleasure in them and let them sit by her side, for her fever had increased, and her malady lasted ten days without abating. After that time, she began to recover her health. Therefore, I left my house and began buying and selling again at my shop. About midday a great ugly black slave, long as a lance and broad as a bench, passed by my shop holding one of the three apples and playing with it. ‘Oh my good slave,’ I said, ‘tell me where you got that apple so that I can get one like it.’ He laughed and answered, ‘I got it from my mistress, for I had been absent for some time, and on my return I found her lying ill with three apples by her side, and she told me that her horned nitwit of a husband had made a journey to Bassorah and had bought them for three dinars. So I ate and drank with her and took this one from her.’ When I heard these words from the slave, my lord, the world darkened before my eyes, and I stood up, locked up my shop, and went home beside myself with rage. When I looked for the apples and found only two of the three, I asked my wife, ‘Where is the third apple?’ Raising her head languidly, she answered, ‘I have no idea.” This reply convinced me that the slave had spoken the truth. So I took a knife, approached her from behind, and slit her throat without saying a word. Then I hewed off her head and chopped her limbs into pieces. After wrapping her in her mantilla and a rag of carpet, I hurriedly sewed up the whole, which I set in a chest, which I locked up tight. Next I loaded the chest on my mule, brought it to the Tigris, and threw it in with my own hands. When I returned to my house, I found my eldest son crying, even though he didn’t know what I had done to his mother. ‘Why are you crying, my boy?’ I asked him, and he answered, ‘I took one of the three apples which were by my mommy and went down into the lane to play with my brothers, when all of a sudden a tall black slave snatched it from my hand and said, ‘Where did you get this?’ And I said, ‘My father traveled to Bassorah for my mother, who was ill, and he bought it along with two other apples for three ducats.’ He paid no attention to my words, and I repeatedly asked him to return the apple, but he cuffed me and kicked me and went off with it. I was afraid that my mother would give me a licking because of the apple. So, out of fear for her, I went with my brother outside the city and stayed there until evening came. And, truthfully, I’m afraid of her. So, please, Father, don’t tell her anything about this, or it will make her more sick.’ After I heard my son’s story, I knew that the slave had slandered my wife and was sure that I had wrongfully slain her. So I wept profusely, and soon my uncle came, and I told him what had happened. He sat down by my side and wept with me, and we didn’t stop weeping until midnight. We’ve been mourning for her these last five days, bemoaning her unjust death. If it weren’t for the gratuitous lying of that slave, she’d still be alive today! So you now know how and why I killed her, and I beseech you, by the honor of your ancestors, kill me right away and let justice reign, for there is no life in me anyway after her death!”

  The caliph was astounded by his words and said, “By Allah, this young man deserves to be pardoned. The only one I’ll hang is that foul slave! It’s the only way to do something which will comfort those who have suffered, and which will please the Almighty.”

  And Scheherazade noticed that dawn was approaching and stopped telling her story. When the next night arrived, however, she received the king’s permission to continue her tale and said,

  Then the caliph turned to Ja’afar and said, “Fetch me the accursed slave, who was the sole cause of this catastrophe, and if you don’t bring him to me within three days, you’ll be slain in his stead.”

  So Ja’afar went away and began weeping, “I’ve already encountered
death and survived, but if you fill a pitcher to the brim too often, it’s bound to crack. Skill and cunning are no help here, and only He who saved my life the first time can save me again. By Allah, I won’t leave my house during the next three days, and I’ll let Him expose the truth as He desires.” So Ja’afar stayed in his house for three days, and on the fourth day he summoned the kazi and legal witnesses, made his last will and testament, and began weeping as he took leave of his children. Soon a messenger from the caliph arrived and said to him, “The Commander of the Faithful is furious beyond belief, and he wants you to come to his palace right away. Moreover, he swears that you’re sure to hang if you don’t produce the slave who caused the damsel’s murder.”

  When Ja’afar heard this, he wept even more, and his children, slaves, and friends wept with him. After he said adieu to everyone except his youngest daughter, he proceeded to bid farewell to her alone, for he loved this little one, who was a beautiful child, more than all his other children. When he pressed her to his breast and kissed her, he felt something round inside the bosom of her dress and asked her, “What are you carrying in your bosom, my dear?”

  “It’s an apple with the name of our lord the caliph written on it,” she replied. “Rayhan, our slave, brought it to me four days ago and gave it to me, but only after I paid him two dinars for it.”

  When Ja’afar heard her speak of the slave and the apple, he was very happy and put his hand into the slit of his daughter’s dress and drew out the apple. He recognized it immediately and cried with joy, “My trust in Allah is complete!” Then he ordered a servant to bring him the slave and said, “What a terrible thing you’ve done, Rayhan! Where did you get this apple?”

  “By Allah, oh master,” he replied, “it doesn’t pay to tell lies, even if can get away with it once. Truth always pays. I didn’t steal this apple from your palace, nor did I take it from the gardens of the Commander of the Faithful. The truth is that five days ago, as I was walking along one of the alleys of the city, I saw some little ones at play, and this apple was in the hand of one of them. So I snatched it from him and beat him, and he cried and said, ‘Oh slave, this apple is my mother’s, and she’s ill. She told my father how she longed for an apple, and he traveled to Bassorah and bought her three apples for three gold pieces, and I took one of them to play with.’ He wept again, but I paid no attention to what he said and brought it here, where my little lady bought it from me for two gold dinars. And this is the whole story.”