One Thousand and One Nights

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  “Now, I want each of you, followed by the other, to open up, despatch and spill your secrets. Let us begin with you, Mistress of the House. Tell us, why did you stress, as soon as we entered your house, not to question what went on, making sure that we read the inscription on the door, ‘Speak not of what concerns you not, lest you hear what does not please’? But what you really meant to say, was, ‘one word from you about what you have seen and you’re dead.’ ”

  The Caliph poured himself water, brought it to his mouth but then, enraged, he failed to drink. “Could you explain to me,” he said, “where this violence comes from? Why did you pounce on and thrash those bitches until they bled? You, flogged lady, why did you sway and yelp in pain, and fall into a swoon, when you heard that song and melody on the oud? We were horrified to see the scars on your body. And now, you third lady, tell me, why have you ignited your sisters’ fire rather than extinguishing it?”

  The Caliph fell silent and sipped his water.

  A heavy silence fell on the room, everyone taken by surprise.

  The ladies had become as pale as the colour of quince. They trembled and shook, realising for the first time the consequences of their earlier threats, especially the mistress of the house, who was the brains behind it all, and who’d decreed the rules.

  She rose and said, “Oh Commander of the Faithful, how we wish that we had cut out our tongues instead of firing threats and accusations. And how I wish I had cut off my two hands instead of summoning my seven slaves with a clap. I beg your forgiveness, your wisdom and integrity to spare us from unburdening our hearts and revealing our motives and reasons which forced us to break the law of the land. To unveil our secrets would be the same as twisting daggers in our hearts, and I assure Your Lordship that it will result in horrible, strange and bizarre stories that no one will believe, other than thinking we are three lunatic women.”

  The porter said under his breath, “It is true, life is but a bunch of secrets.” The Caliph cut through the rising excitement in the room by ordering the mistress of the house, “Go on with your story, we’re all ears.”

  As soon as the mistress of the house found herself, forced, into the middle of the room, Vizier Jaafar stood up, saying: “Be aware that you are in the presence of the seventh son of Abbas al-Rashid, son of al-Hadi, son of al-Mahdi and the brother of Saffah (the butcher), son of Mansour. You must reveal your secrets frankly to the Caliph, and speak only the truth, even if your words burn like fire upon your tongue.”

  The woman nodded, her eyes cast down reverently, and began.

  The Mistress of the House’s Tale

  y case is so strange, and my tale so bizarre, that if I engraved it with needles at the corner of my eye, it would be a lesson for those who wish to consider it. My Caliph, those two bitches are none other than my bewitched sisters, and I must whip them three hundred times each night in order to keep them alive.

  But let me start at the beginning, when we were five sisters enjoying the love and tenderness of our caring parents. Then my father, the great merchant, died and we divided the fortune he left us between us and our mother. Soon our mother joined our father in death and so we divided her money equally among us five sisters. As soon as the period of mourning ended my two elder sisters married, took their share of the money and left Baghdad with their husbands to settle in a foreign country. I remained at home to care for my two youngest sisters, postponing the idea of marriage until they matured and immersing myself in working as a merchant, continuing my father’s business. Two years later, one of my elder sisters returned home, dressed like a beggar in tattered clothes. Shocked and filled with pity, I embraced her and asked what had happened. She wept and told me that her husband had wasted all their money, sold their house and disappeared from the face of the Earth. I took her in, cared for her, served her unconditionally and even shared my money with her. When I thanked God that the black storm had passed over our family, my other elder sister collapsed on our doorstep one day, barefoot. As she sobbed and struck her face she told us that her husband had plundered all her money and deserted her in that foreign land without even a morsel of bread. She had wandered from one country to another until she reached Baghdad. I squeezed her to my bosom as I had done with our eldest sister, showed her love and the utmost kindness, and then divided my money with her too.

  “You’re much wiser and more insightful than us, though you’re younger, and now we feel that you have taken the place of our mother, may God pray for her soul. We promise you with all our hearts that the word ‘marriage’ will not cross our lips again,” my sisters told me, weeping.

  “Let us hire a ship and go to Basra with our merchandise and trade there, for we must depend upon ourselves and not on men,” I told them.

  They accepted my offer and suggestions, and when we came back victorious, having made a big profit, they thanked me and were grateful for my kindness towards them.

  Two years passed, during which we enjoyed great stability and prosperity. Then one day, my sisters shocked me with disastrous news: they had decided to marry for a second time because they didn’t fancy living without husbands.

  “After all God created the animals in the world in twos; every creature in this universe gets married, even mosquitoes and lizards,” they told me.

  I reminded them that they had tried marriage, and that it had inflicted upon them great pain, poverty and degradation. But they would not heed my advice. They each married, without my consent, and took their share of the money while I continued to look after my two younger sisters.

  What I had feared and foreseen came to pass, and my two elder sisters returned in a worse condition even than before. They apologised and asked my forgiveness, swearing by the precious Qur’an, which each of them held in her hand, that if ever they uttered the word “marriage” again, I was to cut out their tongues in revenge. They then threw themselves at my feet, wailing and weeping.

  “We don’t expect you to take us back, other than as your servants,” they cried.

  I found myself feeling great sorrow and pity for them. “You are after all my two sisters, my flesh and blood, and nothing is dearer to me in life but you; you are to me as were my departed parents.”

  And so I took them back as I had the first time, to my bosom, my house and my business. Soon I observed that their disappointment and pain made them immerse themselves in work and business with great dedication, resulting in our making even greater profits.

  One evening, when we five sisters were sitting on the terrace, away from the maids, counting our money, one of my elder sisters sighed and said, “What’s the point of this great fortune, if we are not married?”

  Before I could answer, the other sister moaned, “I agree completely; life without a man is like a kitchen without a knife. We know full well that we were unlucky twice, but who can say? Perhaps we might be lucky the third time and meet the best of men.”

  When I heard this I nearly snapped at both of them, but since our two younger sisters were with us I calmed myself and sought to offer advice.

  “Am I not younger than both of you? Yet I will not consider or contemplate marriage, and do you know why? Because I have learned a lesson: there is little that is good in marriage. It would be next to impossible for me to find an honest man of great integrity, well-mannered; a real gentleman who would honour me and appreciate me and love me for my own self and not for my money. The time has come for me to open up and confide in you. My heart does indeed throb and beat with the desire to fall in love and secure myself in the stability of marriage. But where is the man who would not deceive me and steal my money? Show him to me, for God’s sake!”

  As I have said, we sisters were sitting on the terrace facing our orchard, which was filled with trees and flowers, looking out as the sun began to plunge below the horizon. As I finished speaking, an enormous bird, larger than any I have seen or dreamed I might see, gave a high cry and flapped its wings, which were the many vibrant colours of the peacock, i
n our direction. I turned to my elder sisters.

  “Look at its huge wings; aren’t they like those of an angel? Perhaps it’s a beautifully coloured angel seeking to rescue you from your own thoughts!”

  The five of us laughed, while the giant bird flew towards me and hovered, fluttering its wings vigorously and uttering strange cries, soft and loud at the same time.

  “This bird is no angel, but the man you are looking for!” my elder sisters cried out, as we laughed again. The bird flew away and joined a flock of these strange and enormous creatures, with their huge, brightly coloured wings.

  I forgot completely about this bird until a few days later, when I went down to the manna from heaven trees by the pond, to find out whether the manna was ripe. In the distance I could see the enormous, colourful bird drinking from the pond. To my astonishment, I watched as the bird started to shake and shake, until a man emerged from beneath its feathers.

  I put my hand to my mouth, gasping and suppressing a scream of confusion and amazement. I walked towards him as though hypnotised, feeling no fear. The man was looking at the house and did not seem to have noticed me. He was not like any other man I had ever encountered, he was so beautiful.

  “Praise God who resembles no one,” I murmured, for I had never seen a man as handsome as he. He had a face like the crescent moon, with rosy cheeks and eyes like those of a houri, as if God had created him to bewitch and enchant.

  I calmed myself, and didn’t try to catch his attention, but waited and watched as he walked very carefully towards our terrace. Then he entered his feathers again and flew away, leaving me to stare at the sky, speechless.

  When I climbed into bed that night and shut my eyes, I saw only him, as if he stayed beneath my lids the whole night long. In the morning, I rushed to the pond but neither the bird nor the man was to be seen. I found myself checking the pond several times during the day, to no avail, until dusk fell. To my disappointment I then saw ten birds instead of one at the pond, playing, drinking and taking off and landing on the water. Eventually all of them flew away and my heart sank. But the same bird flew back, landed, shook and shook, and when he had become a man, he saw me standing not far from him. He smiled at me and I reached out and touched his feathers, which were soft and beautifully decorated.

  “Who are you and what are you doing here?” I asked him.

  “But have you forgotten that you yourself invited me? Did I not hear you say the other night, as you sat with your sisters, ‘Where is the man who would not deceive me and steal my money? Show him to me, for God’s sake?’ I am that man you called for, and I hurried to comply with your wishes, of that you may rest assured, my beauty.”

  He took my hand in his and when I recoiled and moved away, he said, “Do not be alarmed. Here is my oath: my eye will not look at one dinar of your money and my hand will not touch one piece of bread from your table. On the contrary, I am planning to have you sleep in a bed of gold, eat from golden plates, and bathe in water of gold.”

  “But who are you really?” I asked, as I tried to still the hundreds of butterflies which fluttered in my heart in spite of myself.

  “When I saw you, I lost my senses, for you took my breath away. My brothers and I come often to the pond in your orchard towards evening to drink from its fresh water. Yesterday evening I reached the pond earlier than usual. As I waited for my brothers, I heard voices. I felt curious, since I was accustomed to the stillness here, and found myself following the sound until I saw you like a rose among these women. I listened to the entire conversation with your sisters, and found myself marvelling, not at your beauty and charm, but at what I heard you saying and for your dazzling personality. I went back home and couldn’t sleep because I kept thinking of you, and so I came back to you, for my heart now is aflame.”

  His words scared me even more, and my mind started to play tricks on me. Perhaps this man was planning to make me fall in his trap, only to suck my nectar, then desert me exactly like the four men who had disgraced my two sisters?

  I froze, not knowing what to say. The man took things out of his wing, and I stood overwhelmed as he produced jewels, among them pearls as big as pigeon’s eggs, saying, “Now do you believe that I want you for yourself and not for your fortune?”

  He bowed and kissed my two hands and my feet. “I will be your obedient servant until Doomsday. I wish to marry you according to the rule of God and his Prophet.”

  At these words, I changed my opinion of men in the blink of an eye. I took him to a cave in our orchard, and there we kissed like Adam and Eve, and to my surprise I let him lift up my dress, and what would happen between a man and a woman happened between us, while I prayed to God to forgive me, assuring the Almighty that we would draw up our marriage contract first thing in the morning. Soon I found myself drowning in ecstasy and pleasure for the first time in my life. I then slept at his feet, and when I woke we sat content and fulfilled, holding the sun and the moon together. I asked him once more: “You haven’t told me who you are. Are you the son of a prince bewitched, one of the greatest merchants, or a nobleman?”

  “I will reveal my identity to you on one condition: you must promise me that no matter what your ears hear me reveal, you will never leave me.”

  I clasped my heart, and I felt myself break into a sweat as I said, “I promise on my memory of my parents that I will never leave you, unless you tell me you’re the Shaytan, Satan himself.”

  The man laughed. “God save us from Satan, I am the son of the King Azraq Blue, the King of Jinnis, the enemies of Shaytan Satan, and my father lives in the Alakroom Citadel, and he has six hundred thousand jinnis, who dive in the deepest seas and fly in the vast sky. I have nine brothers, each of whom carry the name of our father, Azraq Blue, and we fly here and there in God’s wildest world.”

  I caught my breath and said, “Glory to God, the omnipotent, the Almighty, the powerful.”

  Then I thanked God for sending me this flying man.

  He took my hand, saying, “Come with me, let us fly together to my palace which is built in the air, and can be reached by neither human beings nor jinnis other than my brothers, who would take you as one of them.”

  All of a sudden, reality hit me. What was I thinking, falling in love with this man, now that I knew he was a jinni? Dazed and confused, I found myself saying, “I do not wish to go to any palace, either in the clouds or on the ground. I will live only in the house which my father built for us, and in which I grew up. You are probably not aware that I am the head of this family and I am an accomplished tradeswoman, as well as being responsible for the well-being of my four sisters. How can you ask me to fly away with you, and give up all that my God has bestowed upon me? I am certain that I would soon miss my sisters and Baghdad and then I would regret what I had done and cease to sleep peacefully and happily in your arms.”

  I started to weep, feeling sorry for myself. Life had finally smiled at me and I had fallen in love with the man of my dreams, whom I thought I would never find in teeming Baghdad. But then he turned out to be the son of the King of Jinnis!

  “But how will I leave my brothers? Why did my heart flutter only for you, a human being? How could I cease to be a jinni?”

  Then we wept together, embraced and wept even more, knowing that we were making the decision to separate; that our love was forbidden. We kissed and hugged and bade farewell to each other, and then hurried back and embraced again and again. He wiped my tears, I wiped his tears and then I ran home, stopping to look back just once more, to see him fly up and disappear.

  I couldn’t stay away from the pond. I checked again and again, and each time I saw that neither the man nor the bird was there, I was plunged into melancholy and sadness. My eyes looked constantly to the heavens and my ears strained to hear the rustling of a wing.

  When my love became an unbearable torture, I left my bed one night and ran to the pond, not caring if any of my sisters saw me. To my sheer bliss I saw my love waiting for me. He fluttered
his wings, jumping in the air before he left his feathers and held me in his two arms. As we stood face to face with our lips touching he spoke: “I tried in vain to be away from you, but I will vanish and die without you.”

  I gazed into his beautiful, sad eyes and the thought that I would not be able to see them night and day made me weep and choke. But Azraq Blue embraced me and dried my tears with his hand.

  “Please stop crying, my lovely. I shall be the one to leave my family and come and live with you as a human being, for I cannot live for another instant away from you.”

  I squeezed him to me, kissed him and kissed him again, and felt that I was finally in heaven. We agreed that he would knock at our door the next day and introduce himself as a merchant from Basra, asking for my hand.

  “See you tomorrow if God wills,” we said to each other, and I hurried back home, wishing that the night would pass quickly. I was woken by a great commotion and then some tapping at my window. It was Azraq, in the form of a bird. I opened my window and with my help he squeezed himself through and fell to the ground with a thud. Once inside he took off his feathers and we embraced each other and he told me that he could not bear to be parted from me, even for the rest of the night. We became like an orange to its navel. As we whispered words of love, I heard my two elder sisters at my door, asking if I was all right, for they had heard someone at my window. I answered them, pretending that I might have talked in my sleep. Azraq and I froze for a while, until we heard only silence. Then we embraced so strongly that each of us gasped for breath.

  Early in the morning, before he left, Azraq asked me, “Do you have a safe place to hide my feathers?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure that no one will set eyes on them,” I told him.

  “I would like to hide them myself, for these feathers are my power and soul,” he said.