But when he reached Alexandria, with its walls that were closed each night, and beautiful parks and buildings within, he felt safe. He found himself a room at the apothecary’s shop and the next morning he visited the market and bought goods with which to trade. As he wandered the streets he caught sight of a girl climbing off the back of a mule.
Her face was veiled, but he glimpsed her bewitching eyes. When she walked, her curving figure and slender build made all the men in the market gather around her. The man accompanying her seemed not to mind the admiring stares of the men; instead, he brought a chair for the girl to sit on, and Nur al-Din realised that the girl was a slave being auctioned.
The auctioneer lifted the veil from the girl’s face, and everyone gasped at her beauty.
“Men of wealth, men of power, merchants: who will bid, starting from five hundred dinars, for this mistress, who is as beautiful as the moon and its stars, or a glittering diamond!” cried the auctioneer.
Frenzied bidding between the men began. The highest bid, of nine hundred and fifty dinars, was from an old man. The auctioneer addressed him.
“I must seek her consent, for during our journey here I fell ill and this girl looked after me as if I was her own father, so I promised not to sell her to anyone without her permission.”
But the girl was not impressed. “What? Sell someone like me to a decrepit old man who is barely able to stand? His penis will most assuredly be as soft as a piece of dough!”
Everyone laughed, but the old man was furious, and shouted at the auctioneer.
“Refrain from insulting people, will you!” the auctioneer told the girl.
Another old man increased his bid to one thousand dinars, but the girl told the auctioneer, “What is wrong with you, parading me from one old man to the next? This man is concealing something about himself; I sense that he is a fake.”
“You have forgotten your manners,” shouted the auctioneer. “And how can you insult this man by calling him a fraudster when you haven’t exchanged so much as a single word with him!”
“It is easy to detect a crumbling wall, even one painted with the best paint. This old man has dyed his hair and his beard, which to me is the foulest of lies, a deceit begun in the heart that exudes out to the hair.”
“And what if I have got white hair anyway, isn’t it a sign of dignity and maturity?” asked the old man.
“White hair? Why should I stuff my mouth with cotton while I am still alive?” was the slave girl’s answer.
The old man was enraged. “This slave girl you’ve brought to the market does nothing but hurl abuse. Take her away or I’ll tell the Wali to ban you from selling slaves,” he told the auctioneer.
“Do you realise what you’ve done to me? You’ve ruined me,” said the auctioneer, turning on the girl. “Let us leave before someone attacks me.”
But a young man, who was tiny, stopped them and asked if he might buy the girl for any price she named.
“I am no old man, as you all see. I am her age,” he said.
“I’d be willing to be your slave if I owned a chicken farm and you helped me to gather the eggs, since if you dropped an egg it wouldn’t break, because your hands are practically touching the floor.”
The auctioneer was furious. He grabbed the slave girl by the hand.
“Enough! We have lost the chance to make money for us both, and so I will return you to Persia, to the man from whom you ran away.”
But the slave girl, whose name was Zumurrud, was terrified at this idea. She pleaded with the auctioneer to give her another chance. She looked frantically around and spotted Nur al-Din, tall and beautiful, with his radiant forehead and teeth like pearls.
She freed herself from the auctioneer’s grasp. “Look, why don’t you ask that man to bid for me?”
“If he wanted to buy a slave he would have bid for you already, even if it was a small amount.”
Zumurrud removed a huge sapphire ring from her finger and gave it to the auctioneer.
“If this young man buys me, then I’ll give you this ring in return for the trouble I caused.” The auctioneer took her immediately to Nur al-Din, and the slave girl addressed him directly.
“Am I not beautiful? Sir, in God’s name you must tell me if I am not!”
“You’re beauty itself, no one is lovelier than you; you’re the houri God promised his believers in the afterlife.”
“Then why didn’t you bid for me? I would have been happy if you’d bid even one dinar.”
“Were I at home I would have won you with all the wealth I own,” was his answer.
“Sir, come closer and inspect me. I might be a fake.”
Nur al-Din laughed and moved closer. She quickly stretched out her hand and gave him one thousand dinars.
“Come on, sir, bid for me,” she said, aware of Nur al-Din’s embarrassment.
“One thousand dinars for this lovely slave, unless she finds fault with me.”
“Give me your answer, but remember no insults this time,” said the auctioneer.
“Only the moon and gazelles match the beauty of my buyer,” was Zumurrud’s answer.
In the blink of an eye, the auctioneer had fetched the Qadi and notaries and Zumurrud became Nur al-Din’s slave. They were both eager for night to fall so that they could be together. They hurried to Nur al-Din’s room. Zumurrud couldn’t believe that he had no furniture and so he told her his story, and then he asked how she had come to be a slave.
“The past is nothing to me but a soap bubble,” was all she would say. “Now, go and buy me some lamb and rice.”
He raced out and when he returned, she prepared the most delicious meal. When they had eaten, Zumurrud lay down beside Nur al-Din, and they kissed and then to their surprise they took each other’s virginity, and they slept holding each other, like two bees hungry for the sweet nectar.
The next morning Nur al-Din told Zumurrud that he had not even one dirham in his pocket and that he would have to trade wares so that they could survive. In response, the slave girl removed some money hidden in her bosom, saying, “Go and buy twenty dirhams’ worth of silk threads in five different colours.”
Nur al-Din did as she asked. After they had eaten, she settled down next to him, and he closed his eyes and caressed her gently, saying, “Am I touching the silk I bought you? No, I don’t think so, for what I touch is even softer.”
Nur al-Din went off to the market to trade and the slave girl sat making a sash with the silk, not moving until she had finished it. Next morning, she told him to take the sash to the Persian market and ask the auctioneer to put it up for sale.
“Don’t accept less than twenty dinars for it,” she told him.
Nur al-Din hesitated, unable to believe that something which cost twenty dirhams to make could be sold for twenty dinars.
“You’ve no idea how valuable this sash is,” Zumurrud told him.
And she was right, for the sash sold for twenty dinars.
Nur al-Din returned excitedly and asked Zumurrud to teach him how to make sashes.
“To hell with trading, this is more profitable,” he said.
And for a whole year, Zumurrud would work on the sashes and Nur al-Din would sell them, and they made good money and moved to a small house of their own.
One morning Zumurrud told Nur al-Din to buy her more thread than usual, because she wanted to make him a mantle to drape on his shoulders, and the very next day Nur al-Din walked to the market draped in the mantle, accepting the compliments of the other traders, and proud that his lover had made it for him.
But a few days later he went to say “see you later” to Zumurrud one morning and found her weeping.
“What is wrong?” he asked her.
But Zumurrud only cried harder. “The pain of parting from you has smote me.”
Nur al-Din could not understand why Zumurrud was lamenting their beautiful days together, as though they were coming to an end.
“Why would you leave, when
you’re now dearer to me than my very self?”
“Do you not know that clouds rise in the bluest of skies whilst pearls found in the depths of the sea are corpses rocked by waves? I have learned that over time most people reveal themselves to be rotten at heart.”
Nur al-Din begged her to explain her distress.
“I fled Persia because, just as you witnessed the day you bought me, I was unable to resist insulting men who were deserving of it. One such man was so enraged that he swore he would hunt me down, even if I hid in one half of a walnut shell, and force himself on me and become my master. But I had a glimpse of him yesterday when I was about to step out of the hammam. Now listen to me carefully, my master and my love: you must be on your guard against that devil of a man. He drags his left leg and has a very thick beard like a ram. I am sure he came here to find me!”
“I shall kill him when I see him,” said Nur al-Din, filled with fear and anxiety.
“No, don’t kill him, but don’t speak to him or trade with him, even if he begs you to. Don’t even exchange greetings with him.”
The very next day, while Nur al-Din was enjoying the sun in the market, the Persian whom Zumurrud warned him about took him by surprise.
“Where did you get this mantle from?” he asked.
“My mother made it for me,” Nur al-Din said brusquely.
The Persian offered to buy it, but Nur al-Din refused, even when the Persian raised his price until it reached six hundred dinars, saying, “I shall not sell it to you or to anyone else, for my mother made it with her own hands—and this is final!”
But the Persian kept offering more money until he reached one thousand dinars. Finally an old merchant intervened, urging Nur al-Din to accept the offer, since the mantle was worth no more than one hundred dinars. He kept on trying to persuade Nur al-Din, until he was embarrassed and gave in, took the money, and handed his mantle to the Persian. As he prepared to go back to Zumurrud and tell her what had happened, the Persian invited everyone to dine on a roasted sheep, wine and fruit in a nearby tavern. Nur al-Din declined the invitation, but once again the other merchants insisted he accompany them, swearing to divorce their wives if he didn’t, until Nur al-Din relented and went with them.
The Persian waited for Nur al-Din to drink a few glasses of wine and then asked the young man to sell him the slave he had bought the previous year for one thousand dinars, saying he was willing to buy her for five thousand dinars.
“I won’t sell her even for all the treasure of the world,” Nur al-Din said. But the cunning Persian kept tempting him with greater sums of money, pouring more wine all the while, until he had reached ten thousand dinars.
By now Nur al-Din was very drunk. “Yes, I shall sell her to you for ten thousand dinars, just show me the money,” he told the Persian.
The next morning the Persian produced ten thousand dinars. But Nur al-Din was now sober and composed.
“Damn you, Persian liar!” he said. “I sold you nothing! Besides, I live with my mother, and I have no slaves at home!”
But the Persian accused Nur al-Din of lying, asking all the merchants to be his witnesses, and they agreed to testify that Nur al-Din had sold his slave to the Persian. They gathered around him, cajoling him and insisting he agree to this sale, reminding him that he could take the ten thousand dinars and buy another slave girl even more beautiful than his, or instead marry one of their daughters, until finally he accepted and took the money. The Qadi was summoned, and Nur al-Din signed the papers confirming that Zumurrud was now the Persian’s slave.
Nur al-Din sat with his head in his hands, thinking of poor Zumurrud. Meanwhile, when he had failed to return home, the slave girl had begun to weep so bitterly and fiercely that her neighbour had come to see what was wrong.
“My master has not returned home, and now I am terrified that he has been tricked into selling me.”
“But when he sees the sun in you, how can he live without its rays?” the neighbour asked, trying to comfort her.
Zumurrud looked out the window and saw Nur al-Din coming home, with the Persian and a group of merchants trailing behind him.
“Oh broken heart, woe is me! I taste bitterness as though the hour of parting has already come.”
When Nur al-Din came in trembling, Zumurrud said, “Oh! My master, your face shows nothing but sorrow! You’ve sold me!” and began to strike her face.
“I am like a fool who has lost a limb, but surely God who united us once before must grant us reunion?”
She held him in her arms, pressing him to her and kissing him between his eyes.
“But I warned you, my love, didn’t I?” and then she kissed him again between his eyes and said, “I don’t know how I can live with no heart, because I am leaving it with you.”
“Damn you, keep away from me,” she said to the Persian as he approached.
“Your master has wronged you, not I! He sold you of his own free will, while I paid handsomely for you because I loved you.”
Nur al-Din banged his head on the wall, while the Persian with the aid of the merchants carried the weeping and lamenting Zumurrud away.
“Take my bones with you as you go and give them a burial,” Nur al-Din cried out, and then raced after Zumurrud, following her until he watched as she was forced to board a ship bound for Persia. He decided that he would follow her to Persia on the next boat, since he knew where the Persian lived.
Nur al-Din never went to Persia, for Zumurrud managed to escape before the ship sailed, aided by one of the crew whom she bribed with a valuable ruby ring. Afraid that the Persian might leave the ship and hunt for her, she hid in the hammam and sent a eunuch with a message to Nur al-Din, telling him to come at midnight and whistle. Then she would come down to him and they would flee immediately for a foreign land.
Nur al-Din was deliriously happy. He decided that when he was reunited with Zumurrud he would leave Alexandria and return to Cairo, make peace with his father, seek his blessing and marry Zumurrud. Unable to wait a moment longer, he hurried to the hammam and tried to sleep on a bench outside, counting the seconds until he would embrace his love.
But it happened that a thief who was planning to rob a house next to the hammam was below in the alleyway when Zumurrud peeped out the window to check the street. She thought he was Nur al-Din come earlier than midnight and raced down with a saddle bag to meet him. But the thief, who was trained to be quick as a magician, grabbed her, flung her on his mule and fled. Nur al-Din tried in vain to save her. He jumped in the air, yelled and then ran after them but it was too late.
Blaming his ill luck, Nur al-Din went back to the market, not knowing what to do. He sat down, planning to cry until the morning, but saw the old merchant who had convinced Nur al-Din to sell Zumurrud.
“Look what has happened to me! My heart is broken for ever. Even the ten thousand dinars which all of you made me take in exchange for my lovely slave girl, my sweetheart, mean nothing to me!”
The merchant felt so sorry for the young man that he apologised, offering Nur al-Din his daughter’s hand.
“Don’t you love your daughter? If you do, why do you want her to suffer life with an unlucky man?”
And he described to the merchant how he lost his slave for the second time.
Hearing this, the merchant, who was old and wise, said, “But God loves you, for she rode on a mule. Follow the track of the mule, my son, and then you will know where your slave was taken.”
Nur al-Din thanked the merchant and decided to trace the mule, hoping to find Zumurrud and be reunited with her for ever.
Before Zumurrud realised that the man she had escaped with was a horrible thief, she said to him, “At last, my love, we’re together and I am happy you thought of getting us a mule.”
“Whore!” replied the thief. “I am not so soft that I would be the lover of any woman. I am a member of a gang, and soon the forty of us will be banging away at your womb by way of welcoming you to our meeting tomorrow morning
.”
Zumurrud struck her face, weeping. “Why do I escape from one trap, only to fall into another?”
Then she fell silent, for she was trying to come up with a plan to save herself. Eventually they reached a cave outside the city, which the horrible thief entered, dragging Zumurrud with him. To her relief, she discovered that his mother was inside the cave. She was less than happy to see her son, particularly when he left again straightaway, instructing her to watch over the girl until he returned in the morning with his company of thieves.
Zumurrud lay awake all night, and when dawn broke she woke the thief’s mother, saying, “Aunt, you were scratching your head all night long, do you want me to delouse you?”
“Yes, my daughter. I haven’t had a bath for an eternity as these pigs of men, chief among them my son, uproot me constantly from one place to another.”
The old woman took Zumurrud out of the cave via a secret passage and Zumurrud deloused her, killing more than one hundred lice. She left the old woman happily asleep in the sunshine, went back to the cave, dressed in men’s clothes, wrapped her head in a turban and strapped a sword at her waist. Next she helped herself to some of the gold she found hidden in the cave, took her saddle bag, mounted one of the two horses in the cave and fled.
She travelled on her horse, eating what she could scrounge and drinking from springs for ten days until she reached the city. As she entered the city gates she saw a huge gathering of officials and emirs. As she approached they bowed and kissed the ground before her, and when she dismounted, one Vizier addressed her.
“God send you all the victory and prosperity, our magnificent sultan! May your arrival, King of the Age, bring us great blessings and fortune.”
Zumurrud glanced around her, puzzled.
“Your Majesty, God has made you our King!” said the chamberlain. “You must know that we follow a custom in our city. Whenever our King dies we wait for three days and then we stand by the city gates. The first man who arrives in the direction from which you came is appointed our King. Praise God, who has sent us a handsome young fellow this time. But were you an older or lesser man, you would still be our King.”
One Thousand and One Nights Page 24