One Thousand and One Nights (18 page)

“How happy I am that a human being is going to listen to a crucial moment in my story. I would like you, rather than these parrots, who keep mimicking me and interrupting my tale, to hear what I have to say. For reasons of which I am not aware, everybody abandoned this house, the guests and even the master of the house and his entire family, leaving me alone to tell my stories to these talkative and noisy birds.”

The tailor took him by the hand and hurried back to the King. The barber stood before him, unsure of why the King of China wished to see him. The King started laughing when he saw that The Silent One was ninety years old with a white beard and eyebrows, floppy ears and a long nose.

“I want you, oh Silent One, to tell me one of your tales.”

But the barber said, “Oh King of the Age, by God tell me what is the story of this Christian, this Jew and this Muslim, and why is this hunchback stretched on a bed fit for kings, and what is the cause of this gathering?”

“But why do you ask, when it is you who are supposed to tell me a story?”

“I ask in order to assure Your Majesty that I am not nosy or curious and to prove to you that I am innocent of the accusation that I am talkative. In fact I am a silent man.”

The King told him what happened to the hunchback, and the barber came over to where the hunchback was lying and sat on the bed, taking the head of the hunchback on to his lap. He drew his face closer to the hunchback’s and he started laughing and laughing until he fell on his back, and then he said, “For every death there is a cause but the story of this hunchback should be recorded in letters of gold.”

The King of China was intrigued and puzzled. “What do you mean, Silent One?”

“I swear by your health that this hunchback is still alive.”

He took from his belt a jar of ointment and applied it to the hunchback’s neck. Then he asked for an iron stick and made two servants hold the hunchback’s head while he inserted the iron stick in the hunchback’s mouth. Then he took a pair of tweezers and thrust them into the hunchback’s throat and removed the piece of fish dripping with blood.

At this, the hunchback gave an enormous sneeze, which was heard all over the silent palace, jumped to his feet and shook his head.

“What is going on here?” he asked.

“Oh my beautiful hunchback, can it be that you lay unconscious for a night and a day before this Silent One brought you back to us?”

The hunchback quickly asked for his tambourine and when it was given to him he started playing it at once, singing and dancing.

“But Your Majesty, you haven’t told us when and how you met the hunchback, or do you prefer that I tell you a tale?” The Silent One asked the King.

“Not today, Silent One,” said the King of China, “I’m exhausted.”

With that, Jaafar finished his story of the hunchback and the King of China, and the Caliph clapped his hands with wonder and delight.

“Jaafar, this story of the hunchback’s adventures and The Silent One is extraordinary and contains more absurd coincidence even than the story of the three apples.”

Then he turned to Masrur, saying, “Slave.”

Masrur brought forward Rayhan, who bowed and kissed the ground before the Caliph.

“You must stop behaving like an arrogant and foolish young fellow. I know that you didn’t mean harm but nevertheless you’ve created this tragedy. I am going to fulfil my promise to Jaafar and forgive you, but not without conditions. You must spend some hours with the children of the innocent, dead woman, every day. When you hear them talk, or laugh, or cry, you will remember that you are the reason they are motherless.”

Then the Caliph said, “The third dervish!”

Masrur brought the third dervish forward, who knelt and kissed the ground before the Caliph, then rose to his knees.

“Do you accept that you’re responsible for your crime?”

“Yes, my lord,” said the third dervish, burying his face in his hands.

“One should never act on what one hears from others, but seek and discover the truth for himself. Since you’ve punished yourself by plucking out your eye, and since you’ve become a dervish, and to be a dervish is to forgive, and because you are the father of two young motherless children, I will let you go.”

The third dervish kissed the ground before he stood up and let Masrur lead him aside.

Everyone sighed in relief that the night, so nearly at an end, had concluded without imprisonment or death. They waited for the Caliph to stand up and leave at any second with Jaafar, Abu Nuwas and Masrur. But he reached for a cup of water, drank it, frowned at the three women, piercing them with a look.

“You three ladies have heard during this gathering, which wasn’t planned, and couldn’t have been predicted, episodes and stories which have happened to some of us. Stories which have entertained, bewildered, and others which have darkened our hearts and filled us with regret and sadness.

“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.

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, in our direction. I turned to my elder sisters.