One Thousand and One Nights (14 page)

He was silent for a time, eyeing the two men. “And I will give my verdict, which will please my Glorious God, when I’m ready.”

He turned to congratulate Jaafar. “Wonder of wonders, Jaafar! I cannot believe the haphazard coincidences of your tale, which exceeds anything imaginable in its absurdity. Can it be that your soul was in grave danger because you could not find the killer and yet the cause of the crime was under your own roof, laughing and playing all the while?”

He laughed uncontrollably, hitting one palm on the other, until the others gathered around him began to shift uncomfortably. When he finally regained his composure, the Vizier Jaafar said, “Allow me, Commander of the Faithful, to tell you that this extraordinary story of the three apples is nothing in its absurdity when compared to the tale of the hunchback and the tailor.”

“I cannot contemplate a tale in which coincidences play a greater role than in this story of the three apples.”

“Yes, yes—I assure you that this tale is more extraordinary. But I will relate it to you only on one condition.”

“What is that?”

“It is this: if you agree that my tale is more remarkable than that of the three apples, then you will pardon my slave, Rayhan. He was born in our house and has grown up within my family. His error was great, but I believe he will learn even greater kindness and generosity from it.”

The Commander of the Faithful thought for a moment.

“Come on, Jaafar, tell me the story of the hunchback and the tailor. If it is indeed more astonishing, then I will pardon your slave.”

And so, as the Caliph settled down to listen, the ladies poured their guests more wine, lit more incense and returned to their seats. The Vizier cleared his throat. “I heard, Oh Commander of the Faithful, once upon a time, in faraway China, a tailor and his wife were returning home at the end of the day, when they came upon a hunchbacked man.”

he hunchback was extremely drunk, singing and playing the tambourine. The tailor and his wife were taken at once by this hunchback, amused and delighted by his appearance, which would lift the gloom from any heart. He had on a robe with wide, embroidered sleeves, and a tall green hat from which many coloured ribbons streamed down to his feet. The tailor and his wife were about to pass the hunchback, but then they stopped and invited him to come home with them and dine. He accepted the invitation, and the couple whispered to each other, “Oh we are going to have the best night ever with this sweet hunchback! He will certainly entertain and amuse us.”

And they were right. The three of them had much to drink, bantered, joked and ate many dishes with the greatest appetite. But then the tailor crammed a big piece of fish in the hunchback’s mouth and held it shut with his hand, saying jokingly, “You must swallow the whole piece in one go.”

Unbeknown to him, the piece of fish contained a large bone, which stuck in the hunchback’s throat, choking him. When the tailor saw the hunchback’s eyes roll back in his head, he thumped
him on the back, but instead of releasing the bone, the hunchback fell to the ground lifeless.

The tailor was stunned. He froze, murmuring, “There is no power and no strength save in God! How is it that I am the one who has ended his life! How can I forgive myself for what I have done?”

But his wife screamed at him, “Take hold of yourself! Haven’t you heard the poet say, ‘How can you sit and let the fire rage on? Such idleness brings ruin and destruction.’ ”

But the tailor, who was still in shock, said, “I don’t know what to do.”

“Hold him in your arms as if he was our child,” his wife told him. The tailor picked up the hunchback and his wife threw her shawl over him, saying, “Let us take him to a physician in another neighbourhood.”

When they were far enough away from the house, the woman started wailing, “Oh my boy, I wish that this smallpox had struck me instead of you!”

She stopped to ask about a doctor, and someone directed her to a Jewish physician. She knocked at the door until a maid came down. The woman pressed a quarter dinar coin into the maid’s hand. “Give this to your master and ask him to come down as quick as lightning to see my child who is greatly ill,” she pleaded.

When the maid went up the stairs to get the doctor, the tailor and his wife propped the hunchback on the stairs against the wall and ran away.

Meanwhile the maid gave the doctor the coin and bade him go down and see the sick child. The doctor hurried down the stairs in the dark, calling, “Bring me light!”

But he stumbled on the body of the hunchback, which rolled down to the bottom of the stairs. When the physician saw that
he was dead, he cried, “Oh God, Oh Moses, Oh Joshua son of Nun, Oh Jacob! Help me, for instead of curing this wretched sick person I have killed him.”

They lifted the hunchback and carried him up the stairs to his wife and he told her what had happened.

His wife was furious. “You are so naive, why did you carry him up here? Don’t you know that when day breaks and this dead body is in our house, we will lose our lives? Quick, do not stand like a stick in a desert, let us carry him to the roof and lower him into the house of our neighbour, the Muslim bachelor.”

So they carried him to the roof and lowered him very gently by his hands and feet through the ventilation shaft into their neighbour’s kitchen. When the hunchback’s feet touched the ground, they propped him against the wall, next to the window, and then they hurried back to their home.

Their Muslim neighbour, who was a cook, came home around midnight holding a lighted candle. He saw the hunchback standing near the window, and yelled, “Oh God Almighty! Only now do I discover the real thief: none other than a human being, made from flesh and bone, and not the cats and rats I’d always accused. Do you know how many cats and rats I have killed wrongly, and all the while you creep in when I am fast asleep and steal all the meat and the cooking butter given to me by my employer? But of course you are now lost for words.”

Then he took a heavy club and thumped it on the hunchback’s chest, and the body slumped to the ground. The cook came nearer and looked at the hunchback’s face and saw that he was dead.

“There is no power and no strength, save in God the Almighty! I’ve killed him, may God curse the meat and the cooking butter. To God we belong and to him we return; wasn’t it enough to be a hunchback? Why did you have to become a thief too?”

He carried the hunchback to the market, and when he found a dark alley, he set him on his feet against a shop door and ran back home. A few minutes later a drunk Christian tradesman wearing a turban came swaying left and right down the alley. He squatted to urinate and looked up to see the hunchback standing before him. Thinking that he was about to snatch his turban, as had happened the night before, the Christian tradesman called out, “Where are you, night watchman? Come and catch a thief!”

He punched the hunchback on his neck, knocking him to the floor. When the hunchback did not make a sound, but lay still, the tradesman was flabbergasted. Surely he hadn’t killed a man with a single blow? He knelt down, and in his drunkenness, fell on the hunchback.

At that moment the night watchman appeared and saw the Christian tradesman on top of the hunchback.

“Oh God, a Christian is killing a Muslim,” he shouted. He lifted the tradesman off the hunchback and when he saw that he was dead, he seized the drunken man, bound him and took him to the Governor’s house.

The Governor locked the tradesman in a room and asked the watchman to bring the dead man and leave him in the same room. The next morning, the Governor went to his King, who was King of China, and described how a Christian tradesman had killed a Muslim in the market. The King immediately ordered that the tradesman be hanged.

The executioner set up a wooden gallows and put a rope around the Christian tradesman’s neck. The tradesman, whose drunkenness had left him, to be replaced by reason, wept.

“I swear by the Almighty that I barely hit the hunchback,” he cried out, but to no avail. Just as the executioner was about to
pull the rope tight around the tradesman’s neck, the Muslim cook appeared.

“Stop, don’t hang him! This man didn’t kill the hunchback, it was I!”

And he described to the Governor what had happened the night before, saying, “Is it not enough that I have killed a Muslim? Now a Christian will be killed instead of me, and I will never again live in peace.”

So the Governor ordered the executioner to release the Christian and hang the Muslim cook. The hangman wrapped the rope around the Muslim’s neck, but the second he was about to hang him the Jewish physician appeared, crying out, “Stop! Don’t hang him, this man did not kill the hunchback, it was I!”

And he told the Governor what had happened, how a woman had brought the hunchback to his home, claiming that he was an ill child, and how the doctor had stumbled on him in the dark, killing him. “And so I carried him to the roof and lowered him into the house of the Muslim bachelor next door, and left him there.”

Hearing this, the Governor ordered the executioner to take the rope from the Muslim cook’s neck and put it around the Jewish physician. But just as the executioner was about to pull the rope, a tailor made his way through the crowd. “Stop, don’t hang anyone but me, for I was the one who killed the hunchback,” he shouted.

And he in turn told the Governor what had happened, and how he had choked the hunchback in jest, and how he and his wife had then left the hunchback with the Jewish physician and fled. Hearing this, the Governor told the hangman, “Go ahead and release the Jewish doctor and hang the tailor.”

But the executioner said to the Governor, “To tell you the truth, oh respected Governor, I am so tired of stringing up this one and releasing that one, now the Christian, now the Muslim, now the
Jew, now the physician, now the cook, now the tradesman! Thank God there is an end to the matter.”

Then he released the Jewish physician and wrapped the rope around the tailor’s neck. But just as he pulled the rope tight, a man approached saying, “Stop and don’t hang this fellow.” But this time, instead of continuing, “I am the killer,” he addressed the tailor, the physician, the cook and the tradesman.

“I am one of the King’s chamberlains. I must take all of you to the King, because the hunchback you’ve killed was none other than the King’s favourite clown to whose company His Majesty was addicted. He was entertained by him every single night, and when the clown failed to show up last evening, the King ordered us to look for him high and low. We discovered that he had been killed, and now His Majesty wants to hear from you exactly what happened.”

Soon, the four men were brought to the King of China and kissed the ground before him. The hunchback lay in the throne room, stretched out on a grand bed with his head on a silk cushion.

Each one of the four men told the King his story. Tears fell down the sovereign’s cheeks. “Oh my beautiful hunchback, you were funny even in death.” The four men sighed in relief when they heard the King’s kind words.

Then the King addressed the entire company, saying, “Has anyone heard anything funnier than the story of the hunchback?” And then the King shook his head, as if he remembered something particularly funny about the hunchback because he smiled and laughed a great laugh which allowed the four men to laugh with him, then the whole court dissolved in laughter. The Christian tradesman, encouraged, came forward, restraining a chuckle and he knelt down, kissed the ground before the King
and said, “Oh King of the Age, would you allow me to tell you a funnier story even than that of the hunchback?”

“Go on, tell me,” was the King’s reply. And the tradesman began his story.

When I was about to go into the tavern last night, I saw a well-known thief leading a donkey. I joked with him, saying, “Don’t tell me, good thief, that you’ve stolen this donkey!” He answered, “But of course I did! And you’re going to be amazed to know that I snatched it while it was being led by its owner.”

The thief continued to brag: “I did it in clear daylight! Am I not known as the thief who can rob lashes from the eye? I love to be challenged, and today I was walking with another thief, who is not nearly as accomplished as I, and he challenged me to steal the donkey, which was being led by a muleteer ahead of us.”

I immediately asked the thief to walk on until we reached a fork in the path, and then I took off my shoes, and gestured to him to do the same. We approached the donkey soundlessly and I removed the halter from the donkey’s head very carefully, gently freeing the animal and handing it to my companion, who led it away down the other path. Then I put the halter over my head, put on my shoes, and allowed myself to be led by the muleteer, mimicking the noise of the donkey’s hooves. When the donkey and my friend were safely out of sight, I froze and refused to move, no matter how hard the muleteer tugged on the halter. Eventually he looked around, and when he saw the halter on my head instead of on his donkey, he trembled and shook with fear.

“Oh! God Almighty, what is going on? Who are you and where is my donkey?” he cried out.