One Thousand and One Nights (35 page)

But the King squeezed Sindbad’s shoulder, saying, “It is true unfortunately.”

At these words Sindbad was astonished and terrified, more so even than when he’d faced being swallowed alive by a whale.

“King of the Age, since I am a foreigner and the customs of my people are different from yours, will you save me, as your people have done once already, so that I might return to my country and be with my family and relatives?”

“This tradition has been handed down from our ancestors for thousands of years, so that neither partner could enjoy life after the death of the other. I am afraid that these customs are sacred and they cannot be broken, even for the King.”

Then he embraced our poor man and left. Sindbad told me that his gall bladder almost shattered like a broken mirror at these words. He was seized as he tried to run after the King, screaming, “But I am a foreigner, I have nothing to do with your customs.”

He was knocked to the ground and tied to a rope, fighting and kicking all the while. The men attached the jug of water and the seven loaves of bread to his waist and lowered him down into the hole, which opened out into an enormous cave beneath the
mountain. He screamed as they replaced the huge stone over the opening and the cave was plunged into total darkness.

Sindbad released himself from the rope and picked his way among the bones and corpses in the darkness of the cave, promising himself that he would not die this terrible death. He didn’t touch the bread or the water until he became famished and violently thirsty.

Making his way through the pitch-black darkness, broken only by the glittering of precious stones and diamonds adorning the bodies of dead wives, Sindbad searched for a way to escape, but to his horror and despair he found nothing but bones and rotten flesh and glittering jewellery in the foul, stinking grave.

Soon, his provisions were down to a few mouthfuls of bread and a few sips of water. He lay down and closed his eyes, imagining himself dying on top of a mountain or drowning at sea. Suddenly he heard a tremendous sound and the cave was flooded with light. He saw the corpse of a man being thrown down, and then a woman was lowered down just as he had been. As soon as the big stone was replaced over the opening, Sindbad pounced on the woman and struck her head with a stone, killing her.

Then he knelt and asked for God’s forgiveness, explaining to the Almighty that he had committed this bad deed because he needed to be with his family, whereas this widow’s family had sent her to her death willingly if not gladly. He took the dead woman’s water and the seven loaves of bread.

After this, he found himself killing many more women and men who were buried alive with their dead partners, surviving he did not know for how long, since he had lost all sense of the days and nights.

There came a time when he despaired of ever escaping this hell, and he prayed once more to God, asking the Almighty to do with
him whatever he wished. But as he murmured these words, he heard a faint noise coming from one corner of the cave. Sindbad grabbed the jawbone of a dead man and followed the sound until he saw a tiny ray of light. He hurried towards it and found a small opening in the wall, beyond which was a tunnel dug by wild beasts, so that they could sneak in, eat human flesh and escape.

Sindbad wept silently and thanked God for letting him hear that noise. He squeezed himself into the tunnel, using the jawbone to clear his path, until he heard the sea and came out by the shore. He cheered and jumped into the air. Life was beautiful once more! But then he reflected that so too were wealth and prosperity. He rushed back into the cave, collected the jewels of the dead women, put them in a bundle and dressed in several layers of the clothing of the dead men. Then he made his escape through the tunnel once more.

He waited patiently and happily by the sea for days and then weeks, drinking from the salty water and eating what little he found in the sea, seaweed and tiny fish, until one morning he saw a passing ship.

Sindbad cried for joy, and tied a white robe on a stick and ran along the shore with it. Eventually one of the crew spotted him, and the captain sent one of his crew out with a small boat.

When he was taken aboard the ship, the astonished captain told him that he had been sailing for forty years, and that this was the first time he’d ever seen a human being alive on the shores below that mountain.

Sindbad said simply that he was a merchant whose ship had gone down in a storm, and that he’d lashed himself to a plank with some of his belongings, and after a great struggle he had finally reached the shore. He was careful not to reveal what had really happened, lest one of the crew was from that city.

Then he offered the captain and crew some of the jewels in return for their help, for they had rescued him from that terrifying, deadly mountain. But the honourable captain refused to take anything, saying that he and his crew would save any man from the sea, and give them food, water, shelter and clothes. They would even, he told Sindbad, give them a present before they disembarked their ship. These were acts of generosity which reflected the most generous actions of God.

When the ship finally reached Basra, the captain gave Sindbad a seashell, explaining that if he held it to his ear he would hear the roar of the waves and the crashing of the sea.

The porter paused.

“Sindbad put the shell to my ear and, oh, what joy! I heard even the mermaids singing to each other,” he said, and then fell silent in reverie.

“And now tell us, porter,” said Abu Nuwas. “Sorry, I meant to say Sindbad the porter. Do you still visit Sindbad the sailor?”

“Yes, I do, often. But let me assure all of you that next time I visit, I shall be able to say to him, for the very first time, ‘Sindbad the sailor, give me a break! Let Sindbad the porter recount to you his own adventures, which began in the market itself, when a beautiful lady asked me to carry her purchases.’

“And I shall not stop until I have explained to him that in just one night I visited Basra, China, India and Persia—all without a ship!”

orter, you’re such a good storyteller!” said Haroun al-Rashid, when the porter had returned to his seat. “And now your Caliph will surprise you with another story.”

Once, as I was taking a stroll in my garden early in the morning, I overheard a Bedouin yelling at my guards, insisting that he needed to see me immediately. The guards were explaining to him that it was still early and that he should come back at a certain hour. I found myself hurrying to my audience chamber and ordering the guards to bring the man in. Why? Because of the urgency in the man’s voice, and the agonised way that he sighed as he spoke.

As I had foreseen, the man, who was brought in barefoot, said, beseechingly, “Prince of the Faithful! Please, grant me justice against an oppressor, who robbed me of Su’ad.”

I asked him who was Su’ad and who had taken her.

“Su’ad is my heart, she is my wife, and the robber is none other than your Governor, Hisham bin Marwan.”

Then, as though the words were being wrenched out of him, he described “the burning coal which shoots sparks in my heart.” Yes, this was how the Bedouin expressed his pain. He described how his father-in-law had taken his daughter away when the famous drought killed all of the Bedouin’s beasts, camels and horses, leaving them starving. The Bedouin had gone to the Governor and pleaded with him to interfere on his behalf and force his father-in-law to return his wife. The Governor sent for his father-in-law and asked him why he had removed his daughter. But the father-in-law insisted that he had never set his eyes on this Bedouin before.

So the man pleaded with the Governor to summon his wife so she could refute what her father had said. But when Su’ad entered the court, the Governor was so overwhelmed by her beauty that he dismissed the Bedouin’s case, and sent him to prison.

A few days later he was brought before the Governor, who sneered at him like an angry tiger and ordered him to divorce his wife. When the Bedouin challenged the Governor, saying that he would never divorce his wife, the Governor ordered his servants to torture him until he couldn’t take it any more. Eventually he agreed to divorce his wife. He was locked up again until the compulsory period during which a woman must wait before remarrying was over. Then the Governor married her, after giving her father a dowry of thousands of dinars.

When I heard this story I was enraged. I wrote to Hisham bin Marwan, telling him that he had abused his position with his wicked and wrongful behaviour. I ordered him to divorce the woman immediately, which he did as soon as my messenger reached him, but he sent a letter back begging my forgiveness. He sought to explain how he had fallen in love when he was
confronted by a beauty which had no match among Almighty God’s creations.

I found myself so curious to see this beauty from the desert that I asked her to be brought to me. Soon the sun itself shed its light on my audience chamber and on my heart and remained there, for the Bedouin woman was indeed a truly rare beauty.

I gasped when I saw her, and said to her husband, “Bedouin, I will give you three times the number of beasts and camels you lost, one thousand dinars for every month since your wife departed, and on top of that a yearly allowance for your needs. All of this will be in consolation for the loss of your wife.”

And you should have heard the groan of the man. It was so terribly agonised that I assumed he was on the verge of dropping dead.

But instead he said, “I asked your help against the Governor. Now from whom can I seek redress for my unjust treatment?”

I felt deep shame at that moment, but the twinkle in that woman’s eyes made my heart flutter more and more.

“Prince of the Faithful,” the Bedouin continued, “were you to give me everything you own—even the caliphate itself—still I would want only Su’ad. For she is my food, and my drink.”

The woman looked at me boldly and gave me a faint and coy smile, and I found myself saying to the Bedouin, “Well, Su’ad must choose between you, Hisham bin Marwan or the Caliph. And I shall help her to do what her heart desires, do you agree?”

“Su’ad, who is dearer to you?” I asked her, when the Bedouin had sadly nodded his head in assent. “The gracious and noble Commander of the Faithful and all of his palaces? The unjust Governor Hisham bin Marwan? Or this impoverished Bedouin to whom you were married?”

Su’ad replied passionately:

I still remember how stunned I was at her fidelity and integrity. And so I handed her over to the Bedouin, who took her and left.

Abu Nuwas couldn’t help but exclaim, “What a story, Oh Commander of the Faithful. What a woman is this Su’ad!”

The rest of the audience fell silent, but their eyes reflected what they thought. The Caliph’s eyes were lowered; Jaafar’s eyes were fixed on his master; Abu Nuwas’s eyes flicked anxiously like a sparrow from face to face. Meanwhile, the ladies sat with eyes downcast, hoping to avoid being forced into marriage, but at the same time anxious not to give offence. The porter’s heart leaped in hope and sat behind his eyes, which pleaded silently with the mistress of the house and those around her to tell him what would be next.

But then a rooster crowed and the first faint light of dawn filtered into the room.

The shopper stood, saying, “May I tell you a story?”

The Caliph smiled at her. “Of course. Tell me a story or two.”

And now it was time for the shopper to begin.

It happened that the rooster you have just heard crow had an ancestor years ago in the faraway lands of India and Indochina
at the time of King Shahrayar and the brave and brilliant Shahrazad.

Shahrazad chose to marry King Shahrayar, knowing that she would be killed the following day like hundreds of virgins before her, daughters of princes, merchants and army officers. The King would deflower one girl each night and then kill her in the morning, wreaking his revenge on womankind after he had seen his wife taking part in an orgy with her slaves.

Amidst the growing, silent anger of his people, who muttered in hushed revolt and raised prayers to God, begging him to strike King Shahrayar down with a fatal disease, the King continued his campaign of bloodshed.

Shahrazad, who was none other than the daughter of the King’s Vizier, whose task it was to select a girl for the King each night, decided that she alone could bring an end to this bloodbath. Much to her father’s horror and mortification, she volunteered to be the King’s next bride. But she had a plan: she would tell a story each night, bringing it to a dramatic climax at dawn. Then the King would burn with curiosity to hear the conclusion and would decree that she could live until the following night. Shahrazad’s peaceful, eloquent plan worked. She began with one single story: that of the fisherman and the jinni. And from there, the stories accumulated into heaps of stories, like a dry stone of a date growing into a palm tree, with hundreds of dates covering its branches. Soon Shahrazad’s words took over, becoming her shield against the sword hanging over her like an augury of dawn. The King was hypnotised by her stories and his violent, murderous soul was quelled, tamed. Until one day …