Salaam and good evening to you, worthy friends. Please, come closer...
Too close! A little too close! I--
Oh, sorry; flashback. It's time to follow the continuing adventures of Scheherazade's imagination, and I'm going to post four nights at a time until I'm caught up. Which will take a while, since I just finished reading Night fifteen. But it will happen.
So, when we last left Scheherazade and her psychotic wife-murdering husband, she had been just about to tell how the king told his vizier the tale of:
King Sindibad and His Falcon.
No, this isn't that Sinbad; he shows up later. This is a king who had a prized falcon and carried it with him everywhere and all the time. The story doesn't specify, but I wouldn't be surprised if the bird sleeps at night on his arm, too. So, the king goes out hunting one day, because that's what kings do, and challenges his huntsmen that whoever lets the gazelle jump over his head will be executed. Well, you know what happens next, right? The huntsmen point and laugh at the king when the gazelle swan dives over his head and runs away. The king calls a mulligan and chases the gazelle into the mountains. When he catches up to it, he lets the falcon finish the gazelle off and does hunting things to it afterward to package it up for the trip home. Being thirsty, he sees a tree that is dripping water, like melted butter. So he takes a cup and fills it up, offering it to the bird, which promptly turns the cup over and spills it. The king tries it again, with the same result, and a third time. Irritated with the vexing falcon, he thinks the bird is somehow defective, and he cuts off her wing with his sword. That's a bit extreme, don't you think? Especially since it was his favorite bird and all. So, they dying bird points with its remaining wing up into the tree, and the king looks up to see a whole bunch of snakes, dripping poison from their fangs.
Are there any snakes that actually do that? That seems a bit much. So, he takes the dead bird back with him, along with the gazelle. And...that's it, except for the king's wailing and gnashing of teeth, but that's pretty much standard for stories like this. And the other king (the one telling the story, not Sindibad) starts another story right away, telling his vizier the tale of:
The Husband and the Parrot.
Basically, this is a story in which the husband has to go on a long trip, and buys a parrot to leave at home to keep an eye on things and tell him what went on while he was gone. That's a pretty smart parrot. And of course, every husband who leaves his wife in these stories suffers the same fate: She cheats on him. Although this is the first of these adultery stories in which she's not with a black man. Variety is the key to good storytelling, after all.
So, the wayward husband returns from his business trip, and the parrot dutifully tells him that his wife entertained a young man every day while he was gone. Well, he's not going to take that sort of disrespect, and goes all Mike Tyson on her. After the bruises heal, the unfaithful wife figures that one of the slave-girls tattled, and interrogates them. One of them admits that the parrot was the culprit, and so as soon as the husband leaves on another trip (do they never learn?), she gets the slave-girls to set up a hand-mill right under the cage and grind whatever they can, sprinkle water through the roof of the cage, and run around the room flashing bright lights with a mirror into the cage. She could have put the bird under a sheet and hung the cage outside, but I guess she wanted to give the slave-girls something to do while she entertained her boy-toy.
The next morning the husband returns, and this time the parrot's got nothing to report except the stormy weather it experienced throughout the night. Since it was mid-summer and there was no storms, the husband thinks the parrot screwed up and kills the bird. Of course, it's only a few days later that one of the slave-girls tells him what really happened. So he lies in wait until the young fellow comes out of his wife's bedchamber, at which time he beheads them both like any sensible cuckolded husband would do.
What? Just me? Carry on, then.
So, that's the end of the king's stories, but the vizier counters with a story of his own. In Scheherazade's world, nobody can take any course of action without reciting a moral lesson in the form of a wild story. The vizier tells his king the tale of:
The Prince and the Ogress.
Well, that's encouraging; no jinni or ifrit this time around. So, a young prince goes hunting (like I said, it's really common), and his trusted (and totally not trustworthy) vizier sends him after a big animal (what kind is not specified, but how many big animals are there in the Arabian peninsula, anyway? Seriously, other than camels and horses, are there any?). The prince gets lost, but runs into a crying damsel. She claims to be a princess who fell asleep while part of a caravan and fell off her horse, being abandoned by the caravan's crew.
Okay, if he doesn't immediately figure out that she's a lying ogress, I'm done with him. Seriously, it's in the story's name! Besides, what caravan is going to continue on while the princess slips into a coma and falls off her horse? Come on! Of course, he isn't a complete moron, and sees right through--
Oh. No, he falls for it completely. Look, I'm a guy, and I'll be the first to admit that I'll pay close attention to a pretty face. But there isn't a woman alive that could make that story believable. This guy is an absolute idiot. She should just go ahead and eat him; the gene pool will thank her later.
So, the moron takes her on his horse, and as they are riding, they pass a ruined building. She actually calls for a potty break! Prince Moron waits while she disappears into the ruin, wondering what's taking her so long. Apparently constipation wasn't a problem for these people. Finally, he goes to find her, and stumbles across her looking much different. Spoiler alert: She's really an ogress, or a 'ghulah' in this story. In the footnotes, Burton compares her to a lamia, Lilith from Hebrew myth, and Baba Yaga. And she's telling her family about the succulent meal she just brought them. I hope they don't believe in 'you are what you eat,' because this meal will make them grossly stupid.
So, Prince Moron turns and runs like hell back to his horse and--what? He just stands there shaking while she comes back out (is she disguised again? I think so, but it's not made clear). She asks him what's wrong, and he says he spotted an enemy that he's scared of. And now her brains dribble out of her head, because she suggests he buy off his enemy so he can leave in peace. But no, this enemy wants nothing but his life. And then...seriously, this happens. The ogress, the demonic hellspawn that wants to eat him, tells him to pray to Allah, who will surely protect him. And he does. And, guess what? IT WORKS! She turns away from him and leaves! That's like a coach drawing up a play for the other team, letting them run it, and getting fooled by it! This is easily the stupidest story so far. I feel like I lost IQ points reading it.
Oh, but here's the best part. The prince gets home and blames the vizier for what happened to him, and the king executes the vizier! What?! What did the vizier have to do with it? He didn't summon the ogress from the pits of Hell and send it after the idiot prince! He's the one who was stupid enough to fall for the girl's story, not the vizier!
But, the vizier (the one telling the story, not the one who got beheaded in the story) thinks this is a story that will convince the king to kill the guy who healed him (remember him?). And lo and behold, it is. Somehow, that story convinces the king that the man who healed him from advanced leprosy is really a spy plotting his death.
So, the king summons the healer, who shows up expecting to get more rewards, and he's humming poetry and having a great time, praising the king in his songs. So, he comes to the king's throne, bows, and the king informs him that his reward for his service is to be executed as a spy. This doesn't exactly sit well with the healer, whose name is Duban, by the way. He protests, but the king is adamant, because he's as stupid as the prince in the vizier's story. Maybe that's why the vizier picked that story; it's important for the audience to identify with the main character.
Anyway, Duban tries everything to keep his head attached, but the king isn't having it. Finally, Duban acquiesces to his fate and asks permission to return home and take care of his debts and hand out his books on medicine. Oh, and he'll also bring the king a gift, a book of secrets that will allow the king to make Duban's head continue to speak even after it's removed from his body. This impresses the king, who agrees to Duban's request, because he's an idiot. So, Duban goes and does what he promised, pays off his debts, distributes his books, and makes funeral arrangements. See, I would have hopped onto the nearest camel and high-tailed it out of there. But Duban is wiser than I, because he comes back. Wait. Did I say wiser? I meant he's a moron, too.
Or is he? Because he instructs the king on what to do when his head is removed and put on a platter covered with a special powder. And then...slice! The head comes off, and they put it on the powdered platter, and sure enough, the head begins to speak, instructing the king to turn the pages and read three lines from each page. He does so, because he's still an idiot, even though the pages are blank. And, to the surprise of no one, the pages are poisoned, and the king's been moistening his finger to turn the pages, thus licking the poison, and he dies just before the head does.
Got all that? Good, because all that was the story told by the fisherman to the ifrit after shoving him back in the jar. Nested stories, remember? Oh, and that's the end of the fifth night.
Night six, and Scheherazade goes back to the fisherman, telling the ifrit that he's going to suffer the same fate because he threatened to kill the fisherman for the crime of letting him out of his thousand-plus-year imprisonment. The ifrit is still begging for mercy, even teasing a story of his own, but refusing to tell it unless he's released. Then he makes a vow and a covenant with the fisherman, promising that he absolutely won't kill him, and he'll even help him with his fishing since that's what caused all the trouble in the first place.
Bolstered by the promises of the totally trustworthy demonic and psychotic spirit-creature, the fisherman agrees, and the ifrit swears by Allah to do exactly what he said. Okay, so he's actually going to follow through on the promise not to kill the fisherman. Great! He opens the jar, and the ifrit comes out, then punts the jar way out into the sea. This does not boost the fisherman's confidence, and he literally pisses his pants, then reminds the ifrit that he promised Allah he'd be good.
The ifrit leads him into the wilderness beyond the city, and they find a mountain-tarn (a small lake). The ifrit wades in and invites the fisherman to follow him. When he does, he sees that he is surrounded by multi-colored fish like he's never seen before. We're not getting that story the ifrit promised, apparently. Can't trust an ifrit, can you? Altough the fisherman did, and now he's got some pretty fancy fish. The ifrit tells him not to fish more than once a day, and then leaves, without killing the fisherman. Okay, then.
Still with me? Good, because here is where the story gets complicated. The fisherman takes four of these fish and puts them in a bowl, then brings them to the king's palace as a gift. The king is just as impressed as the fisherman, because despite having been king of these parts for a long time, he's never seen fish like these. So naturally, he has them sent to the kitchen for frying, paying the fisherman four hundred dinars for the catch. Nice deal. Not the same as getting a princess for a bride, but then he's just a fisherman.
Meanwhile, the cook starts cleaning them and frying them, just like you're supposed to do with fish. But then a gorgeous young woman comes in through the wall, dressed to the nines, and starts talking to the fish about their covenant while sticking a wand in the pan. The cook faints, so she misses the part where the (cleaned, deboned and frying) fish raise their heads from the pan and reply, singing a song while they're at it. The girl flips over the frying pan and goes back through the wall, which closes up behind her. When the cook comes to, she sees the fish burnt to a crisp. So, naturally, she faints again. Because no one has ever burned multi-colored fish in a pan before. The vizier shows up, demanding the fish. So the cook tells her what happened, and the vizier slaps her around for making up such a ridiculous story.
No? Oh, he just sends for the fisherman to get more fish. He does, and the whole scene repeats again. At this point, Scheherazade ends her story for the night, much shorter than the previous night was.
Night number seven, and once again the girl with the magic wand makes the fish get up and dance in the frying pan before disappearing. This time, the vizier witnessed it, so he goes to the king, who wants to see it for himself. So the fisherman is summoned to get yet another batch of fish, and the whole scene starts all over again. Except this time, it's not a pretty girl that comes through the wall; it's a huge black slave (how do we know he's a slave? I don't know; it just says he is), who bursts in like the Kool-Aid Man and does the same trick with the fish before leaving.
So now, having seen it with his own eyes, the king is intrigued and wants to know more about these fish. He interrogates the fisherman (politely; he kept bringing him fish, after all) and finds out that the fishpond is only half an hour away from the city. So the king takes a group of men, and with the fisherman as a guide (who is now cursing the ifrit for putting him in this position), heads off to the mountain-tarn to see these magical fishes. And...now the wilderness is a desert? That's a lot of soil erosion in two days. But they find the tarn anyway, which none of them have ever seen before despite having lived all their lives in this region.
Having set his guards up around the perimeter, the king tells his vizier that he has a gut feeling that he has to figure out the mystery of this fish-tarn. He orders the vizier to guard his tent and pretend he's in there, sick, while he heads off somewhere (with guards all around the place; is this king secretly a ninja?) to solve the mystery. He changes clothes and takes his sword, and it's two days of a march before he finds a palace. Two days from the tarn? How does he know they even know about it, since he only lived half an hour away?
But, this being a fantasy story, of course he gets some answers. Of a sort. The place is deserted, and wandering around he finds that it's beautifully furnished and full of rich treasures. But he also hears a lamenting voice singing a dismal and depressing song. Looking around, he finds a young, handsome prince who is sitting on a couch...because the lower half of his body is encased in stone due to a curse. Naturally, the king wants to know how this happened, which leads us to the tale of:
The Ensorcelled Prince.
The prince tells the story of how he married his cousin (like I said, this isn't uncommon in these stories), and thought that it was a happy marriage. I'm sure that by now, you can figure out what's going on, and what she's doing, and who she's doing it with. Hey, the variety was in the last story, remember? Back to the usual. The slave-girls betray her secret, and he learns that she's been drugging his wine to make him sleep so she can go and have her fun. So, that night when she drugs the wine, he only pretends to drink it and fall asleep, then he follows her to the slave quarters of the city. We're talking slums here. She goes into one of the mud-brick huts, and the prince climbs up to a hole in the roof to see what's going on. Sure enough, she's shacking up with a 'hideous' black slave with huge lips, who is also a leper and a paralytic. Seriously? I mean, I've heard the phrase, 'once you go black, you never go back,' but come on! Is this prince that much of a loser in the sack? Or is she just into some really kinky stuff?
And get this: She's apologizing to the slave for being late! And she's running down her husband, calling him all kinds of ugly, asking the slave to forgive her and promising that she's only for him. And he's not buying it! And the cuckolded husband is still up on the roof, watching through the skylight (hole in the roof) as she strips off and begs for some food, which turns out to be rat-stew. Yikes. And then she climbs into bed with her leprous lover, which finally sets off the prince, who comes down and swings for the neck...and Scheherazade is done for the night.
One more to go today. And apparently, this prince sucks at swordfighting, because he missed the guy's neck, only slicing a couple of arteries. Oh, is that all? But the tramp wakes up (she fell asleep that fast? Before they actually did anything?), and the prince leaves. Seriously? He just goes home and waits for her to come back. And she does, not having seen who actually attacked them.
And in the morning, she comes in to their bedroom and tells him that she needs to leave for a while She's in mourning; her hair is cut, and she's wearing black. Then she recites a country song to him, saying that her mother is dead, her father was just killed in a jihad, and one of her brothers died of a snakebite, and the other fell off a cliff. Laying it on a bit thick, isn't she? Of course, this prince isn't as much of an idiot as the other one was; he knows she's lying. But he lets her go, and she builds a cenotaph and sneaks her not-dead-yet slave-lover inside to tend to him. Even without the 'close-buttocks game' action going on, she's still attached to this guy. This goes on for two whole years, until the prince catches her crying about her broken heart. He tries to get her to stop her mourning, but she threatens to kill herself. I would have told her to go ahead, but that's just me.
She keeps it up for a third year, when he catches her inside tending to her mute and impotent lover. Finally, he's had enough, and he confronts her and admits that he was the one who cut the slave's throat. He even draws his sword to finish them both off, but she just laughs at him. It turns out that she's a witch, and she curses him to be half-stone. Then she curses the entire city, turning the entire thing into the tarn...and turning all the people therein into fish, color-coded by their religions for convenience. Yep, every white fish the fisherman caught and handed over to the king to fry was a Muslim. Not satisfied with that measure of revenge, the nasty woman gives the prince a daily whipping just to remind him who's really in charge. How good was this guy in bed, anyway? Because that seems like a severe overreaction on her part.
So, the King (who was trying to solve the mystery of the fish, remember) asks how he can help his fellow nobleman out of this horrible situation. The prince tells him where the slave is holed up, and the king goes in to see the slave lying there, as he has for the past few years. The king stays hidden, watching when the witch comes to whip her husband once again. Then she leaves him, going back to the cenotaph. And after she pleads with her lover to speak to her, the king twists his tongue and lays on a heavy accent, convincing her that he can't speak to her because of how she is treating her husband and his subjects. He talks her into freeing the prince from his stony prison, and she reverses the spell and orders him to leave on pain of death. Then the king, still faking an accent in the darkness, pleads with her to freeing all the people and restoring the city as well. She heads off to do just that...
And the night ends, and so does this very long blog post. Tune in next time to see what happens next!
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