Man, that last post was a long one, wasn't it? And believe me, I'm condensing the stories as best I can. The thing I noticed about the last four stories was that there weren't any jinnis, other than the one the fisherman was bargaining with. There was an ogress, a really stupid prince, an even stupider king, and a nasty witch who turned her cousin/husband into a half-pillar of stone because she wanted to play the close-buttocks game with an ugly leper slave. Icky.
So, let's continue with NIGHT NUMBER NINE.
When last we left, the king pretending to be the lecherous, leprous slave had tricked the witch-queen into reversing the curse on the prince, and she was about to free the city, as well. And so she does, and the fish stand up and become men again. The lake becomes a city, and the curse is gone. So, she goes back to her "lover" and the king slices her in half, then quarters, just to be sure. Well, she would have turned him into a newt or something, if she could have. But that was it for the nasty witch, and the prince was quite thankful and happy. Now, the two of them left, the King adopting the Prince as his son, since he didn't have one anyway. Hurray! Happy endings all around!
Except that the story doesn't appear to be done yet, as they head back to the Sultan's palace, with an escort of Mamelukes. I should mention that these guys are military slaves, soldiers owned by the sultan or king. Historically, they were common in the Ottoman Empire, and often acted as administrators and even rulers of some cities. There, some history in your entertainment!
Back to the sultan, who rewards the fisherman (remember him?) by marrying one of his daughters, marrying another one off to the prince, and making the fisherman's son the head treasurer of the kingdom. One has to wonder if that son had any experience with making monetary policies for a kingdom. I would guess 'no,' which makes him qualified to run the Federal Reserve.
Anyway, that is the end of the story of the Fisherman and the Djinni, finally. But Scheherazade informs her husband that she has an even better story to tell:
The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad.
This story starts in Baghdad, where a porter, who happens to be a bachelor and planning to stay that way, comes across a woman who would be a leading lady in Bollywood today. She's so gorgeous that he almost doesn't hear her hire him, but he readily takes the job and starts carrying her stuff. She does some shopping, and he gets to follow around this stunning beauty all day, thinking he's got it made. We get a lot of descriptions of the things she's buying, and this guy must be built like Arnold Schwarzenegger to carry it all. I don't think it would all fit in the trunk of my car, you know? But he's following her like a faithful puppy dog, carrying whatever she buys. It's enough to feed an army a seven-course mean and have leftovers. He finally notes that had he known what she was going to do, he would have brought a pony or a camel to help. She tells him that the reward will be worth it. Having read ahead, I can't disagree.
The shopping spree takes two pages, then she finally leads him to a mansion. She knocks, and while the porter is still thinking how hot she is, another woman opens the door, and she's even better-looking than the first one. She's so beautiful that the description of her takes up half a page, including some poetry. Well, the porter is just beside himself (not really, but having a twin would have helped with the carrying). The shopping girl tells the other one to help the porter with his stuff, and they invite him in. And there in the mansion is yet another woman, the best-looking of the three. They take the merchandise from him and toss him a couple of gold dinars, but he's still dumbstruck by the bevy of beauties and doesn't leave. So, they throw him another coin, but he's not worried about the money, and flat-out suggests that three women all alone need a fourth to keep them company. And wouldn't you know it, that line works on them, but they don't want to give up their secret, which we don't know what it is yet. He assures them that he is good with secrets, and they finally agree to let him stay with them.
After the first few stories, I'm sure you can guess where this is leading. And Scheherazade does not disappoint. They do some partying and drinking, then some drinking and partying, until the girl that was doing the shopping finally strips down and jumps in the pond in the courtyard. Then she gets on the porter's lap and starts asking him what he calls her privates. Yeah, I'm being delicate; trust me, the book is not. Not even close. But here's where it starts to get weird. Every time he guesses, he's wrong, and she smacks him around for a bit. Stark naked, mind you. The writers of these stories were into some kinky stuff. Finally he turns the tables and asks what she calls it. And she gives him the answer: "The basil of the bridges."
More partying and drinking, and the second woman who answered the door repeats the same scenario as her sister did, including the beating him until he's sore when he guesses wrong. She calls it 'the husked sesame seed'. Third time's the charm, and the last woman goes through the same procedure, and calls it...'the Khan of Abu Mansur.' Yeah, I don't get that one either. There doesn't seem to be any sort of clue or point to all this except to include a picture of one of the naked women cavorting at the porter's feet. Well, whatever floats the reader's boat, I guess.
Anyway, the porter decides to play as well and gets naked, swims around, and then asks them to name his special party favor. They start guessing...and Scheherazade stops her story there. I'm sure the king was really excited to keep hearing this story the next night. But, she lived another day, and thus we come to NIGHT NUMBER TEN.
The story picks up again with the ladies still guessing, and he turns their own secret names back on them. I'm not going to get more detailed than that; my son wants to read my blog. So, the party goes on, and while it's not explicit, it's pretty obvious what goes on after that. So, we'll skip to later on, where they tell him he can't stay the night unless he promises to do as he's told, ask no questions, and read what's written above the door. He does, and it says, 'Whoso speaketh of what concerneth him not, shall hear what pleaseth him not.' He agrees to their conditions, probably because he's already having the time of his life and doesn't want to stop. They start eating the magnificent feast the shopping girl bought, and then there's a knock at the door.
One of the girls opens the door, and there are three one-eyed men with shaved heads out there, called 'Kalandars,' who are looking for a place to stay for the night. She convinces the others to let them in, figuring they can have some fun with them. So the Kalandars come in and are pretty impressed with the place, and think the porter (who is drunk and has been bruised pretty badly by the three women) is a beggar like they are. He takes offense, but the girls quickly make peace between them, and they join the feast. The beggars get some musical instruments and begin to play, which draws outside attention, and there's another knock at the gate. This time it's the Caliph Harun al-Rashid, his bodyguard Masrur, and his vizier, Ja'afar, and anyone who's seen a Disney movie knows that name. Actually, Burton informs us in the footnotes that these are historical figures, who will show up often in these stories.
The Caliph is looking for a party as well, and the vizier suggests this isn't the best place to do so. But the Caliph has the final say, so of course the girls let them in. Ja'afar says that they are merchants from out-of-town, not disclosing their true identities just yet. They get the same condition that the porter and the Kalandars got, which is to shut up and not ask questions about stuff that doesn't concern them.
The party goes on for a while, although I will hasten to point out that everyone is clothed; they're mainly eating and drinking. Then the girls have something they have to do, and the table is cleared off. The men are told to sit in various couches, and you would think this is going to lead to another story I am going to delicately gloss over. You would be wrong; it's a whole different kind of weird. The shopping girl tells the porter to give her a hand, and they bring out two black women from a closet, with chains around their necks. They then proceed to whip them and, when finished, hug them and kiss their foreheads.
I'm not really sure how to describe this stuff; it's just weird. I can't even make snarky comments. Needless to say, the Caliph is curious as hell as to why they're doing this. He's not upset by it, but he wants to know what's going on. Ja'afar reminds him that they promised to mind their own business. Then one of the girls...you know what? This is just too weird to explain. It turns out she's got scars and welts on her back as well (which the porter didn't see earlier when she was bouncing naked on his knee, but whatever), and finally the Caliph demands to know what's going on. The Kalandars are wondering what they've gotten themselves into as well. The men gang up and demand to know what these girls are up to. The girls reply by summoning seven black slaves with swords and order them to tie the men up together by the elbows. They'll question them before having them decapitated. The porter protests that he didn't break his promise...and Scheherazade stops.
Believe me, there was a lot of weirdness in the part I skipped over. Maybe it will get explained later, but not so far. I told you, this is definitely not the Disney version of these stories.
Moving along, Scheherazade continues on with NIGHT NUMBER ELEVEN.
So, the lady starts questioning the men; the Caliph tells Ja'afar to tell them who he is before something bad happens; Ja'afar points out that he earned it, which doesn't do wonders for his employer-employee relations. The lady starts with the Kalandars, and asks them some questions about who and what they are. It turns out that all three are princes from different countries, and each of them has a story about how he lost his eye and became a wandering mendicant. Coincidences are a big thing in these stories.
The ladies let the porter go, but he wants to stick around to hear the stories, which is good, since that's the point of this entire exercise. So, one of the one-eyed men steps forward and begins to tell:
The First Kalandar's Tale.
This guy is a prince, with a cousin who was born on the same day as him. The cousins grow up to be great friends, and one day while dipping heavily into the wine together, the cousin asks the prince to help him with something really important and not to stop him from doing it. 'No problem,' says the prince, and the cousin leaves, coming back with a veiled woman. He asks the prince to take the lady to a specific burial ground and go into a sepulchre (sort of like a tomb) and wait for him. No, that's not at all ominous.
The prince does what he's asked, and shortly after the cousin arrives, carrying water, mortar, and a trowel. He opens a hole in the sepulchre's floor, then digs through the dirt until he reaches an iron plate. Below it is a staircase, and he tells the woman to make her final choice. She goes in, and the cousin asks the prince to put everything back the way it was, including the flagstones on the floor so no one can tell they went down there. He'd been working on this place for a whole year in secret. He then goes down, and that is the last time the prince sees him. He bricks up the place as requested, still a bit tipsy from drinking.
The next day, the prince regrets what had happened, and wonders if it was all a dream. No one has seen the cousin, and the prince goes hunting for the sepulchre to no avail. He repeats this for a whole week, until he heads home to his father the Sultan (not the same sultan as in the previous story). On the way, though, he gets attacked by rioters; it turns out that his father's rulership was in the process of being demolished by a mob. The prince finds out that his father's vizier had led a rebellion and overthrown the sultan, killing him in the process. This is a problem for the prince, since he had accidentally put out the vizier's eye with an arrow some time past. Sure enough, the prince gets brought, shackled, to the vizier, who orders him to be beheaded. The prince protests that it was accidental, to which the vizier decides to do it to him on purpose, and puts out his left eye. He then orders one of his swordsmen to bring him out to the wastelands, kill him, and leave him for the animals to feast on.
You remember Snow White? Yeah, same thing here, although the one-eyed prince doesn't sing about it. But the swordsman, who had served his father, lets him go and warns him never to come back or they're both dead. So, the prince returns to his uncle's home, telling him about the coup. The uncle is distraught because his son (the cousin, remember?) has been missing for a while. The prince tells him what the cousin had done, and the uncle goes with him to find the tomb. This time, they actually find it, and break into the trap-door. Going down together, they run into some blinding smoke. Continuing, they find a saloon, with tons of provisions handy, as well as a canopy over a couch. The uncle checks out the couch, and there finds the cousin and his lady together and naked, but burned to a crisp. The uncle then spits in his son's burned face and tells him he got what he deserved. And on that note, Scheherazade goes to sleep, and you just know the king isn't going to leave it at that.
NIGHT NUMBER TWELVE, and Scheherazade resumes the story. It turns out that the lady wasn't just some cute thing the cousin picked up; it was his sister (also the prince's cousin). Yep, let's add incest to the stories, because why not? She must have been veiled up pretty well for the prince not to recognize her, since he would have known her pretty well. And no one in the palace seemed to be wondering where she was, being the uncle's daughter and all. But, there it is, and the uncle flat-out says that Satan got hold of them both and drove them to unnatural lusts for each other. Well, at least they're saying incest is bad. That's a good sign, even though you have had cousins married in a few stories prior to this. I suppose 'cousin-marriage' wasn't considered as bad as 'sister-marriage' back then.
So, the uncle adopts the one-eyed prince as his son now, and they put the tomb back the way it was, leaving the charred couple to their eternal embrace. When they get back to the uncle's palace, they hear the marching of armies, and the vizier who had taken the prince's eye is on the conquest kick, wanting to take the uncle's lands as well, thereby assuring no challenger to his ill-gotten throne. And he's hired a bunch of mercenaries, so he's got the upper hand. The uncle is killed (orphaning the prince once again), and the prince escapes by shaving his head and dressing up like a beggar, leaving the city and heading for Baghdad, where he fell in with the other two Kalandars and found the ladies' house.
His story impresses the ladies enough that they let him live, and then we hear:
The Second Kalandar's Tale.
This one was a prince as well, highly educated and well-known across many lands for the breadth of his learning. A far-off King wanted to meet him, so he went to sea and sailed for a full month to get to the land of Hind. Unfortunately, before they get to the king's palace, a huge dust-storm comes up, and an hour later they are surrounded by a troop of fifty horsemen, who don't answer to the King of Hind, and don't care that the travelers are his invited guests. They rob them blind (no, they don't put his eye out), and the prince is left out in the wilderness with most of his entourage killed by the bandits.
He manages to find a cave in a mountain, then sets out the next day until he arrives at a city. Unfortunately, it's not the city he wants to go to; in fact, it's run by one of his father's blood-enemies, so if he announces his presence or reveals his identity, he's dead meat. He takes up work as a woodcutter, since nobody in this city cares about his book-smarts. He ends up working as a woodcutter for a year.
One day, he starts digging up a tree but finds a copper ring attached to a trap-door. Under the trap-door is a (surprise!) staircase, and down there he finds a beautiful woman. She asks him if he's a man or a jinni, and tells him that she's been there for twenty-five years without having seen any man in all that time. She is a princess, and was kidnapped on her wedding day (to her cousin, of course) by a jinni who locked her up here and shows up every ten days for a tryst, keeping her well-fed and comfortable but imprisoned. She can summon him at any time by brushing up against an alcove in the cavern. She's not happy about it, and since he's not due back for another six days, she tells the woodcutting prince that he's got five days to stay with her, with the implied rewards therein.
They get to partying and carrying on, and after some drinking and fornicating, he gets the idea to take her away from this place. She says no, that he's going to have to be content with getting nine days out of ten with her, but the jinni isn't to be crossed. Princey-boy had a bit too much wine in him, because he starts bragging that he can take down a jinni, and that in fact he was an expert in doing just that. She argues with him that suicide isn't painless, but he gives the alcove a swift kick--
And Scheherazade ends it there. Another cliffhanger, and we're done with this post as well. At least we've got another jinni; it's been a few nights without one showing up. There wasn't much magic in these four nights, except for the witch-queen who got sliced and diced at the beginning of Night Nine, just a bunch of people running into a whole pile of weird coincidences. Oh, and sex, because that's a big thing in these stories. As you can tell.
So, that's it for this one; come back for the next one, where I'll close the gap between where I've read and where I am in these posts. I'm reading Night Seventeen tonight, so I'm almost caught up. I'm going to try to summarize the stories a bit better in the future, since these posts are quite long.
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