Arabian Nights and Days (9 page)

It was neither the face of Gamasa al-Bulti nor that of Abdullah. It was a wheat-colored face with a clear complexion, a flowing black beard and thick hair with a parting that fell down to his shoulders, while the look in his eyes sparkled with the language of the stars. Abdullah had been overtaken by death, just as had previously happened to Gamasa al-Bulti. Fadil and Akraman had disappeared, Rasmiya and Husniya too, also Umm Saad. But new voices materialized and adventures that came with sunrise, and a new world that disclosed wondrous things.

He found life pleasant in the open space close to the green tongue of land that stretched out into the river. The date palm was his companion, and fishing in the river provided his food, while the pure air was constantly with him. The people who came for amorous diversion and music earned his displeasure yet gained his forgiveness. As for his heart's ease, he found it in conversing with Abdullah of the Sea.

People who crossed the river brought with them the news of the city. Among the things he learned was that the governor, Yusuf al-Tahir, had chosen Husam al-Fiqi as his private secretary and Bayumi al-Armal as his chief of police. He learned too that the security forces had stormed the quarter and were looking for Abdullah the porter. They had arrested his friends and had led Ragab the porter and Fadil Sanaan and his wife Akraman off to prison. Thus his feeling of security all too quickly came to an end and his heart became anxious. Once again he goaded himself into action.

He did not go in order to kill but to present himself as a ransom for those he loved. He was not conscious of any feelings of fear or misgivings. His sense of enlightenment took him above his uneasiness. He went straight to Bayumi al-Armal at police headquarters and with calm composure said, “I have come to confess before you that I am the killer of Adnan Shouma.”

The chief of police looked at him closely. “And who are you?” he asked.

“Abdullah of the Land, the fisherman.”

From his appearance the chief of police reckoned him to be mad and ordered him to be put in fetters of iron in case he were dangerous, then asked him, “And why did you kill Adnan Shouma?”

“I am entrusted with the killing of evil people,” he said simply.

“And who entrusted you?”

“Singam, a believing genie, and through his inspiration I killed Khalil al-Hamadhani, Buteisha Murgan, and Ibrahim al-Attar the druggist.”

The man humored him, saying, “The previous chief of police, Gamasa al-Bulti, has already confessed to killing Khalil al-Hamadhani.”

“Originally I was Gamasa al-Bulti,” he exclaimed.

“His head's hanging at the door of his house.”

“I've seen it with my own eyes.”

“And you insist that the head is yours?”

“There's no doubt about it, and you'll believe me when you hear my story.”

“But how and when did you fix yourself up with this new head?”

“Let me ask for Singam to come as a witness.”

“You should be kept locked up forever in a lunatic asylum,” the man bellowed, and he ordered him to be sent straight to the asylum.

“Help, Singam!” he shouted as he was being taken away. “Come to my rescue, Abdullah of the Sea!”

Fadil was tortured for a long time in prison, until the governor found no alternative but to release him, along with the others. At the same time he gave orders to discover the whereabouts of Abdullah the porter.

M
oonlight flooded the balkh trees in Shooting Square, making the smooth bezoar flowers glow, while it also immersed Qumqam and Singam. They were settled on one of the branches of the highest tree on a night when the breaths of departing winter were mingling with those of a spring that was ready to come into being.

“How good is time if it flows under the pleasure of Providence!” said Qumqam.

“When divine immanence abides, the whispering of the flowers is heard as they glorify and praise God.”

“What does man lack for the enjoyment of the blessings of time and place?”

“That's what baffles me, brother: has he not been granted an intellect and a soul?”

Qumqam pricked up his ears warily, then asked, “Is there not some warning harbinger in the air?”

At this a male and a female genie alighted on a nearby branch, both shamelessly intoxicated.

“Sakhrabout and Zarmabaha,” whispered Singam.

“Godlessness and evil,” whispered Qumqam.

Sakhrabout laughed derisively and commented, “We enjoy existence without fear.”

“There is no happiness for those whose hearts are empty of God,” Qumqam shouted at him.

“Really?” said Zarmabaha sarcastically.

And she and her companion began making love, and sparks flew from their embrace. Qumqam and Singam disappeared, at which Sakhrabout and Zarmabaha let out a shout of triumph, and he said to her, “You've been away from me an age.”

“I was playing a trick in a temple in India. And where were you?”

“I made a journey over the mountains.”

“On my return,” said Zarmabaha seductively, “I saw a girl whose beauty stunned me. It must be admitted…”

“I too saw a handsome young man in the Perfume Quarter, whose beauty has no equal among mankind.”

“A glance at my girl would erase from your memory the picture of your young man.”

“That's an unjustified exaggeration.”

“Come and see with your own eyes.”

“Where is your girl to be found?”

“In the sultan's palace itself.”

In the twinkle of an eye the two of them were in the reception wing of the sultan's palace. A girl made her appearance: a prodigious beauty. She was taking off her cloak embroidered with threads of gold in order to put on her nightdress made of Damascene silk.

“Dunyazad, the sister of Shahrzad, wife of the sultan,” said Zarmabaha.

“Her beauty is in truth greater than life itself. No fragile human being is favored with such beauty.”

“You are right—it shines for just a few days, then time impairs it.”

“So you take delight in gloating over them.”

“They have an intellect but they live the life of imbeciles.”

“How very immortal she appears!”

“Perhaps you will now concede that she is more beautiful than your young man?”

“I don't know,” said Sakhrabout after some hesitation. “Come and see for yourself.”

In less than an instant they were in the shop of the young man, a paragon of handsomeness. He was closing the shop and putting out the lamp before leaving.

“This is Nur al-Din the perfume-seller.”

“His handsomeness is also outstanding. Where is your friend from?”

“As you see, he is a seller. What interest is it to us where he is from?”

“Of all males he is most suited to my young girl, and she of all females is most suited to him.”

“They live in the same city but are as divided as the sky and the earth.”

“This is indeed an irony—and yet it is we who are accused of playing jokes!”

“How is it that the matchmakers are not competing over this girl?”

“Steady! Many would like to have her, among them Yusuf al-Tahir, governor of the quarter, and Karam al-Aseel the millionaire, but who is worthy of the sister of the sultan's wife?”

“Zarmabaha, this world is weighed down with stupidity.”

“I've an idea,” exclaimed Zarmabaha joyfully.

“What is it?”

“An idea worthy of Satan himself.”

“You've set my curiosity afire.”

“Let's have some crafty fun and bring them together!”

The black eyes of Dunyazad were lit up. It was the wedding party at the sultan's palace, a marvel of luxurious splendor. The palace rippled with the lights of candles and lanterns, setting aglitter the jewels of those who
had been invited, and resounded with the singing of the male and female performers. The sultan Shahriyar himself bestowed his blessing by giving her as a present the jewel of the wedding night.

“May your night be blessed, Dunyazad,” he said to her.

She waited in the bedchamber at the end of the night in a dress decorated with gold, pearls, and emeralds. Her mother bade her farewell, also her sister Shahrzad, and alone she waited in the bedchamber, lost in thought, concerned only with her anxious waiting and beating heart. The door opened, and Nur al-Din, in all his Damascene finery, Iraqi turban, and Moroccan slippers, entered. Like the full moon he advanced toward her and removed the veil from her face. Kneeling down in front of her, he clasped her legs to his chest. With a sigh he said, “The night of a lifetime, my beloved.”

He began stripping off her clothes piece by piece in the silence of the bedchamber that was filled with hidden melodies.

Dunyazad opened her eyes. The curtain was letting light through. She found herself immersed in the memories of the magic source from which she had sipped. Her lips were moist with kisses, her ears intoxicated with the sweetest words, her imagination replete with the warmth of sighs. The sensation of being embraced had not left her body, nor the tenderness. This was now the morning, but…Only too swiftly the harsh winds of consciousness blew over her. Where was the bridegroom? What was his name? When had the formalities of the marriage been carried out? O Lord, she had not been proposed to, she had not been given in marriage, and there had been no party at the palace. She was being snatched from her dream like someone being led to the execution mat. Was it really a dream? But the nature of dreams is for them to vanish, not to become so firmly established and corporeal that they can be touched and sensed. The room was still fragrant with his breathing. She jumped to the floor. She found that she was naked and had been despoiled of her innocence. A terrible penetrating trembling assailed her.

“It's madness!” she exclaimed in despair.

Gazing around her in stupefaction, she again exclaimed, “It's ruin!” And madness loomed like some pursuing beast.

As for the awakening of Nur al-Din, he was angry and agitated on seeing his simple bedroom in the dwelling that lay above his shop in the Perfume Quarter. Had it been a dream? But what an extraordinary dream, with all the power and heaviness of reality. Here was the bride in all her beauty, a reality that could not be forgotten or erased from his heart. When and how had he been stripped of his clothes? He was still smelling that lovely fragrance that had no parallel among his scents. He could still see the sumptuous bedchamber with its curtains, its divans, and its fantastic bed.

“What's the point of playing a joke on a sincere believer like myself?”

He was tortured not by reality alone but also by love.

Zarmabaha guffawed with laughter and asked Sakhrabout, “What's your opinion of this hopeless love?”

“A truly unique jest.”

“Mankind has never known such a thing.”

“Not necessarily,” said Sakhrabout. “They are keen on creating illusions.”

“But how?”

“How many there are who imagine that they have intelligence or the ability to compose poetry, or are possessed of courage.”

“What idiots they are!” she said, laughing.

“I am amazed at why they should have been given preference over us.”

Dunyazad resigned herself to the fact that her secret was too heavy for her to bear alone. She hastened to Shahrzad's wing of the palace just after Shahriyar had gone off to the Council of Justice. No sooner did Shahrzad see her than she asked anxiously, “What's wrong with you, sister?”

Seating herself on a cushion at the feet of the sultana, she raised her eyes with an appeal for help. Choking with sobs she said, “I wish it were illness or death.”

“I take my refuge in God—don't say such a thing. We parted yesterday and you were fine.”

“Then something happened that does not occur in the world of the sane.”

“Tell me, for you have upset my peace of mind.”

Lowering her eyes, she recounted to her the story that had begun with an imagined marriage and ended in real blood. Shahrzad followed the tale with doubt and anxiety, then said encouragingly, “Don't hide anything from your sister.”

“I swear to you by the Lord of the Universe that in my story I have not added or taken away a single word.”

“Would he be some scoundrel from among the palace men?” inquired Shahrzad.

“No, no, I have never set eyes on him.”

“What man of sense would accept your story?”

“That is what I tell myself. It is a story like one of your amazing tales.”

“My tales are derived from another world, Dunyazad.”

“I have fallen prisoner to the truth of your mysterious world, but I do not want to be its victim.”

Shahrzad said sadly, “I shall know the truth sooner or later, but I am frightened that disgrace will overtake us before that.”

“That is what kills me with fear and worry.”

“If the sultan gets to know your story, his doubts will once more
be awakened and he will revert to his low opinion of our sex and will perhaps send me to the executioner and himself go back to his previous behavior.”

“God forbid that any harm should befall you on my account,” exclaimed Dunyazad.

Shahrzad thought for a while, then said, “Let us keep our story a secret, with neither the sultan nor my father knowing it. I shall arrange with my mother what shall be done, but you must return to our house with the excuse of being homesick.”

“How wretched I am!” muttered Dunyazad.

Nur al-Din asked his mother, Kalila al-Dumur to come to see him. The old woman came, moving her lips in a silent recital of verses from the Quran. Her emaciated face bore traces of an old beauty. He sat her down by his side on a sofa from Khurasan and asked her, “Were we visited by any strangers while I was asleep?”

“No one knocked at the door.”

“Was no voice heard coming from my room?”

“None. While I myself sleep, my senses don't—the faintest of sounds wakes me up. Why do you ask such strange questions?”

“Perhaps it was a dream, though quite unlike other dreams.”

“What did you see, my son?”

“I saw myself in the presence of a beautiful girl.”

“It is an invitation to marriage from the unseen,” said Kalila with a smile.

“It was a reality both felt and sensed,” he said sharply. “I don't know how to doubt it, but I am also unable to believe it.”

Said the old woman simply, “Don't worry yourself—get married.”

“Have you ever heard of a reality that disappears in a dream?”

“The Lord is omnipotent—you will forget everything before an hour is past.”

“Yes,” he said with a sigh.

He knew he was lying and that he would not forget, that his heart was throbbing with real love and that his beloved was flesh and blood, a beloved who would not be forgotten, whose impression was ineffaceable.

Nur al-Din opened up his shop and looked at people with a new face. All his adolescent life he had been known for his pure good looks and quickness of mind. But that spring morning he looked distracted and confused. Those who used to rejoice at his appearance wondered what it was that had altered him and taken over his mind. He too was all the time wondering about the extraordinary dream which surpassed reality in its devastating effect. He had reached twenty years of age without marrying because of an old desire to marry Husniya, the sister of his friend Fadil Sanaan. Formerly he had hesitated because of his limited income and the great wealth of her father; after that he had hesitated because of his mother's objection to his marrying the daughter of a man whose life had been mixed up with a genie.

“Keep away from evil, for we do not know anything about such secrets,” the old woman had said.

He had kept his friendship with Fadil, leaving Husniya to time. But where was Husniya now? Where, too, the world and everything in it? Nothing existed but that sparkling image, the sumptuous bedchamber, and the bed itself which was larger than the whole of his own bedroom. He had seen a vision of reality, had made real love, and here he was now loving in a way in comparison with which any actual love would be weak and feeble. Here he was suffering life's languor, its loneliness, its melancholy and everlasting sadness in being separated from her; it lingered in his nostrils. As for her whispered words, they repeated themselves with his every breath.

He recollected his youth spent under the wing of Sheikh Abdullah al-Balkhi learning to read and write and the rudiments of religion. When he had had his fill and was about to bid the sheikh farewell, the man had said to him, “How better suited you are to Love.”

Understanding that the sheikh was inviting him to stay on with him, he said, “My father is ill and I must replace him in the shop.”

“I don't accept in my company of disciples anyone who does not work.”

“Let worship and devoutness be enough for me.”

He did not fail to keep to his thoughts on this and did not turn aside from the straight path. Now he remembered the spontaneous words of the sheikh: “How better suited you are to Love!” Should he visit the sheikh to seek advice? But he was afraid and conceded that it was appropriate that the secret be kept within his heart.