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Introduction:

What if it were written in the hidden annals of Persia, O Reader, that the Sultan Shahryar did not spare the life of the Queen Shahrazad on the one thousand and first night, and she had to continue her tales.......?

At some 51000 words, this is a long story. Also, it's written in the style of the original unexpurgated, Book Of The One Thousand And One Nights. So only read it if that's your kind of thing.

When Shahrazad ended her tale on the thousand and first night, little Dunyazad rose as usual from her position at the foot of the bed.

“Dear sister,” she said, “your words are as sweet as the aroma of roses, and your tales as marvellous as the light of the moon and stars.”

Then Shahrazad smiled and said, “It is nothing to the stories that I could tell you, if only this gracious king would give me leave to tell them tomorrow night.”

Then the Sultan Shahryar thought to himself, “I must hear more of the marvellous tales she has to tell!” Taking Shahrazad in his arms, he did with her as they were wont to do together, until the break of day. And in the morning he went to the diwan, where he saw the old wazir, Shahrazad’s father, with his daughter’s winding sheet over his arm, for he feared her already dead; but the king said nothing to him, but went to his work as usual, ruling, dispensing justice, and running the affairs of the kingdom, so that the old man was thrown into the greatest perplexity.

But when the one thousand and second night had come,

SHAHRAZAD BEGAN:

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THE TALE OF MUMTAZ-I-DUNIYA AND HAMDOUNA

O King of Time, in the passage of an age and a moment, there lived, in the isles of India and China, a merchant by the name of Dariush.

He was a rich and prosperous merchant, with many ships on the seas; and he loved his only child, a daughter, Mumtaz-i-Duniya, the Light of the World as she was named. Mumtaz-i-Duniya had lost her mother while she was still a baby, so she was brought up by an old nurse. Dariush loved the little girl, though his business affairs left him little enough time to take care of her properly; still, as she grew older, he hired a succession of teachers, to train her in all the arts and sciences, so that she became with the passage of years a young maiden of great accomplishment as well as surpassing beauty.

Now Dariush was getting on in years, and he thought to himself, “I must find myself another wife, for my daughter is of the age where she really cannot be without the guidance of a mother.” And so it happened that he wed a woman by the name of Aminah. She was a great beauty, and had a glib tongue, so that everyone who saw her fell under her spell; but that beauty hid a nature most greedy and cruel. And from the first moment that she laid eyes on Mumtaz-i-Duniya, she hated the girl with every fibre of her evil heart.

For a while, however, Aminah hid her hatred from Dariush as well as Mumtaz, so that the only person who had an inkling of the woman’s true nature was the old nurse. But she knew that nobody would believe her, since it was only her intuition against the beauty and smooth tongue of the merchant’s wife, so perforce she held her peace.

And so the years passed, until Mumtaz had turned eighteen, an age that should have gladdened her heart and that of her family. But evil times had come to the merchant Dariush; all but one of his ships were destroyed by storms. Meanwhile a great fire consumed the warehouses where most of his stock was stored, so that he faced ruin unless he took urgent measures to recoup his finances.

Then Dariush said to his daughter and wife, “You know what tribulations Heaven has seen fit to bring down on me. I have no option but to go on a voyage myself on the one ship that remains to me, and trade abroad in foreign ports, to bring back merchandise to sell and – if fortune permits – make us prosperous again.”

Then Mumtaz said, “Father, let me go with you, and be by your side so that I can assist you in any way possible.”

“A woman’s place is at home,” the merchant replied, for he greatly feared for the safety of his young daughter among sailors and the dangers of the sea and foreign lands. “Stay with your mother and help her.” And so, gathering sailors and whatever goods remained to him, he sailed away.

Now the woman Aminah had, over the years, carefully and little by little stolen money and jewels from the merchant, so that she had accumulated a secret fortune. “The time is ripe for me to rid myself of this old fool, and his daughter as well,” she thought to herself, and, taking a few of the jewels, one night she went to a disreputable part of the city where a sorcerer known to her plied his execrable trade.

“I want you to make sure that my husband and his ship do not return,” she told the magician, who then burnt incenses and read arcane spells from books in languages only he knew. Then Aminah paid him the jewels she had brought, and went back home to wait.

Sure enough, in a few days a ragged sailor came to Dariush’ home. “O mistress,” he said, “I am the only survivor of your husband’s crew. We were attacked by pirates, who captured your husband and my colleagues, and sailed the ship away with all the merchandise it contained.”

The woman Aminah’s heart leapt with joy at the news, but she kept an outward façade of composure. When the sailor had gone, she summoned the old nurse and had her call Mumtaz to her.

“Your father is lost,” she said. “He and his ship will never return. They have been taken by pirates. Therefore, we are ruined. The only way to save the house and business is for you to be sold as a slave. With your beauty and education, you will fetch a fine price.”

Mumtaz swooned in shock at the news, and, once she recovered, burst out in a storm of tears and protests. But the beautiful but cruel woman was adamant. “I have already called the slave dealers to come tomorrow morning,” she said. “You have this one night to say goodbye to your old life.” And, smiling inside, she swung on her heel and went to her chambers to gloat.

Then Mumtaz cried out in lamentation, and in her agony she improvised these verses:



“My heart is torn out, and an open wound

Bleeds where it used to be –

For by Fate and Heaven I am forsaken

All I held dear is lost to me.

My father gone, my world shattered

Like a vase dropped on a floor of stone

All I have left is this face, this body

A curse to me to bear alone.

Is this why I was born at all

Is this what my future says?

Today a maiden, and tomorrow –

A slave for the rest of my days.”

But the old nurse took Mumtaz by the hand and drew her to a corner. “Little Mistress,” she said, for to her Mumtaz was still the little child she had brought up, not the young woman she was now. “Little Mistress, I had long known of the nature of your stepmother, and knew that a day like this might come. Be of strong heart, and listen to me.” From inside a chest she took out a bundle of clothes and other things. “These are men’s wear. In these you will look like a boy. Quickly, dress in them.”

When Mumtaz obediently did, for she loved and trusted the old nurse, the ancient lady reached into the chest again. “Here is your father’s old sword, which I am glad I had persuaded him to hire a tutor to train you to use. Tie it around your waist.” When the girl had done so, the old nurse gave her a small bundle. “Here are a hundred dinars, which I saved from the money your father gave me. Take it and hide it on your person. Now, as soon as darkness falls, leave this house and the city. Go as far and as fast as you can, and heaven will keep you safe from this wicked woman and her cruel machinations.”

“But what about you, Old Mother?” Mumtaz asked. “What will you do?”

“Don’t worry about me,” the old nurse replied. “I have relatives in the city. Often have I thought of going to live with them, but I stayed for your sake, to keep you safe from this evil woman. As soon as you leave this house, I will go to them, and your stepmother will not be able to harm me.”

As soon as darkness had fallen, Mumtaz pulled on leather boots and tied a cloth around her head in the manner of a turban, draping the sides around her ears and under her chin, so that she looked like a beardless boy. Tucking the small bag of dinars in her bosom, she slipped out by the back door of the house and into the streets beyond. A little later, the old nurse left, too, to go to her relatives in the town.

Now Mumtaz-i-Duniya was as brave a young lady as she was beautiful and educated, and at no time had she the slightest intention of fleeing. Instead she had made up her mind to find her father, for she was certain that he was still alive, even if only in the clutches of pirates. So, instead of taking one of the roads leading out of the city, she made her way down to the harbour to look for passage on a ship bound for the same lands as her father had wanted to trade in. By great fortune she found one, which was just about to leave; and, in return for her promising to work for her passage, the captain allowed her aboard, for he was short of sailors and had to sail with the tide.

“You are no sailor, from your appearance,” the captain said. “But if you cannot sail, you can cook and clean.” So Mumtaz was sent to the galley, where she spent her days as assistant to the cook, a fat and genial black man who treated her well and fairly.

For several days all went well, for Mumtaz worked as hard as any of the other sailors, and the captain was satisfied with the labour of the boy – for of course that was what he thought her – who had joined the crew.

Then one morning, the rising sun showed an island on the horizon. “We have a long voyage ahead of us,” the captain told the crew, “and we will need water and fresh food. So we will stop at that island for a few hours.”

The crew happily agreed, and by midday the ship had come close enough to drop anchor, and everyone went ashore by boat, where they saw trees heavily laden with fruit, red and yellow, which they set to devouring. Mumtaz, however, separated from the others and set out to explore the island on her own, for after their enforced company for all these days she was glad to be by herself for a while. Finding a little stream of water, she drank her fill, and then wandered up it in the hope of finding a deeper pool where she might fill the leather water-bags she carried with her.

Suddenly, as she walked, she heard voices ahead of her. At first she thought that they were of the others of her crew, but she had left them all behind, eating fruit and looking for water. So, she crept ahead with caution, and soon the voices became clearer so she could hear what they were saying.

“My mouth waters when I think of all the men on the beach,” one voice was saying. “I say we fall upon them and devour them at once!”

“There is no need for such hurry,” another voice replied. “Let them eat their fill of the fruit they are gathering, following which they will undoubtedly lie down in the shade of the trees to sleep. Then we can swallow them without any need to chase them down one by one.”

At hearing these words Mumtaz’ heart was seized with alarm, but she crept forwards far enough so that, hiding behind a tree, she could see the source of the voices; and there were two monstrous ogres sitting on a fallen tree, each uglier than the other, their great yellow tusks gleaming in the sunlight that fell through the leaves overhead, with huge cudgels in their hands.

Quietly withdrawing from their foul presence, the girl rushed back to where the ship’s crew, who had gorged themselves with fruit, had just settled down to rest in the shadow of the trees, and cried out to them to return to the ship at once. They were much loath to leave their rest, and the captain was about to refuse, when the fat old cook raised his hand. “O captain,” he said, “I believe that this young man is right, and we must heed his words, lest it pass with us as it did with the thief of Basra.”

“What thief is that?” the captain demanded to know.

“I will tell you the tale,” the cook said, “but quickly, for if the young man is right, we are in grave danger, and have no time to waste.” And, taking up his turban, which he had removed and spread on the ground to sleep on, he began tying it back on as he told

THE STORY OF THE THIEF OF BASRA

O excellent captain, there was once in the city of Basra a thief by the name of Umar ad Din.

He had been a thief from tender years, when, to the despair of his widowed mother, he had spent the day, not in school or even her little shop, but out on the streets, stealing whatever he could find. When the old lady finally died of a broken heart, he still did not repent his ways, but let the shop fall into disuse, preferring to make his living from stealing. But he was handsome and presentable, and was so skilled at stealing, that never did so much as a shred of suspicion attach itself to him.

Now one day it so happened that Umar ad Din was whiling away his time in the bazaar, looking for rich merchants with heavy purses ripe for the picking, when all of a sudden he saw, coming towards him, a woman of such beauty that his breath caught in his throat. The sky and the earth seemed to merge before his eyes, and almost unknowing he uttered these verses:

“A thousand moons, a thousand suns

A thousand years might pass me by

But not such beauty will ever shine

Up in yonder sky.

May the winds and the waters

Cry out in voices true,

No greater beauty in all the world

Madam, than which lives in you.”

At that moment he saw that the woman’s eyes had turned to him, and she gave him a little smile; and that smile made her beauty blaze brighter than all the suns and moons that ever were. “Good youth,” she said, “I am here in the bazaar to buy provisions for my sisters and myself; but I am in need for a strong young man like yourself to carry them home for me. Will you do me this service? You will be rewarded for your effort.”

“I hear and I obey,” Umar ad Din said, and followed the young woman as she first went to a shop which sold baskets, where she purchased a large one, which she handed to the thief. “This is for the things I will buy,” she said. Umar ad Din, hoisting the basket on his shoulder, followed her as she moved among the shops, buying meat and fish, vegetables and fruit, bread and honey, until the basket was quite full. Umar ad Din, smitten as he was, did not fail to notice that she paid for all her purchases from a small pouch which she wore on a thong around her neck, which bulged with gold.

“By my eyes,” he thought to himself, “not only is she beautiful, but she must be rich indeed. This may be the chance that I have been waiting for all my life.”

“Now follow me home,” the beautiful woman said, when the basket could hold no more. As Umar ad Din followed her, he noticed that her clothing was as fine and rich as a princess might wear, and the greed grew in his heart as much as his lust for her.

Eventually they came to a high wall with a gate set in it, from behind which Umar ad Din could hear birdsong and see trees laden with fruit. “This is where I live with my sisters,” the woman said. “Put down the basket, o youth, and take your money.”

“Mistress,” the thief said, “I have carried this basket all this way, and it would be remiss of me to not deliver it to your very house, instead of leaving it in the street like this.”

“Very well,” the woman said, and, taking a key from her belt, she unlocked the door and ushered Umar ad Din into a small but beautiful garden, on the other side of which was a mansion of yellow stone.

“My sisters are away at the moment,” the woman said, “but they will return shortly. They will not be happy if they find you here, for they do not like the thought of a man coming to our home. So,” she unlocked another door that opened into a hall floored with marble and lined with splendid statues of bronze, “put your basket down here, take your money, and go.”

“Mistress,” Umar ad Din said, “may I not do some other service for you? You do not even have to pay me, for beauty such as yours has struck my heart.”

The woman laughed, and her laughter was as silver bells. “No, foolish youth,” she said. “You have already done too much by coming in here. Go before my sisters return, or it may be the worse for you.”

“It is already the worse for me,” Umar ad Din said, “for, as I have already said, your beauty has struck me in the heart. Are your sisters as pretty as you?”

“They are both far more beautiful,” the woman said, and laughed again. “But you do not want to make their acquaintance, trust me. Leave while you still can.”

Umar ad Din took the dinars she proffered, and, bowing, left. But he had no intention of staying away.

“If she is so beautiful,” he thought to himself, “heaven knows how ravishing her sisters must be. And if her house’s antechamber alone is so sumptuous, my mind boggles at the thought of how much there must be to be stolen.” And, quite by habit, his eyes darted quickly at the mansion over his shoulder, noting where the windows were, which trees grew close enough to give access to them, and how one might be able to break and enter.

So that night, once the city had gone to sleep, the thief slipped back along the way he had gone with the woman, until he came to the wall. Of course he had no key, but to an accomplished burglar like himself it was no effort to scale the wall and drop into the garden, following which he climbed a tree, crawled along a branch, and with utmost ease broke in through a window, finding himself in an empty room.

“First,” he thought to himself, “I will try to get a glimpse of her, to slake the thirst for her beauty that has been burning in my heart. Then, I shall gaze my fill of her sisters. And then, I shall slake my thirst for more tangible things.” So he opened the door to the room and went into the passage beyond, which was lined with doors on both sides.

Gently opening the first door, he saw within a bed, on which lay the sleeping form of the beautiful woman who had hired him earlier in the day, clad only in a simple shift that left her shoulders, arms, and legs bare. On the table beside her bed lay the pouch she had worn around her neck, and a few silver ornaments beside, all dimly lit by moonlight coming through a window. For a moment Umar ad Din was tempted to steal the money and ornaments and leave right away, but his greed stopped him. “Not before I see the other sisters,” he thought. “She said that they are more beautiful, so they must have more things to be stolen as well.”

So, leaving the bag of money and ornaments unmolested for the moment, he slipped out of the room and into the second one, where he found another bed, on which was a woman whose beauty was such that it made the first one’s look like a guttering candle to one of the lamps that light up the palace of the Commander of the Faithful. She wore nothing more than a cloth around her loins, leaving her bosom, two perfect hills crested with lovely puffy nipples, bare. And the table by her bed was piled with three bags of coins and more ornaments, which were the gleaming yellow of gold, not silver.

“This is almost more than I can bear,” the thief thought to himself. “I should steal all of this now, and leave quickly. But after seeing these two women, I am not leaving without setting eyes on the third one.” So saying, he opened the third door, and there, on the bed, lay a woman whose beauty made that of the second look like a glow-worm to the moon on her fourteenth night; and she wore nothing but what she had been born wearing. And her bedside table was piled high, not with silver or gold, but piles of diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, and rubies.

“Whatever the cost,” the thief said, “I cannot possibly leave without a better look at this lady.” Coming closer to her, he stared with fascination at her nude form, from the perfect lines of her toes to the heavenly contours of her face, leaving aside nothing in between.

“I will just look at her a little longer,” he said to himself, “before I steal these jewels and leave.” His eyes caressed the hills of her breasts and the flat plain of her belly, with its dimple of her navel. “Just a little longer.” He gazed enraptured at the triangle between her legs, and the deep valley there, which curved to vanish between her thighs. “A little bit more.”

And he stood looking at her, mesmerised by her naked beauty, until two white arms twined around him from behind.

“O Umar ad Din,” said the woman who had hired him in the morning, “I had told you to stay away, but it’s too late now.”

Umar ad Din turned, and behind him was the woman of the morning, and behind her the other sister, the one with the bare bosom. And long fangs sprouted from both their mouths. At the sound of voices, the third sister, the naked one on the bed, opened her eyes and sat up; and fangs grew from her mouth as well.

“We eat and drink like human beings,” the second sister said, “because we do not wish to kill unless we must. Our sister here told you to stay away, but you disobeyed; and so we must.”

Umar ad Din opened his mouth, but it was already too late to scream as the sisters closed in.

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At this point Shahrazad saw the approach of dawn and discreetly fell silent.

But when the one thousand and third night had come,

SHE SAID:

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“And so,” the cook finished his tale, “the three sisters feasted on the thief, who could have easily got away if only he had not been so greedy both for beauty and money. The longer we tarry the worse the danger grows for us.”

“You are right, good cook,” the captain said. “We have, in any case, eaten our fill, and should be satisfied with that.” He then ordered the sailors to take up their things and return to the boat, which they did, albeit with much grumbling and many angry looks in Mumtaz’ direction.

But hardly had they pushed off the shore than there was a great crashing among the trees and the two ogres came charging out, each big as an elephant, gnashing their tusks and beating the ground with their immense cudgels in their fury at having missed their meal. The terrified sailors rowed as quickly as they could, so that they reached the ship before the two ogres thought to begin wading out after them.

“You have saved all our lives, O youth!” the captain said, when they had set sail and were a safe distance from the island of ogres. “From this moment on you no longer have to work for your passage, but are my honoured guest on board.”

“I hear and obey, O captain,” Mumtaz-i-Duniya said. That very day she was given a cabin beside the captain’s, was seated at his right hand during meals, and within a few days was treated by him as a brother and boon companion.

Then one day the ship came to its first port of call, in a city with white stone walls and towers crowned with tiled domes of brilliant blue. It was evening when they reached the port, the sun sinking in the west, and the captain called the crew to him.

“I’ll go ashore and meet the harbour master,” he said, “and then talk to the brokers to locate merchants for our wares. I will return at dawn tomorrow, and then you can all go and spend the day in the town.”

When the captain had left, Mumtaz went to her cabin, for she was tired from the long voyage and the pitching of the vessel on the waves, a sensation that, unlike the sailors, she was still unused to. However, before her head could even touch the pillow, there was a soft knock at the door. She opened it and found the fat cook standing there, a bundle in his hands.

“Young master,” he said, “I beg your pardon for disturbing you like this, but you are in great danger. You must leave this ship at once!”

Mumtaz drew him by the arm into the cabin and closed the door. “What danger are you talking about?” she asked.

“O unhappy youth,” the cook replied, “the sailors are all filled with jealousy of you, because you have become so close to the captain and no longer need to work. Even now, they are gathered down in the hold, conspiring. Tonight, while you sleep, they intend to cut your throat, tie weights to your body, and throw you into the sea. They then intend to break into the captain’s chest in his cabin, and steal the dinars that are to pay for the voyage. When he returns, they will tell him that you stole the dinars and fled in the night.”

Then the darkness fell before Mumtaz-i-Duniya’s eyes. “O good cook,” she wailed, “what can I do? I cannot fight all the sailors at once. They would overwhelm me. Must I submit to being slaughtered like a sheep, and only because I saved these wretches’ lives and they are too ungrateful to remember it? Do they not know the story of Abu Niwas and the bandit’s son?”

“What story is that, master?” the cook asked.

“I will tell you,” Mumtaz-i-Duniya said, “for it is a tale of such marvel that, even if it were to be inscribed with a needle on the corner of an eye, it would bring enlightenment to the circumspect.” And so she began

THE TALE OF ABU NIWAS AND THE BANDIT’S SON

O cook, there was once, in a village near the great city of Cairo, a farmer named Abu Niwas.

Though he worked every day from morning to night, tending his fields, he was poor, for his land grew little, and of what little it grew, the governor took most in taxes. So Abu Niwas became bent and prematurely old, and all he had to live in was a hut of reeds plastered with clay. But he was content with his lot, for he did not know that he could have or deserved better.

Now Abu Niwas had just one great sorrow, which was that he had no wife, and so would never have children to succeed him and inherit his farm. No woman would even deign to look his way, and when he went to the marriage brokers, they laughed in his face.

“Who will marry a farmer who will never be anything but a poor farmer scratching a living from the soil, and with not a dinar to his name?” they asked. And Abu Niwas, his nose hanging to the ground, went back to his farm, dejected.

Now one day it so happened that Abu Niwas was busy digging a little canal to bring water from the Nile to his little plot of land, when, all of a sudden, he heard an odd noise in the reeds. Going to seek the source of the noise, he came across a little child, almost a babe-in-arms, lying in the mud, wrapped in a piece of cloth, and crying from hunger.

“Heavens above,” the farmer exclaimed in surprise, “who could have abandoned such a little child here? Whoever it is, I cannot leave it here to starve or be eaten by crocodiles.” And, picking up the little mewling bundle, he carried it back home.

On unwrapping the coarse cloth in which the child was wrapped, he found it to be a boy, to all appearances healthy, without a blemish on his body except a black birthmark on his right shoulder. So it was a profound mystery how he came to be left where he was.

“I must ask around if anyone has mislaid a baby,” Abu Niwas said to himself. “But for now let him remain here, where I can take care of him.” And then he became so busy in taking care of his farm and the child that he quite lacked time to ask anyone, but he told himself that it did not matter.

“If I cannot have a wife, I can at least have a son,” he told himself. “The Nile herself may have sent this boy to be my son, to take care of me in my old age, inherit this patch of land, and live on after me, so my name does not vanish from the earth.” And he named the boy River’s Gift.

Many years passed, and River’s Gift grew into a sturdy young man, who was perfect in every respect, except that he could not, or would not, ever speak, not a word. But by act and gesture he showed that he loved his adoptive father with all his heart, and worked harder on the farm than ten men. In consequence, though the patch of land never became very productive, Abu Niwas was no longer absolutely the poorest man in the country and never had to worry about how he would pay the governor his taxes.

Then one day it came to be whispered in the land, in dread rumours, that a terrible bandit called Bahram and his band had begun laying waste to the territory to the south, and advancing north up the river. Wherever he went, the talk went, the governor’s worthless soldiers, who were only good for coercing honest hardworking people out of their money in the guise of taxes, fled instead of fighting. The whole countryside emptied as people fled north. The only ones who did not leave were Abu Niwas and River’s Gift, because they never went anywhere but to sell whatever produce they gleaned from their fields, otherwise never met anyone, and nobody even considered journeying to their farm to tell them what was happening.

And so it was that one morning, when Abu Niwas and River’s Gift went to their fields, they were suddenly set upon by a number of bandits. In a trice they were tied up and carried to where their chief Bahram stood waiting.

At the sight of this chief Abu Niwas’ bowels turned to water, for he was huge and cruel-eyed, with a scimitar over his shoulder, and a bushy beard in which he had tied up the finger-bones of people he had killed. He looked at them as though they were no more than the mud that plastered their clothes.

“By Heaven,” he said, “these are two poor enough specimens. How dared you remain, when the whole country has cleared out for fear of me, Bahram the Bandit? How dared you?”

“Begging your pardon, Master Bandit,” Abu Niwas stammered, when he had regained use of his tongue. River’s Gift, of course, stayed silent. “Master Bandit, we are just two harmless and poor farmers, of no use to you. We have not even anything you can steal, though all we have is yours.”

“So you say,” the bandit said, “but we shall see!” He forced the father and son to lead him back to their hut, which he and his men thoroughly ransacked, but found nothing of more value than half a dinar.

Then the bandit Bahram turned furious eyes on the wretched father and son. “You dare waste my time, and my men’s time, by even existing? Tell me where you hid your money, or your heads will answer for it!”

“O Bandit of Bandits,” the farmer replied, “O excellent robber, we are but farmers whose earnings go only to keep body and soul together and help fill the governor’s coffers. What you see is all we have.”

“I do not believe you,” the bandit Bahram shouted. And, turning to his men, he ordered them to strip the father and son, to see if they were concealing any money or other valuables on their persons.

“They have nothing,” one of the bandits reported, with trepidation, for he knew the temper of the bandit chief.

“I will see for myself,” Bahram roared. He circled behind them, and suddenly stopped as though rooted to the spot.

“Foul farmer,” he shouted, “where did you find this boy? Did you steal him?”

“Master Bandit,” the wretched Abu Niwas stammered, “he is my very own adopted son, since he was a baby. This I swear on his head. I found him on the bank of the Nile, in the reeds, many years ago, and brought him up as my own.”

“You lie,” the bandit said. Wrenching his own garment off his shoulder, he pointed to a black spot on it. “See, he has the identical birthmark that I have, and as my son had.”

“What happened to him?” Abu Niwas asked.

“A wretched woman, who gave birth to him and whom I imagined to be faithful, stole him away as soon as he was weaned, and vanished with him many years ago. I spent years searching for him, but never found him, until now. Where is the woman, on whom I have sworn to avenge myself?”

“As Heaven is my witness, Master Bandit, I know not. Maybe she was fleeing along the river bank when she was eaten by a crocodile, and left the child among the reeds where he fell.”

“Be that as it may, this is my son,” Bahram said. Motioning to his men, he ordered them to cut the boy loose. “And you have had him all these years when I did not.”

“Wait, O Bahram,” the poor farmer said, “how can you be certain that this is your son, only because of a birthmark? Could it not be that he is another child altogether?”

“You are right,” the bandit said. “I will put him to a test. Boy,” he said, turning to River’s Gift and handing him his scimitar, “it is time for you to prove yourself my son. Use this to lop the head off this wretch here, who falsely calls himself your father; then I will know that you are mine for certain.”

Then the sky grew dark before Abu Niwas’ eyes. “Is this my reward for saving the child, for bringing him up as my own?” he whispered, but to no avail. He saw River’s Gift raise the scimitar and step forward, and closed his eyes and bent his neck for the stroke of the blade. But he did not feel its edge; instead there was a noise as of something heavy falling on the earth, and when he looked up, he saw the bandit chief lying on the ground, his body neatly separated from his head.

The River’s Gift spoke, for the first time ever, and his voice rang like thunder. “The only father I acknowledge is the poor farmer who found and raised me; he alone has the right to call himself my father. As for you…” he pointed the scimitar at the other bandits, “…flee from here at once, before you feel this blade on your necks as well.”

The surviving bandits, who had never before faced anyone who fought back, but only terrified people who only tried to run away, took fright and fled in a rabble down the river and were never seen in that country again. So much for them.

Then River’s Gift tenderly untied his father and raised him to his feet. “The bandits are gone,” he said, “and, look, in their hurry, they have left behind all their loot. Dear father, it is our duty to find the owners and return what we can to them.”

This they did, and in consequence became famous and beloved in that land, and had no more want or hardship for the rest of their days.

_______________________________________

Having finished her story, Mumtaz-i-Duniya wiped her eyes, which were wet with tears. “O cook, even the foundling son of a farmer who sprang from a bandit’s loins knows the value of gratitude, but not, it seems, this shipload of sailors. It remains only for me to prepare to die.”

But the old cook shook his head. “Be of good cheer, young master, for I have brought with me the means of your deliverance.” He held up the bundle. “Here is a robe of black cloth, which will make you hard to see in the night. As soon as full darkness has fallen, cover yourself in it, and go to the side of the ship further from the shore. I have already made a raft by tying together the empty water skins we have on board, and will leave it where it will not be seen by anyone who does not know it is there. Throw it into the sea, and then let yourself down after it. Use it to support yourself above the water, and paddle to the shore. More than that, I cannot help you.”

“O prince among cooks,” Mumtaz said, and hugged him, “may your days forever be blessed!” As soon as darkness had fully fallen, she took a small bag of dried food and another of water, tied them to her belt, threw on the cloak over her clothes, crept from her cabin, and to the side of the ship. Feeling with her hands she soon found the raft made of the empty water skins, now blown up with air and tied together. Throwing it down into the water, she scrambled over the side and let herself down by the anchor cable, and, as the cook had instructed, paddled to the shore. Borne by the waves and tide, she finally reached land a little distance from the walls of the city.

“Here is a pretty pickle,” she thought to herself, after she had dried herself as best she could. “If the captain believes I have indeed stolen his dinars and fled, he will have the city searched for me, and if they find me, I could never prove myself innocent.” And in her frustration she improvised these verses:

“Many are the tales I read that tell

Justice triumphs, and evil flees

But the world teaches something else

In the sobs borne on every breeze.

Justice is the most precious jewel

The wronged need but never find

But to him with purse of gold

Justice follows like a slave behind.

Had I but a bag of gold

Justice would be mine to buy

And him whom I chose to wrong

Could do no more than suffer and cry.

But my steps to the wastes do wander

In search of something strange and new

Justice, not to buy and sell

Real justice, raw and true.”

Not daring to enter the city, she then struck out across country, to try and put as much distance as possible between herself and the walls before sunrise, lest she be seen and chased down. Throughout the night she walked, until, footsore and exhausted, she stumbled to a halt as dawn licked the eastern sky with a flush of pink. All around her was open desert, with only a few scrub bushes growing here and there.

“I must rest,” she said to herself, “but first I must look for shelter, for in this flat open land I can be seen from far away and if search parties from the city come this way they cannot fail to find me.” Looking around, all she could see was what looked like an old ruined palace or fortress some distance away, its tumbled stone walls overgrown with withered grass and half buried in windblown dust and grit.

“Needs must when the devil drives,” she said to herself, and made as much haste, in her exhausted state, as she could to the ruins. She discovered that they were of an age so ancient that all the structures, bar one, had crumbled away, leaving only the bases of roofless walls, fallen pillars, and nowhere to find shade from the rays of the rising sun.

The only exception was a small building of stone, like a box in appearance and without any windows. Having circled it, Mumtaz found only a low door, inside which was shadow so dark that she could see almost nothing, and ordinarily she would have never thought to enter such a place. But being exhausted, and acutely aware of the danger from search parties, she bent and made her way inside, sat down with her back to a wall, and, after eating and drinking the food and water she had brought with her to sate her hunger and thirst, she bundled up the cook’s black cloak into a pillow, put her head on it, and fell asleep.

When she woke, it was much later and darkness was falling. Before she could move, however, she heard two voices somewhere outside, talking. And after listening for a while, she realised that they were owls which made their home in the ruins.

“It will soon be dark enough for us to fly out,” the first said. “I am glad, because I am tired of having to listen to the wailing that begins every night from under the ground below this building and lasts till the dawn.”

“It is a pity,” the other owl agreed. “But there is nothing to be done, for nobody is there to do anything about it.”

“What about the young man who even now sleeps in a corner of the room beneath our claws?” the first owl said.

“That young man,” the second owl replied, “will leave too, as soon as it is dark enough, and it is not likely that he will ever come this way again. Come, it is just fallen night; let us fly away, and, if we are fortunate enough, perhaps we will find some other home without any wailing or lamentations to disturb our rest.”

“So be it,” the first owl said, and with a nearly silent rustle of wings, they flew away. Mumtaz-i-Duniya, marvelling at what she had just heard, had just picked up the black cloak and was about to leave as well when she heard a new sound from somewhere in the darkness.

It was as though a woman was crying in desperate sorrow, as though her heart had been broken and was being clawed apart by ghouls. Mumtaz-i-Duniya was so startled that she jumped involuntarily, and the scabbard of her sword struck the stone wall with a clink. At once the sobbing stopped, and a voice asked, “Who’s there? Is someone there?”

It was a beautiful voice, soft and musical, and Mumtaz was enraptured by it. “Who are you?” she asked. “My name is Rustam,” (for this was the name she had been using) “and I had been sheltering in this building during the heat of the day. Pray tell me who you are, and where, and I will do my utmost to help you.”

“Nobody can help me,” the voice replied, “except one who fulfils the conditions that will break the curse which has trapped me where I am. And I am now convinced that no such person exists.” Sighing, the voice then recited these lines:

“Long sat I hoping, waiting

Long sat I pining for release

But hope is dead, blown long away

Like dust on the morning breeze.

Tears washed what was left anon

Until not even tears were left

And all I do is sit bound

Tearless but weeping yet.”

At these words Mumtaz’ kind heart was stricken as though by an arrow. “Tell me who you are,” she said, “and where; for if it is at all possible to help you, I will.”

“My name is Hamdouna,” the voice said. “As to where I am, if you will walk to the wall opposite the door of the room you are in, you will find a staircase set in the floor. Follow it down, and at the bottom you will find another door, only this is of heavy wood and studded with copper spikes.”

Mumtaz, felt her way, for it was completely dark in the room, found the staircase and followed it down until she came to the door. “I have found the door,” she said. “How should I open it? I have no key.”

“There is a way,” the voice said. “But only those free of sin can find it.”

“But who can be…” Mumtaz said, while feeling the door for a handle or other way of gaining admittance. Then her finger grazed the tip of one of the copper spikes. The razor sharp metal sliced into her skin, and as she gasped and withdrew her finger, a few drops of her blood fell on the door. Silently, it swung open.

“The door just opened!” Mumtaz gasped, in between sucking her cut finger.

“It did?” the voice sounded astonished. “Tell me now what you see.”

Inside was a passage of stone, with torches set in holders on the walls, and the torches were all burning with clear flames, throwing a steady light which left no shadow. Mumtaz described it.

“It is as I remember,” the voice said. “Come along the passage, and, as you advance, take care to count every torch as you pass it. At the fortieth torch, tell me what you see.”

Mumtaz did as she was told, and, as she reached the fortieth torch, saw, set in a deep alcove opposite the unwavering flame, a great blue jar of polished stone, as tall as she was.

“I see a jar,” she said, “of blue stone, and it is sealed with a lid rimmed with a band of silver and gold.”

The voice sounded suddenly very near. “I am imprisoned in that jar,” it said. “If you could but open it, I would be free. But, alas, I can only be freed by one who has never even had an impure or sinful thought in their mind. And who could possibly exist such as that, let alone find their way here?” It sighed. “At least I have this comfort, that I am not alone in the world, and that there are still those brave and selfless enough as you to find your way here. I will be eternally grateful to you for that.”

“Do not despair, O Hamdouna!” Mumtaz cried. “Despair never helped anyone, as the story of Arifa Alam and the moneylender of Hama teaches us.”

“What story is that?” the voice inquired. “Imprisoned here as I am, I have found no opportunity to hear many stories, or indeed any, for more time than I care to think about.”

“Gladly will I tell you,” the girl replied, while she walked around the jar, closely examining its lid, but there seemed to be not even the slightest crack in which she might force the tip of her sword to lever it open. “It is a tale of marvel beyond compare, so that were it written down in letters of gold and set before the public, it would provide instruction to all and sundry.”

So saying, she began…

**********************************

At this point Shahrazad saw the approach of dawn and discreetly fell silent.

But when the one thousand and fourth night had come,

SHE SAID:

**********************************



O King of Time, the maiden Mumtaz-i-Duniya, as she examined the jar with a view to opening it, began recounting the tale of

ARIFA ALAM AND THE MONEYLENDER OF HAMA

Once, long ago, when the world was less enlightened and such activities were still permitted, there lived in Hama a moneylender called Salman ibn Zaydan.

He was, even by the standards of the vile trade of usury, an invidious and utterly reprehensible individual. Without a qualm or second thought, he would reduce to beggary widows whose only sin was to borrow a few dinars to pay hakims and doctors to treat their sick children; he would seize the houses of men who lay on their deathbeds, and have them thrown on to the streets, for not returning a few dinars that they could no longer work to earn to repay the loans that they had taken from him years ago, and which they had worked every spare moment since then to pay back.

As time went on, he became so rapacious in his greed that even other moneylenders began shunning him. “People,” they said, “would rather sell their property, buy on credit, borrow from friends or relatives, or go without, rather than borrow money from us – and it is all because your greed taints all of us by association. Be off with you!”

But Salman al Zaydan only laughed. “With all the money I have made, I could buy and sell all of you,” he said. “There will always be people in such desperate need of funds that no other avenue is open to them but to borrow money, and there will always be numbers of such people who will borrow from me because they can borrow from nobody else.”

He occupied a large shop at the edge of the market of money changers and brokers, where merchants who visited Hama always came to arrange funds and make business inquiries. Many of those merchants, especially those from distant lands, needed to borrow money in a hurry to pay for their investments. Salman ibn Zaydan had made sure to bribe enough of the brokers and moneychangers so that they sent the merchants to his shop, and, infamous as he might be in Hama itself, he was never without clients seeking to borrow money.

One day it so happened that a caravan arrived in Hama from Basra, which belonged to a young merchant whom everyone called Dawn’s Flower, because of his fresh and innocent appearance. Dawn’s Flower’s father, a great merchant in Basra, had sent him on this, his first trading journey, with a cargo of Chinese silks, Indian spices, Persian carpets, and other riches that had cost the old man almost a year’s profits to furnish. Dawn’s Flower was desperate to make a good trade and return to his father’s approbation.

Salman ibn Zaydan was kept aware by his spies of newly arrived merchants to Hama, so that he knew which ones he could expect to ignore him, which might borrow from him but he could not exploit or cheat, and which he could take for everything that they had. As soon as he heard of Dawn’s Flower’s arrival, his ears pricked up and his nose expanded as though to sniff for the smell of money.

“A young fool from Basra, on his first trading journey?” he said to himself. “This will be a great opportunity indeed! Business has been slow recently.” Then he fell to thinking of exactly how he might arrange it so that the new arrival would have no option but to come to him for funds, and soon his devious mind came up with a plan.

Dawn’s Flower had put up at one of the khans for visiting merchants near the main bazaar. That night, just after he had finished his dinner and was thinking of going to sleep, he had a visitor.

“Young master,” this visitor said, “my name is Abd al Qasim, and I am a merchant come all the way from al Andalus. Having sold all my goods, I had intended to journey on to Basra to buy merchandise for my return journey. However, I hear that you are only just arrived from there, and I am inclined to buy your entire caravan’s worth of items so as to save me from the trouble of travelling to Basra, for I am weary and long to return to my wife and family. It will also be good business for you, for you do not have to tarry finding customers and paying brokers’ fees.”

Dawn’s Flower was too astonished and gratified at the offer to wonder at how unlikely it was that an unknown merchant would want to buy his whole stock like this. “Gladly,” he said. “This is what I have…”

The man who called himself Abd al Qasim listened to his recital and pondered for the space of an hour. “That is all very fine,” he said, at last, “but your entire caravan’s worth of goods, of perfect quality as they are, will but fill only half my requirements. It would probably be better for me to travel on to Basra after all, and take ship from there after buying all I need.”

Dawn’s Flower was stricken with disappointment at the thought of losing this bit of promising business. “Wait, friend,” he said, “perhaps you can buy the remainder of the goods you want from other merchants from Basra who are here; surely there must be many.”

“There are,” Abd al Qasim said, “but I do not know which among them are offering goods at their proper price, which are of good quality, and who are not merely attempting to take advantage of a merchant from distant al Andalus, someone that they never have to risk meeting again in their lives, for, once I return home, it is doubtful if I will ever make this long journey again. Only a trustworthy person from Basra itself, such as you, will be able to tell.”

“Do not despair, o good Abd al Qasim,” Dawn’s Flower cried. “I will myself go with you to buy the things that you require, and make sure the price you pay is fair.”

“I would be eternally grateful to you,” the visitor said, “but the problem is, some of the merchants I have sold my merchandise to are yet to pay me, and it will take a few days to recover all my dues. In the meantime, nobody will sell to me on credit, because I am a merchant from far away and they do not trust me to not disappear with anything that they furnish me without money down.”

“That is no matter,” young Dawn’s Flower said. “There must be moneylenders here in Hama. Tomorrow, I will myself go and borrow money to pay for your purchases. When your debtors pay you, you can return the money and take your goods.”

“That will do admirably,” the Abd al Qasim said. “Your caravan’s goods are worth quite ten thousand dinars; to buy as much again I will need ten thousand dinars more; and my debtors owe me ten thousand dinars.” And after some honeyed and flattering words he withdrew, promising to meet Dawn’s Flower the next day.

Now of course this Abd al Qasim was no merchant from al Andalus, but one of Salman ibn Zaydan’s trusted cronies. He went straight from the khan of the merchants to the moneylender himself.

“The bird is ripe for the plucking,” he said. “Expect his visit tomorrow first thing in the morning.”

The next morning Dawn’s Flower went to the market of the moneychangers and brokers and asked for the location of a moneylender, and one of them, who like so many of the others had been paid by Salman ibn Zaydan, indicated the shop of the moneylender himself. Salman ibn Zaydan welcomed Dawn’s Flower warmly, and gave him sherbet with rose water to drink while he stated his business.

“You need ten thousand dinars for a week?” he asked. “Excellent. And what do you have to offer as security? Your caravan? That is not a problem at all. Return in the afternoon and I will have the money for you, as well as the contract.”

Dawn’s Flower, on leaving the moneylender’s shop, met the supposed Abd al Qasim, as arranged. He went with him to the bazaar of the merchants, and spent the day picking and ***********ing goods which Abd al Qasim promised to return for later with the money. In the afternoon Dawn’s Flower went back to the moneylender, was counted out ten thousand dinars, and signed a contract to pay it all back by the end of the week.

“But mind, young master,” Salman ibn Zaydan said, “I cannot wait for a day past that, for I have other clients to furnish.”

“Do not worry, good moneylender,” Dawn’s Flower replied. “I will return it all, have no fear.”

Leaving the shop, he then met Abd al Qasim, and gave him the bag with the ten thousand dinars. “I will begin purchasing the goods you ***********ed for me first thing tomorrow,” that worthy replied. “In the meantime, should you wish to meet me, I am staying at such and such a khan.”

As soon as Dawn’s Flower had left, Abd al Qasim went back to Salman ibn Zaydan, gave him back the ten thousand dinars, and left Hama for Damascus, to stay away until it was all over, lest he be seen and recognised. So much for him.

A few days later, Dawn’s Flower thought to himself, “I wonder how my friend the merchant from al Andalus is getting on with his purchases. Tomorrow he is to return the money he recovered from his creditors, pay for my caravan, and buy all my goods. I will visit him at his khan.” He asked his way to the khan Abd al Qasim had named, and asked for the merchant from al Andalus, and great was his astonishment and alarm when he was told that no such person was staying, or at any time had stayed, there.

“Surely he must have made a mistake with the name of the khan,” he thought, and visited all the other merchants’ khans, one by one, but they all denied knowing any such person. He then rushed to the bazaar, to the stores he had visited with Abd al Qasim, and demanded to know when the merchant had returned to make his promised purchases.

“He never did,” the shop owners all told him. “We never saw him again, and thought he must have changed his mind.”

Then the earth grew dark before Dawn’s Flower’s eyes, and he bit the very entrails of despair. Rushing back to his khan, he threw himself down on his bed. “Tomorrow I have to return the ten thousand dinars to the moneylender,” he thought. “I have not sold any of my goods, because I had thought them already sold to the merchant from al Andalus; and there is no way I can sell them all now at such short notice. I am undone.” And he broke out in a storm of tears, accompanying them with these lines:

“My heart in its innocence trusted too much

It is my fault, and grievous a fault it is, true

Among thieves only a thief may prosper

A lesson I must learn anew.

Deep in the caves of sorrow

Out of the abyss of pain

The same old truth raises its hoary head

And teaches its lesson, again.”

Now the owner of the khan had a daughter called Arifa Alam, who was as beautiful as she was clever, and as compassionate as she was beautiful. She was passing by Dawn’s Flower’s room at that moment, and, hearing his sobbing, her tender heart was struck with disquiet.

“O noble youth,” she said, entering the room, “what makes you weep so? Tell me, for your sorrow strikes me with grief for you.”

Dawn’s Flower looked at her, at her beautiful face and troubled gaze, and could no more help himself than a moth can help itself from seeking the light of a candle; and he unburdened himself of his whole story, leaving out no detail, but it would serve no purpose to repeat it all here.

“So,” he said in conclusion, “I will lose everything, for the moneylender will seize my caravan, and will have no option but to return to my father in disgrace; and he will never trust me again.”

“It is all the wicked moneylender’s doing,” Arifa Alam cried. “I have heard of this Salman ibn Zaydan, and his crimes; even his brethren the other usurers detest him and will have nothing to do with him. But do not lose yourself in despair, o noble youth. I promise you that I will not just save your caravan, but that I will make sure Salman ibn Zaydan never cheats anyone again.”

“How will you do that, o fair maiden?” Dawn’s Flower asked. “If you do, you will have a slave for life in yours truly.”

“Do not worry about that, o handsome young man,” Arifa Alam said. “I will tell you when I need your help, and what you are to do.” Going quickly to her room, she disguised herself as a Bedouin from the desert, and left for the market of the brokers and moneylenders.

Salman ibn Zaydan was sitting in his shop, chuckling at the thought of the caravan he would be seizing the next day, when he had a visitor. It was a young Bedouin, in the garb of a desert dweller.

“O Salman ibn Zaydan,” the visitor said, “I am told that you are the greatest moneylender in Hama. I am the son of the chief of a tribe of Bedouin, who are camped near the city. We have a great deal of goods to trade with, but, owing to the reputation of the Bedouin among civilised peoples, nobody will trade with us except in dinars. We are only here for two days, and we need thirty thousand dinars to pay for our purchases. Will you furnish us?”

Salman ibn Zaydan could scarcely conceal his glee. To cheat a tribe of illiterate desert Bedouin, he thought, would be child’s play to such as he. “Come back in three hours,” he said, “and I will have the money for you, and a contract on which you will make your mark.” As soon as the young Bedouin had left, though, he opened his safe and counted his money.

“I have only the ten thousand dinars here that I got back from that fool from Basra,” he thought. “The rest is all lent out, and there’s no way I can recover any loans in a hurry. I will have to find the rest somewhere, and quickly.”

His first idea was to borrow the remaining twenty thousand dinars from the other moneylenders, but when he went to the street of moneylenders they all turned their backs on him the moment that they saw him coming. “You accursed man,” they said, “find your money elsewhere. Do not show your face here again.”

Salman ibn Zaydan was in a great quandary as he made his way back to the market of the moneychangers and brokers. But then suddenly he saw, before him, something that made his eyes all but bulge out of their sockets.

It was a beautiful lady, in robes that rivalled a princess’, her arms and neck dripping with jewels. She was attended by a servant with a heavy beard, carrying a sack that hung swollen with coin.

“Mistress,” the moneylender called, “may I help you in some manner?”

The lady looked at him through the thin veil that partially hid her features. “You may,” she said. “I am looking for a quick bit of business. I have need to make a tidy profit in only a couple of days, and I am looking to make an investment that will make me quick returns. I was thinking of trying my luck with the moneychangers and brokers.”

“How much money do you have to invest?” the moneylender asked.

“Just twenty thousand dinars,” the woman replied. “And I will settle for nothing less than a return of twenty five thousand.”

“I can do that for you,” Salman ibn Zaydan said. “Please step into my shop here.”

And he wrote out a contract promising to pay back the woman twenty five thousand dinars in two days, following which he was given the sack by the heavily bearded servant, from which he counted out the exact sum of twenty thousand.

“I will be back for my money in exactly two days’ time,” said the woman. “Make sure you have my money ready, all twenty five thousand, or it will go badly for you. I am not without influence in this city.”

“It will be as you wish, O mistress,” Salman ibn Zaydan said, any qualms he might have washed away by the thought of all the profits he was going to make. “Do not worry about it.”

“I am not worried,” the woman said, “but unless you have the money ready in two days’ time, you should be.” So saying, she left with the heavily bearded servant, whereupon the moneylender immediately set to writing out a contract for the Bedouin, for when he should return.

In a while the young desert dweller was back. “O gracious usurer,” he said, “have you got the money ready?”

“I have, O prince of the desert,” the moneylender said. “Here is the contract on which you must make your mark, promising to return my money by the morning of the day after tomorrow, or your goods will be forfeit. And here are your thirty thousand dinars.”

“It is good,” the Bedouin said. Making a scrawled mark on the document, ‘he’ went on ‘his’ way, and by devious routes meant to make sure ‘he’ was not followed, returned to the khan, whereupon ‘he’ shed ‘his’ disguise and dressed again as Arifa Alam.

Dawn’s Flower, in the meantime, had also removed the disguise of the heavily bearded servant. “O Mistress,” he asked, “what must we do now?”

“What you must do,” Arifa Alam told him “is go to the moneylender tomorrow morning, as soon as the cock crows, and return his ten thousand, so that he has no hold on you. And then leave the rest to me.”

So the next dawn, as soon as the cock had crowed, Dawn’s Flower rushed to the moneylender’s office with a bag containing ten thousand dinars. Salman ibn Zaydan was most shocked and unhappy to see him with the money, but consoled himself with the thought of all the other business he had on hand and the amount that he stood to make. “Here is your contract,” he said. “Now be off with you; I have other clients to attend to.”

The day went by, and Salman ibn Zaydan sent out spies to see what business the Bedouin were doing in the bazaar; but they found no Bedouin, and returned to tell him so.

“There is an encampment of Bedouin outside the city,” he said. “Go and look for them there.” But the spies returned to say that there was no Bedouin encampment, nor had there been any.

Then the evil heart of the moneylender was stricken with affright. “That woman will be back in the morning for her twenty five thousand dinars,” he thought. “And I have only ten thousand to give her. She has the contract, and if she goes to the courts, I am undone. The judge has always hated me and is only waiting for a chance to finish me. There is only one way out; I must flee.”

And so, that night the wicked usurer took the ten thousand dinars that Dawn’s Flower had given him, locked up his shop, and fled the city, never to return. So much for him.

In the morning Arifa Alam went to the moneylender’s shop and confirmed that, as expected, Salman ibn Zaydan had run away. “It is done, good Dawn’s Flower,” she then told her lodger. “You are free to make your trades and return to Basra with your head held high.”

“I will never cease to be indebted to you,” Dawn’s Flower said. “Mistress, you have captured my heart as surely as you have saved my reputation and my money. Will you help me trade my goods, so that nobody takes advantage of me again?”

“I will do more than that, good Dawn’s Flower,” Arifa Alam replied. “You have won my heart as much as I have won yours; for I fell in love with you the moment I saw how pure and innocent you were. Will you do me the honour of becoming my husband?”

“With the greatest of pleasure,” Dawn’s Flower said. And he and Arifa Alam married and settled down in Hama, she to run the khan with her father, he to act as his father’s permanent agent in that city, and they lived there in peace and content for the rest of their days.



________________________________________________

“O Hamdouna,” Mumtaz-i-Duniya finished her tale, “as you can see, there is no use in plunging into despair, No matter how black things seem, there is always a way, if only one can find it.”

Having all this time examined the great stone jar, she could find no crack or crevice or other way of opening it. Stretching on tiptoe, she began feeling the gold-and-silver band around the lid for any catch or secret panel. Her fingers found none, but a drop of blood from her cut finger was smeared on the band.

Immediately there was a thudding noise, a puff of green and yellow smoke, and the lid of the great jar popped off and crashed on the floor of the passage.

Mumtaz-i-Duniya jumped back in alarm, for the jar itself then tottered and fell over to smash to pieces; and from its ruin rose the great form of a jinniyah, with wings on her back and her head adorned with the short horns of her people. She swayed a moment, looking around her, and then her legs gave out and she fell with a cry to the ground among the shattered pieces of blue stone.

Mumtaz, who had watched all this in amazement, leapt forwards instinctively to catch the jinniyah before she fell, and was nearly borne to the ground by her weight, for the latter was far larger than she. She laid the jinniyah on the ground on her back and put her arms under the latter’s head to keep it off the stone of the passage floor.

The jinnyah had fainted, and as she slowly moaned and mumbled her way back towards consciousness, Mumtaz couldn’t but look in helpless admiration at her. She had never seen one of the jinn before, and the jinniyah in her arms looked nothing like what she had been led to expect.

Apart from the thin bronze bracelets and anklets she wore, the jinniyah was nude. Her skin was a pale green, her breasts perfect twin mounds surmounted by nipples of dark olive, her fingers and toes tipped by nails of the same colour, as was the tangled hair crowning her head. The plain of her belly was ridged with muscle, just like the columns of her arms and legs. Mumtaz’ eyes were drawn inexorably to the spot between her thighs, where her hairless mound was split by a cleft as deep and inviting as a shadowed valley in the heat of a desert day.

The jinniyah was beginning to stir, and Mumtaz quickly removed her gaze from the latter’s intimate parts to her face. This, too, was far more beautiful than the girl had been led to expect; if it were not for her green skin and the four curled horns projecting from her forehead, the jinniyah would have been the most beautiful woman Mumtaz had ever seen. Her face grew warm from the thought, and she couldn’t understand why.

She grew aware that the jinniyah had opened her great golden eyes and was looking up at her, as she sat with the latter’s head in her lap.

“You,” the jinniyah whispered. “You let me out of my prison. That can only mean that you have never had even an impure thought in your life. You. And you are no youth called Rustam; I can see clearly enough that you are a female just like me.”

“I am a young woman, yes.” Mumtaz’ face grew hot. “And as for setting you free, anyone could have done it,” she mumbled.

“Not anyone. Only you.” The jinniyah sat up and reached out to touch Mumtaz’ hand. “I owe you more than my life and freedom. I owe you everything.”

“We’ll have no talk of owing anyone anything,” Mumtaz replied, blushing even hotter. “I am Mumtaz-i-Duniya, daughter of the merchant Dariush; and you said that you are called Hamdouna.”

“I am,” the jinniyah replied. “How is it that you come to be here to be my rescuer? I am certain you have a tale to tell that explains everything.”

So Mumtaz recounted her story, leaving out no detail, but it would serve no purpose to repeat it all here.

By the time she had finished, tears were streaming down the jinniyah’s lovely face. She reached out and enfolded Mumtaz in her arms. “I promise you,” she said, “that if your father be still alive, I will do everything in my power to bring you together again.”

“I am certain that he is,” Mumtaz replied. “But, tell me, how is it that you were imprisoned in this jar?”

Hamdouna sighed. “It is a story….” she began.

**********************************

At this point Shahrazad saw the approach of dawn and discreetly fell silent.

But when the one thousand and fifth night had come,

SHE SAID:

**********************************

O gracious king, this is what the jinniyah Hamdouna told her rescuer Mumtaz-i-Duniya:

“It is a very long story, and I think, if we are to proceed anywhere at all tonight, we should be on our way before I begin telling it. I am still very weak from my long imprisonment in that jar, but I feel my strength slowly returning; and I think I can now walk.”

Mumtaz blushed as the jinniyah rose to her feet, for she could scarcely keep her eyes from wandering to Hamdouna’s perfect breasts or the valley between her thighs. Turning her head away, she held out the cook’s black robe. “This was meant to cover me from head to foot,” she said, “so it should be large enough for you.”

“It’s just another thing I am indebted to you for,” the jinniyah said, and pulled on the cloak; it covered her from her shoulders to her knees. There was no space for her wings, so Mumtaz had to slit the fabric with her sword. “Let us see if we can find some food and drink, and then leave this place; I have no wish to ever set eyes on it again.”

“Where can we find food and drink? I had a little with me, but it is finished now.”

“Come with me,” the jinniyah said, and led Mumtaz further down the passage. “As I recall there was food and drink stored somewhere. Look for more jars, but smaller ones than the one you found me in.”

They came across the jars opposite the eighty-fifth torch. These Hamdouna opened without trouble, and from them brought out dried fruit and bread, still fresh after how many years the human girl did not even try to think about. They ate their fill and Mumtaz filled her bags with as much as they would hold. Hamdouna opened another, smaller, long necked jar, with a curious raised design of curls and angles around the base; and it was full of water as fresh, cool, and sweet as though from the wells of Zam-zam. When they had drunk from it, it was still nearly full, and Hamdouna hoisted it on her immense shoulder without any sign of effort. “Let us go,” she said.

Mumtaz followed her up the passage the way they had come, her eyes unable to keep from roving up and down the jinnyah’s graceful body, from the easy sway of her shoulders and her free arm to the way her bottom shifted under the black robe, the slide of muscles under the pale green skin of her arms and calves. She felt her heart beat faster and an unfamiliar sensation began, a warm stirring that grew deep in the pit of her belly and spread to the spot between her thighs. She desperately tried to turn her mind away from it.



“What is this place?” she asked, as they came to the open door, past which the stairs ascended into darkness.

“It was the palace of the king of the jinn, Fayn al Usud. But from what you tell me, it has been a long time since…” Stepping out of the room on top into the open night air, she looked around. “It’s been much, much longer than I thought,” she said softly. “I cannot even begin to imagine how many years it has taken to break down into these few ruins the great palaces and gardens that were here before.”

Mumtaz could not help but reach out to touch the jinniyah’s arm. It was rigid with some hidden tension, but Mumtaz felt the muscles relax somewhat under her touch. She kept her hand there, lightly resting on the jinniyah’s forearm. “You are here now,” she said. “Whatever was here is gone, but you are here.”

Hamdouna nodded shortly and then the two young women set out across the desert, which was illuminated by pale moonlight. “It is just that I am remembering those who were here…” she said softly. And she began to tell

HAMDOUNA’S STORY

O Mumtaz, (Hamdouna said), I was born to a jinni named Nahim, who was a high official in the diwan of the king of the jinn, Fayn al Usud. I was the only child of my parents, who therefore doted on me, and provided me with all the education that they could, so that I grew up not just happy and contented but educated to an extent that was rare, even among the jinn.

There was, however, one great shadow over my childhood. It is the custom of the jinn that when a child is born, an ancient and learned jinnyah is summoned to tell the new-born’s fortune. My parents called the oldest and most learned jinniyah that they knew, a venerable crone by the name of Faizunnisa. This ancient lady only laid eyes on me when she cried out in alarm, went white as a sheet, and burst into tears, covering her eyes with her hands.

“What is it, revered Grandmother?” my mother asked in alarm. “Why do you cry and cover your face?”

“I weep for the future that I see for this girl,” Faizunnisa replied, “for a great danger awaits her, one that will snatch her from all she knows and loves. I cover my eyes that I do not have to see her face, for the sight of it breaks my heart.” And she recited these lines:

“A pearl in its repose pines

For the touch of a loving hand

But falls prey instead

To the greed of a robber band.

What price the pearl’s beauty then

That would set it among stars in sky?

Better that it would be a common stone

Then the thief would pass it by.”

More than that she could not or would not say, so my parents were thrown into the greatest disquiet and despondency.

At last my father thought of a plan. “Our daughter,” he said, “can only be put in danger if she is out among those who are capable of doing her harm. If, however, she is kept within our four walls and in our gardens, she will be safe.”

So I grew up alone except for my tutors and my books, without a glimpse of the world outside, and without any contact with another jinn child, boy or girl. This state of affairs lasted many years, until I was grown into a young woman; and still no disaster had befallen me, so that my parents began to relax.

“The old jinnyah Faizunnisa must have been mistaken,” my mother declared one day.

“Even so, we must be careful,” my father said. “We must be vigilant about whom our daughter can see and talk to.”

Now it so happened that the king Fayn al Usud got to know that my father had a daughter who had been brought up in seclusion. “O Nahim,” he said one day, “how long can you possibly keep your daughter shut away? Bring her to my palace, and introduce her to my daughter; for my daughter is lonely too, and needs someone to talk to.”

The king’s daughter was the Princess Sameera, whose beauty was famed in the land, and who was the apple of her father’s eye. My parents discussed the matter among themselves and decided that, since the danger prophesied by the old jinniyah had not come to pass, it would be permissible to send me to the king’s palace. And is they secretly hoped that making Fayn al Usud happy in this respect would not harm my father’s career, they took care to say nothing of that to me.

So one morning my mother combed and styled my hair, dressed me in new robes of silk, and anointed my limbs with perfumed oils; then, for the first time ever, I stepped out of my father’s own little mansion and accompanied him and my mother to the king’s palace.

The palace was a huge place then, as big as a human town, and I was conducted by many a passage and hall and antechamber until I was brought to the presence of the princess Sameera; for of course I wasn’t important enough to be brought before the king himself. But I hardly cared about that, for the wonders that I was beholding for the first time were as far above my experience as my father’s mansion was above those jinn who preferred to live in a cave or on a tree.

I was not given time to look more closely at the paintings and sumptuous hangings on the walls, or the statues that decorated every corner, for my parents hurried me along until I came to a door guarded by two fierce jinniyah warriors; and that was the entrance to Sameera’s own quarters.

I still remember my first glimpse of Sameera, as though it had happened only yesterday. It was a small room, with a carpet on the floor so deep that my feet sank in it almost to the ankle. The princess herself stood across from me, clad in a single broad piece of golden cloth that wound itself around her shoulders, down across her torso, and was wrapped round her hips and between her thighs. Her skin was all the colours of flickering fire, her hair flamed like autumn leaves, her eyes the blue of the cloudless sky. She wore no jewellery; her arms and legs were bare.

She was breathtakingly, incredibly, beautiful. The rumours had not lied.

She smiled at me, and her smile struck me straight to my heart. She raised a hand and beckoned me forward towards her. I was vaguely aware that the door had been closed behind me, that my parents – who had ceaselessly admonished me all the way on how I should behave with the princess – had left without a word, and that we were alone.

“You are the lady Hamdouna,” Sameera said, still smiling, and took my hand. Her touch was like liquid fire that travelled from her fingers into mine. I fought down a gasp. “There’s no need to look so terrified,” she said. “You’re so pretty! I wish I had your looks.”

This creature, ten times as beautiful as the moon on her fourteenth night, called me pretty? I would have laughed if my mouth had been capable of making sounds. Fortunately she did not insist on an answer, but drew me by the hand through a curtained doorway into another room, with thick cushions on the floor to sit on and low tables laden with golden platters full of fruits, bread, and meat, and silver goblets with rose water and sherbet.

“Hamdouna,” Sameera said, seating me down and settling by my side, so that her bare leg brushed my knee through the thin material of my dress, “please do refresh yourself, for I’m sure you are hungry and thirsty after the heat of the day outside. And tell me all about yourself, for I’m sure we will be great friends.”

I have no idea what I told her, for my mind – while my mouth was busy talking – was taken up by the nearness of her, the smell of her perfume in my nostrils, the touch and shift of her leg against mine. But whatever I said must have been satisfactory, for she smiled and, putting her arm around my shoulders, pulled me to her.

“Hamdouna,” she said, “will you not come and see me every day? And when you do, will you not tell me of what goes on in the wide world?”

“Why, Mistress,” I exclaimed, “surely you do not need such a wretch as me to tell you about the world! You’ve guards and ladies in waiting, and, I’m sure, visitors far more interesting than I ever could be.”

“None of them bears a candle to you,” she said, and hugged me again. Just then my mother came to take me home, and the princess came with me to the door to her chambers, holding me by the hand. “Gracious lady,” she said to my mother, “I was most pleased to meet your daughter, and I would wish her to visit me every day.”

My mother, as you can imagine, was most gratified by this, and on the way home questioned me extensively on what Sameera and I had done together that she had liked me so much. I said, truthfully, that we had just talked.

“Heaven be praised,” my mother exclaimed, “that we have not wasted our time in all the education we poured into you! If the princess thinks of you as a friend, it might make things a little easier at the diwan for your father.”

I did not understand what she was talking about, for such things were never discussed in my presence; but later I found out that powerful factions were busy contending behind the scenes at the diwan, and my father, as one who refused to side with anyone, was as such hated by them all. It would not have made any difference at that time even had I known, for I would have believed that it did not concern me; but you shall see.

That night I lay on my bed thinking about Sameera and only about Sameera; I had barely been able to touch my dinner, to the consternation of my mother, who worried lest I was sickening for something and would not be able in consequence to visit the princess. I indeed felt myself sick; but I could not tell what with. I had never been with a young person of my own age before, let alone a lovely young woman. I had no experience of love, lust, or even physical attraction; I did not even realise that such things could exist. The books I had read, carefully ***********ed by my parents and tutors to teach me the arts and sciences, had never discussed affairs of the heart. So I had no inkling of what made my face flush, my heart race, and an unfamiliar heat travel down my belly to the spot between my legs while I thought of her. And I thought about her constantly.

As I lay on my bed, tossing and turning, unable to sleep, these lines fell unbidden from my lips:

“Most dreams die when the morning comes

Are killed by the opening of an eye,

But some dreams live on and on

From sigh to yearning sigh.

Must I for unfelt touches long

Sigh for unkissed lips, and yet –

Drown in the present’s unsung song

For what I know not and cannot forget?”

So in the morning I was still sleepless, tired, and filled with a desire for what I did not know. And in this state I was taken again to Sameera.

“Dear Hamdouna,” she said as soon as she laid her eyes on me, “you look pensive and exhausted. Come with me to my hamam, and we shall have a nice bath together. It is just what you need.”

“I hear and obey, O Princess,” I murmured.

“Princess? Not to you. To you I shall be only Sameera.”

“But why?” I dared ask, while she, as yesterday, took me by the hand and conducted me deeper into her domain, through a pavilion where a fountain made rainbows in the light of the sun through skylights high above. “I am nobody.”

She gave me a strange smile over her shoulder. “Do not let me ever hear you call yourself nobody again,” she said, and opened a door set with panels of brass polished to the point where they reflected us like mirrors. Even in that metallic reflection she was heart-breaking in her beauty. “Here we are.”

I do not know what I had expected in her hamam; attendants and masseuses at the least, for certainly a princess should have no less. But we were alone, and as I stood there, looking at the pools of hot and cold water, the marble massage benches, I felt her hands on my shoulders. “May I help you undress?” she murmured in my ear.

Numbly, silently, I stood there, my tongue turned to stone; and she, the princess, took my silence as though it were permission and stripped me, her hands slipping over my body, removing my clothes item by item until I had nothing on but my soft shoes. Then she knelt at my feet, and, gently raising each leg in turn, slipped those off as well. The marble floor was cool to my bare feet.

I did not know what to do, what to say, even what to think. Nobody had ever seen me naked except my mother, and that had only been when I was still a quite young girl. I had not even looked at myself when I was completely naked; it had never struck me to do so in the mirrors in my rooms.

“You are even more beautiful than I could have imagined,” Sameera murmured. “Hamdouna?”

I found my tongue at last. “Yes, prin…I mean, Sameera?”

“Can you help me undress, please?”

Still as though moving by some agency not my own, my hands rose to obey, and I undid the knot at the nape of her neck that held her single wraparound dress together. She twirled around a couple of times on her tiptoes and it unwound from her body, leaving her as naked as I was.

I could not keep my eyes from her, try as I might. She was a little shorter than me, her build a little more slender, her arms and legs slimmer so the bulge of her hips looked larger. Her breasts swayed slightly as she moved, their perfect nipples like little hills. Her hands and feet were beautiful as birds in flight, the folded wings on her back black as night and promising the softness of velvet to the touch. My gaze flicked, naturally and only momentarily, to the cleft between her thighs, pale pink in colour like the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet, its plump outer lips separated slightly by its inner ones, peeking shyly out at the world.

I might have gazed on her forever, but I realised that she was saying something. “Hamdouna?”

“Sameera?” I whispered.

“I said, will you lie down on the bench, so that I can massage you?”

To be massaged by a princess! Obediently, I lay down on the bench, face down. I saw her draw on rubbing gloves, and then she began to rub me down, from my shoulders to my hips, then down the backs of my thighs and calves, and my ankles and my feet. I lay there like a piece of stone, unable to move, scarcely able to breathe, lost in what was happening to me.

At some unknowable time, she turned me over, and scrubbed my front, too, the gloves rubbing and exfoliating my skin so that I could not tell whether the flush in my face and shoulders, chest and breasts, were from blushing or her rubbing. As her hands roamed down my belly towards my hips, the warmth in my lower belly began pooling in my own secret spot between my legs, and as I instinctively pushed my thighs together, something in my own cleft throbbed and leaped.

Sameera gently pushed my legs apart and rubbed the inside of my thighs, right up near where they joined. Her eyes flicked down to my cleft, and to my horrified shame I felt moisture trickling down from it along the curve of my bottom, but she didn’t seem put out at all.

“You are beautiful, Hamdouna,” she said, and I thought she was about to say something else, but she bit her lip and shook her head slightly, and sighed.

“Sameera? Is something wrong?”

“No, nothing.” She sighed again and then moved down to rub my thighs and legs down to my feet. When she had scrubbed me down to my toes, she pulled off the rubbing gloves. “I wish you weren’t so innocent, Hamdouna. It makes me feel that I should not do what I so much want to do.”

I did not understand. I did not have the knowledge to ask the questions I wanted to ask, or put them into words.

“Come,” she said, “let us get into the warm pool. I will rub your shoulders and arms and let your tiredness drain away.”

She got into the pool first, her back against the marble, her legs spread, and made me settle between them, my back to her chest, her breasts pressing at me between my wings. Her hands roved up and down my arms and shoulders. The sensation – and the warm water – was so soothing that despite everything I must have fallen asleep right there, her breasts against my back, her hot throbbing slit pressed against the bottom of my spine.

She gently woke me when the water had begun to cool, by kissing the side of my neck. “Hamdouna,” she said, "You must wake up. We should dry off and get dressed now. Your mother will soon be here to accompany you home.” So I did, with great reluctance, for I wanted to stay there, between her arms and legs, for ever. It was the safest and happiest place I had ever known in my existence till that day.

After we had dried ourselves – or, to be quite accurate, she had dried me and then herself – and dressed again, she suddenly looked very shy. “Are you unhappy at what we did today?” she asked, looking down at her feet. “Do you think…perhaps we could do it again?”

I hastened to assure her that I had loved it, though my own mind was full of confusion about what had just happened between us. The only thing I was quite certain of was that this was not something I could talk about to my mother. I knew it was, whether holy or otherwise, a secret between the two of us alone – the princess and I.

That night, when I was alone in my room, I stripped myself bare and looked hard at my body in the mirror. I saw that my features were regular, my breasts well formed, my limbs straight, and my skin smooth and without blemish; but apart from that, what the princess saw in me that was beautiful, I did not understand at all. But that thought led me to think of her, of what she looked like without anything on, and suddenly that same feeling of warmth came over me in my lower belly and in my cleft. I felt again the moisture squeezing between my thighs, and reached down to feel what it might be. My fingertips brushed against a tiny nub at the top of my slit, and a sensation from it shot all through my body so that I gasped and felt my knees tremble.

Again, more deliberately, I touched myself, and the sensation repeated, making my heart race and my breath catch in my throat. My legs began to feel weak and I fell back on my bed, my fingers delving into my folds to find that nub again and again, and my own moisture coated my hand and trickled down to wet the bed.

I do not know how long that first exploration of myself lasted, but after a while the darts of pleasure every time my fingers brushed the nub gave way to something else, another sensation, a feeling as though my entire groin was beginning to clench, rhythmically, and then the feeling grew more and more and the spot between my legs seemed to catch fire with the force of the surge of ecstasy that came over me. I could not even keep my eyes open as my hips thrust against my hand; I must have cried out, because I suddenly heard my mother at the door, asking if I were all right.

I said something that must have satisfied her and prevented her from coming in, though I no longer remember what it was. After she had gone, I touched myself some more, but gingerly, not knowing what had happened and more than a little frightened by the sensations I had aroused in myself, until I drifted off to sleep.

The next few weeks settled into a pattern. Every day I would visit Sameera, and we would spend the day together. Sometimes we would walk in her private gardens, barefoot in the grass, picking fruit from the trees and eating as we walked. Other days we would sit in her pavilion, when she would play music and sing, or read from her books, of which she had a considerable collection. She had a lovely singing voice and was better at making music than I could ever hope to be. And she was insatiable in her curiosity about the world outside, asking me more questions than I could ever answer.

“O Sameera,” I asked her once, “why do you not go out into the town, or to your father’s diwan, and see for yourself what you desire me to tell you?”

“My father thinks the danger to me would be too great if I were to set foot in the town,” she said, sighing heavily. “Did you not see the two jinniyah who guard my door? They, and other guards, are there to keep me safe.”

“Keep you safe from whom?” I enquired, and so, from her reply, discovered the tensions among the diwan factions my parents had kept from me.

“One of the two main groups is that of the wazir, Tariq ul Hayah. He wants to control my father from behind the scenes. The other…”

**********************************

At this point Shahrazad saw the approach of dawn and discreetly fell silent.

But when the one thousand and sixth night had come,

SHE SAID:

**********************************

O King of the world, this is what the jinniyah Hamdouna said to the maiden Mumtaz-i-Duniya, as she continued her tale:

“The other is the commander of the army, Wadarb’ al Qitali. He would like nothing more than to overthrow my father and become the king himself. My father thinks that either would want to lay their hands on me to bend him, my father the king, to their will.” She sighed again. “I am a worse prisoner within these walls than you can imagine.”

My heart ached for her, and, throwing my arms around her, I hugged her to my bosom. She laid her cheek against mine and then kissed me gently on the lips. The by now familiar sensation settled in the spot between my legs, and I felt the equally familiar moisture begin to form, but there was nothing I could do about it now. In an effort to distract my own mind, I searched in my memory for a story to tell her. “Powerless as I am,” I said, “I will do my utmost to help you escape one day into the outside world, just as in the tale of the labourer and the rat.”

“What labourer and what rat might that be?” Sameera asked.

“I will tell you,” I said, “and it is a tale from which even a princess can draw instruction.” And so saying, I began

THE TALE OF THE LABOURER AND THE RAT

O Sameera, there was once, in the passage of an age and a moment, in the great city of Baghdad, a labourer called Saeed. He was poor as a mendicant, with only the clothes he wore on his body and his turban to his name; but he was proud, because he worked for his living instead of begging for alms.

At that time the Commander of the Faithful, the Khalifa Harun al Rashid, was having a new palace built, and Saeed was one of those who had been hired to build it. All day he toiled under the hot sun, digging the foundations of the palace. One afternoon, after he had taken a brief rest and had a bite of bread to eat and water to drink, he took up his mattock again and struck at the earth. To his surprise, the soil gave way under the blow of the tool as though it were no more than an eggshell, and within he saw a burrow, and the frightened eyes of a rat, looking out at him.

Now Saeed, though he was a common labourer who knew neither how to read nor write, was a kind-hearted man, who wished no harm to man or beast. “Dear rat,” he said, “dear sister, I mean you no harm. Please don’t look so terrified; I will not kill or hurt you.”

“How can I believe you?” the rat squeaked. “Your kind traps and poisons mine, sets cats and dogs on us, and comes after us with nets and sticks. I would run away, but I cannot even do that, for my babies need me, and I cannot abandon them.” And, moving slightly to one side, she let Saeed see into the burrow, where she had her nest, full of pink new-born rats.

Saeed’s heart was moved with pity for those little pink beings, so new to the world. “As they are your children, they are precious to me too,” he said. “In token of my friendship, here is some bread for you.” And he gave the rat the rest of the bread he had, which he had intended for his supper that night.

The rat took the bread, and for the rest of the day watched Saeed at work, ever vigilant for any move he might make to threaten her or her children. But he did not, and at the end of the day’s work, went back to his hovel after wishing her a pleasant night.

Every day after that Saeed would come first thing in the morning to the rat’s burrow, and, after greeting her cordially, would give her whatever scraps of food he had managed to save. He would then share his lunch with her and wish her a pleasant evening at the close of day. And so, little by little, the rat lost her fear of the man and began talking to him as well, especially as her children began to reach the stage of weaning and she did not have to be with them all the time anymore.

“O Saeed,” she asked one day, “are you from this city? For I have never seen anyone from Baghdad as kind as you.”

“In truth, I am not,” the labourer answered. “I am from a village on the bank of the Tigris, south of here. As a tenth son, with no prospects of inheritance or any other way of making a living in the village, I decided to come to the city to survive by the labour of my hands. And I have been here ever since, working to live while people from Cairo and Damascus, Constantinople and Persia, the Maghrib and Abyssinia, all pass me by.”

“Do you mean to say that the world extends so far beyond Baghdad?” the rat asked, wide-eyed in astonishment.

“Oh,” Saeed laughed, “it extends a lot further than that. But it makes no difference to me, since I will never be able to travel any of it.”

“Never say never, O Saeed!” the rat replied. “If it is so written, someday you will be able to go where you wish and see what you want.”

Now one day it so happened that the Commander of the Faithful had been presented with a splendid jewel by an ambassador from a far distant land, a stone as transparent as the air itself, and he had it set in gold and made into a brooch which he presented to his favourite concubine of the moment. One day, as the Khalifa and this concubine were at the construction site, inspecting how the palace was coming along, the brooch fell unnoticed from her shoulder and into a pit in the ground, where the dust raised by passing feet swiftly covered it.

It was only when the Khalifa and his party returned to the diwan that the concubine discovered her loss. She immediately reported it to the Khalifa, who as immediately summoned the foreman of the construction works, one Yubid at-Tugah. “Find the brooch at once,” he roared, “or your head will answer for it.”

Now this Yubid at-Tugah was a man of insatiable greed and no scruple whatsoever. “If the brooch is lost,” he thought, “and if it is at the construction site, I can find and keep it for myself. I only need a suitable scapegoat to put the blame on.” As he thought these words, his eyes fell on Saeed, who had just taken up his mattock after his noonday rest to begin work again.

“Now that is the perfect candidate,” Yubid at-Tugah thought. “He is not from Baghdad. He has no friends or family in the city. Nobody will care what happens to him. And in any case putting the blame on him will save my head.” So thinking, he went straight back to the diwan and reported to the Khalifa.

“The brooch has been stolen by a labourer by the name of Saeed,” he said. “I know it to be true, but I do not know where he has hidden it.”

“We will make him tell us,” the Khalifa roared, and sent his soldiers with Masrur his sword-bearer to arrest Saeed. Quickly tying his arms and hobbling his legs so that he could not escape, they dragged him before the Khalifa.

“I will give you until tomorrow morning to tell us where the brooch is,” Harun al Rashid said, when the labourer declared that he had no idea of the existence of any such brooch, let alone of its whereabouts. “You have until then to think about it. Or else, as the cock crows, Masrur will separate your head from your shoulders.” Then he had Saeed dragged away and flung into a small cell in the dungeons of the palace to wait the morning and Masrur’s sword.

The poor labourer fell to lamenting his lot in the most piteous terms. In his sorrow he cried:

“What is a man’s life worth?

Less than a stone, comes reply.

What is the worth of innocence when

A word can mean the innocent die?

I broke my back for the Khalifa’s palace

And nobody had a word to say –

The Khalifa’s woman lost a bauble

So I will not see tomorrow’s day.

Better by far that I had wandered

The paths of the world, starving, alone

Than answer with my head because

A concubine lost a pretty stone.”

He would have gone on longer in this vein, but he suddenly heard a little voice, and, looking down, saw his friend the rat poking her head out of a hole in the corner.

“O Saeed,” she said, “cease your crying, compose yourself, and tell me what happened. I saw the Khalifa’s men seize you, and have hurried here as quickly as I could without drawing anyone’s attention.”

So Saeed told her what he was accused of, and that the Khalifa’s sword bearer would undoubtedly have his head at dawn on the morrow.

“There is still time,” the rat said. “My children and I will search the construction site and see if we can find this stone.” So saying, she scurried back to her burrow and her children.

“Look in every crack and crevice,” she told them. “The life of our friend Saeed depends on our finding this thing.”

So, just as darkness fell, the rat family spread out across the construction site, looking in every hole, every pit, every crack, and every fissure. The rat herself ran here and there, searching with even more diligence than all her children put together. All of a sudden she paused.

“There is someone with an oil lamp moving around the site, poking in corners and looking for something. Why, it is that whey-faced wretch of a foreman. What is he doing here at this hour? Let me follow him and see.”

Just then the youngest of the rat children ran up to his mother, with something held in his front paws. “I have found it,” he squeaked. And there was the brooch, glinting in the starlight.

The rat immediately realised what had happened and what the foreman was looking for. Ordering her son to get his brothers and sisters and tell them to return to their burrow, she took up the brooch in her mouth and followed the foreman around, as he looked here and there, until he gave up with a disgusted sigh.

“It must be somewhere around,” she heard him mutter. “I’ll try again tomorrow night.”

Then the rat followed the foreman back to his house, slipping along the shadows, and crept through his door. She waited in a corner until the man had had a belated supper, washed it down with goblets of sour wine, and fallen into a drunken sleep. Then she did certain things, and rushed back to the palace, creeping down through the burrows and holes in the wall until she arrived at the cell in which Saeed was being held.

“O Saeed,” she squeaked, “are you awake?”

“How can I sleep?” the poor labourer replied. “It is almost dawn, and my time to die.”

“Nonsense,” the rat told him firmly. “Now listen. This is what you must do…”

Just as she finished speaking, there was a rattle of keys in the lock and the Khalifa’s men entered, Masrur at their head. “O thief,” the sword bearer said, “are you ready now to tell of where the jewel is hidden?”

“I am no thief,” the labourer said, “but if the Khalifa permits, I will – by means of divination known only to me – find where it is secreted. I can, however, do it only in presence of the Khalifa.”

Masrur laughed, but, being, as the whole world knows, a good-natured man, he agreed to take the labourer before the Khalifa, who had just finished his morning ablutions and breakfast and was therefore in a jolly mood. “Why not?” he thought to himself. “It will present a little diversion before I start my work for the day.” And he ordered the labourer to be supplied with whatever he needed.

So Saeed had sandalwood fetched, which he burnt in a brazier while dropping aromatic oils into the fire, all the time muttering under his breath and gazing deeply into the smoke. Then he turned to Harun al Rashid.

“O Commander of the Faithful,” he said, “the stone is, indeed, stolen; but not by me. I ask that you have the foreman, Yubid at-Tugah, summoned here. I will then explain all.”

Yubid at-Tugah, who had only just wakened from his belated and drunken sleep, was hastily summoned from his house, given only time to dress himself, and arrived, still protesting and complaining. At the sight of the labourer, whom he had imagined already beheaded, his face grew dark with fury.

But Saeed gave him no opportunity to speak. “Commander of the Faithful,” he said, “this man has stolen the brooch; I suggest you have your men search him, paying especial attention to the folds of his turban.”

“Do so, then,” said the Khalifa.

“I hear and I obey!” Masrur the sword-bearer reached for the foreman’s turban, and had hardly begun unwinding it when the brooch fell out of it and to the floor.

Then the foreman’s bowels turned to water, and he fell to the ground, crying and begging forgiveness; but the Khalifa had him dragged down to the same cell where Saeed had been confined, and thrown in there; and perhaps he languishes there to this very day. So much for him.

“Young man,” the Khalifa then addressed Saeed, “you have not just saved me from committing a great injustice, but this ability of yours seems to me to be something that will be of much use to the realm. I would like to appoint you my spy, to travel all the territories under my rule and report to me about injustices and all manner of things that should be brought to my notice. You will, of course, be adequately paid for your efforts. You can have an hour to think of my offer.”

“The Khalifa is most gracious,” the astonished Saeed replied. “I shall withdraw to consider your most gracious offer, and return in an hour.”

“This is a pretty mess!” he said to himself as soon as he was outside the palace. “I have no such abilities, and if I took the job, the Khalifa would soon recognise me as a fraud. To not take the offer, however, would be an affront to him that he would never forgive.”

“Friend Saeed,” a familiar voice interjected from somewhere near his ankles. “Why are you still so despondent? Did I not secure for you your freedom?”

Then Saeed told the rat his problem. “Almost were it better that I were beheaded,” he said, “for then my troubles would have been over.”

“O foolish Saeed,” the rat replied, “did I not tell you that you would be free to see the world if it were so written? And do not be worried for a moment about the Khalifa thinking you a fraud. I, and my children, will accompany you on your travels, and be your eyes and ears. Nobody notices a rat in a hole in a corner, but the rat hears all and sees all!”

So it was that the former labourer Saeed, who had only ever known his village and Baghdad, began on his journey to see the world, from the Anatolia to Khorasan, and from Abyssinia to al Andalus; and at his side were his faithful friend the rat and all her children, who also got to see that the world was bigger than their little burrow and the patch of land around it.

Of all the wonders that they saw, of all the adventures that they had, perhaps we shall speak another time!

_________________________

“Just as,” I said to the princess Sameera, “the rat was the labourer’s eyes and ears, I will be yours; and, as she helped him escape his prison, perhaps, if Heaven allows, I will help you too.”

At these words Sameera threw her arms around me and kissed my lips again. “Dear Hamdouna,” she said, “you cannot know how my soul thrills to you, how I have to keep myself under the strictest control to stop myself doing what my heart screams at me to do with you.”

I still did not know exactly what she meant, but over the past few weeks of touching and exploring myself, I had some idea now that it must involve that. And I wanted to reach out and touch her too, in that intimate way, to let her know that she could do anything that she wanted to; but my own thought that she was a princess and I a commoner stopped me. After all, my mother had never stopped reminding me of the differences in our stations and that I must never do anything to upset her.

“It is time I were going,” I said, getting hurriedly to my feet so that she would not see the desire in my eyes. “I shall see you tomorrow.”

“Until tomorrow,” Sameera replied. “I can barely wait.”

That night, my parents called me to them. “Hamdouna,” my father said, “tomorrow morning, the king is sending me on an extended mission, to visit the isles of Waq-Waq, to solve certain problems there. And your mother is going with me, for it is a long and difficult trip, and she does not want me to make it alone.”

“Your father is right, daughter,” my mother replied. “I will accompany him. You, on the other hand…”

My heart had fallen like a stone to the pit of my stomach, but thrilled at her next words.

“Your father has secured the king’s leave for you to remain with the princess Sameera as long as we are gone, as her companion. We cannot take you with us, for the old jinniyah Faizunnisa’s warnings still resonate in our ears, and the way to Waq-Waq is full of perils already.”

“I hear and obey, dear mother,” I said, trying to conceal how my heart leapt with delight at the news that Sameera and I would be together.

The next morning, my parents conducted me to Sameera’s quarters before going to King Fayn al Usud at the diwan to make their farewells. I found that she had already got the news, and welcomed me with a hug so tight that it drove the breath from my body. “So long have I waited for this moment,” she said, drawing me by the arm to her pavilion. “Sit down and let me get you sweets and sherbet to welcome you to your new home.”

I watched her fill a plate with delicate pastries and asked a question that I had been thinking of for a long time. “Why do you not have ladies in waiting and attendants? Why do you, as a princess, do everything for yourself and for me?”

She smiled wryly at me. “My father cannot trust any attendant to not be a spy for the wazir or the general,” she said. “And I enjoy doing things for you. Here.”

As I nibbled on a sweet, she sang for me while accompanying herself on a lute, and my heart filled with what I recognised at last to be love for her. It was, of course, something that I had no right to, and as undoubtedly she would laugh at me if I told her, or, worse, her eyes would fill with scorn and she would push me away. I resolved to keep my realisation to myself.

“Why are you crying, Hamdouna?” Sameera asked, her face twisted with concern; and I realised, belatedly, that tears were streaming from my eyes.

“I am merely worried about my parents and their long journey to Waq-Waq,” I replied. “It will take them years to get there, and years to return; I worry for their safety.”

“The king my father trusts your parents to go and return safely,” she replied, and hugged me tenderly. “They will be fine, never fear.”

We spent the day, as usual, in talking and reading and walking in her garden, feeling the breeze in our hair and the grass under our toes. The only difference was that, as the evening shadows grew long, I would not have to go home tonight, to lie in bed dreaming of her, my fingers frantically busy between my thighs.

We returned to her pavilion, and she looked at me. “Hamdouna,” she said, “will you come with me to the hamam again? I would like a bath to freshen myself for our first night together.”

“Only if you permit me to massage you in turn,” I replied, summoning all my boldness. My cleft had already begun moistening and to my horror I felt my nipples harden and pucker, pushing out the thin fabric of my dress in little points. Whatever would she think? “I mean…” I added desperately.

“Of course I permit you,” she said, with a warm smile and a hug. “Let us go and undress and…”

At that moment the door to the antechamber slammed open and one of the two jinniyah guards burst into the room. “Princess,” she shouted, “you must come with us at once!”

“What is happening?” Sameera gasped.

“The army commander, Wadarb’ al Qitali, has launched a rebellion against your father the king; even now, his soldiers are on the way here to seize you.”

“Where is my father?”

“He is in a safe place, as is your mother. But there is no time to talk. You must come with us.”

“I will go nowhere,” Sameera declared, “unless Hamdouna comes along with me.”

The guard jinniyah threw me a glance as though I were no more than a pet cat or a potted plant. “If you wish, princess, and as long as she does not get in the way.”

“She has a name,” I spoke up, annoyed by the way she had spoken about me, “and you know it. And not only will I not get in the way, I will protect the princess with my life, for she is more precious to me than life itself.”

The guard jinniyah did not even bother to acknowledge my response. “Princess? We have no time to spare.”

“We are coming,” Sameera said, and, holding me by the arm, she pulled me to the door. The other guard jinniyah was waiting there, anxiously looking down the passage. They took us down a route that I had never seen before, through many stairways and sloping corridors, until we arrived at an underground passage, lined with torches with unwavering flames. The two jinniyah guards hurried us along this passage, until we suddenly heard the noise of fighting ahead of us, the clash of sword on shield and the shouts and grunts of combat.

“They are already here,” the jinniyah who had entered the princess’ chambers cried. “Quick, get in here, both of you.” Before we had time to react, she thrust us both through a door, and slammed it shut with a great sliding block of stone. It fitted so well that there was not even a crack to mark the doorway.

Left so suddenly alone, Sameera and I clutched at each other, our terrified eyes searching each other’s faces. The little room we were in was lit by one of those unwavering torches, and had a mattress on the floor, so it was probably intended to be a refuge for such a time of crisis as this. The stone walls were so thick that we had no idea what was going on outside, whether the king’s soldiers had prevailed or whether Wadarb’ al Qitali’s troops were even now prowling the passages looking for us.

I was very aware that Sameera and I were still tightly in each other’s embrace. I could feel her heart thudding against my breast, and…

**********************************

At this point Shahrazad saw the approach of dawn and discreetly fell silent.

But when the one thousand and seventh night had come,

SHE SAID:

**********************************

I was (said Hamdouna) very aware that Sameera and I were still clutching each other frantically, her arms around my neck and her great terrified blue eyes searching mine for some hope of reassurance. What reassurance could I give? I knew about as much of what was happening as she did, which meant nothing at all.

Instead, I did the only thing I could think of. Turning my head, I pressed my lips to hers.

Her fingers clasped me round the neck and pulled my head to hers as her lips parted and she kissed me back desperately. “Hamdouna…” she whispered. “I need you. I need you more than I have ever needed anything before.”

At first I did not understand, then her fingers fumbling at my clothes finally showed me what she wanted, what she needed. And as her fingers pulled my clothing aside to reach my skin, I was suddenly inflamed by the same desperate need. We didn’t know what would happen to us, whether we’d live through the day; it might be our only opportunity to feel each other’s caresses again, and we both knew it without having to say it.

Scrabbling at each other, urgently, not caring what we were doing, we stripped each other, and then she pushed me down on the mattress on my back and threw herself on me. Her horns tangled with mine as her tongue plunged into my mouth, her breasts rubbed on mine, and her thigh pushed between my knees until it pressed into my cleft, rubbing back and forth on it as she rubbed herself all over me. I cried out softly as the pressure of her thigh on that little nub on the top of my slit made me grind and thrust myself against her, the sensation cresting until it exploded, pleasure radiating from between my legs till it drove all thought from my mind.

When I could think coherently again, I was lying between her spread legs, my face next to her cleft, which she was holding open with her fingers, her lips spread like a flower, her own little nub standing pink and proudly out from its green hood. Her scent, too, was thick in my nostrils, the same smell that I was familiar with when I touched myself. Instinctively, doing what that little nub seemed to invite me to do, I closed my lips around it and touched it with the tip of my tongue.

Her hips bucked against me so hard that I was all but pushed off, but before I could wonder if I had hurt her in any way, her hands were on the back of my head, pushing it down to her spot again. I began sucking it gently in between flicking it with my tongue, and her hands were tangled in my hair, pressing my head to her, making sure I was not pushed away as she bucked and trembled. Then all of a sudden she pressed my head down to herself with all her strength as she ached off the mattress and cried out, shuddering over and over again.

And it was just at that moment that the stone slab of the doorway slid aside and a cohort of soldiers pushed their way inside.

I can visualise exactly how they found us – naked, our clothes lying discarded on the floor, my head between Sameera’s legs, her back arched off the mattress, her head thrown back in ecstasy. It would have made a superb painting, I have thought many times – a painting of love. But of course the soldiers did not think of it that way.

Rough hands grabbed at my shoulders, pulled me off Sameera, and flung me backwards so hard that I slammed against the wall before falling to the floor. Others helped Sameera up and flung her clothing over her as best they could,

“What has she done to you, princess?” one of the soldiers demanded. They were all jinn I had never seen before; none were members of Sameera’s jinniyah guards. “Has she hurt you?”

“No!” Sameera shouted, holding her dress around herself. “Don’t you touch her! She has not done a thing to me that I didn’t want her to!”

My head was still spinning from my collision with the wall, and when I tried to speak all I could do was moan. All that this did was make two of the soldiers take me by the arms and hold me up. My vision began to go grey, and my head drooped on my chest. Faintly, as though from very far away, I heard a frantic scream – “Hamdouna!” – before my consciousness slipped away from me.

When I regained my senses I was lying on the floor of the passage. The sensation of the cold stone on my back told me that I was still naked. I could hear voices speaking over me.

“The princess was hiding where you thought they would be, Grandmother.” It sounded like the jinni who had asked Sameera if I had hurt her. “The wazir is grateful for your help.”

From these words I realised that the soldiers who had found us were not rebels under the army commander Wadarb’ al Qitali, but under the command of the wazir, Tariq ul Hayah,. Not that it made any difference; from what Sameera had said, they were equally dangerous. I tried to stay very still.

“I was here when these tunnels were built,” another voice replied. It was an ancient voice, a jinniyah’s voice. “If she had been brought by her guards through the tunnels, there was only this one room where she could be.” Whoever she was, she paused a bit, and when she spoke again, her voice was a lot closer, as though she were bending over me. “And what about this girl?”

“Do you know her? I am told that she is the daughter of Nahim, the official who left for Waq-Waq this morning.”

“I know her. What do you intend to do with her?”

I half opened an eye, cautiously. I did not know the old jinniyah bending over me, but I had heard enough de***********ions of her from my parents, of her complexion of lavender blotched purple with age, her long nose and her protruding chin, to recognise her at once. It was Faizunnisa, who had prophesied great danger for me when I was a baby.

“The wazir Tariq ul Hayah says that Nahim must be allied with Wadarb’ al Qitali; and his daughter’s purpose was to romance the princess and keep her with herself, in one place, to be captured by the rebels. And she succeeded, but we got here first.” I tried to protest, but all I could utter was a tiny moan that the jinni did not even seem to have heard. “The wazir ordered me to cut her head off. I was just about to do that when you arrived.”

“Do not do so, good jinni,” Faizunnisa said. “An action cannot be taken back, and when it is an unjust action, the effects that follow will never bring good to anyone. Have you never heard the story of the fisherman’s daughter and the heron?”

“What story is that, Grandmother?”

“I will tell you. Listen well, and learn well the lesson it tells.” And Faizunnisa knelt beside me, gently rubbing my forehead, as she began

THE TALE OF THE FISHERMAN’S DAUGHTER AND THE HERON

O brave jinni, know that there was once, in the marshes south of the great city of Cairo, a fisherman by the name of Jamil.

He was not a rich fisherman, but he was content. He had a little boat, in which he went out into the Nile every morning to catch fish in his nets. In the afternoon, he would bring the catch back, which he and his wife, whose name was Fatima, would take to Cairo to sell. They had each other, they had their health, and they had a little daughter, whose name was Moon-Blossom.

Moon-Blossom was as beautiful as her name suggested, and grew up to be a clever, high-spirited girl, whose favourite pastime was to wade in the reeds and watch the birds. One day, as she was doing so, she found an abandoned nest, and in that nest was a single egg.

She took the egg back home and showed it to her mother.

“It is a heron’s egg,” Fatima said, examining it. “You should take it back to the nest.”

“The mother heron has left the nest,” the girl argued. “The egg will get spoilt if we leave it there.”

“Very well,” the kind-hearted Fatima said, “we will do our best to hatch it. Wrap it well in this rag and keep it close to the fire, but not too close, and make sure to turn it round and round as soon as one side gets too warm.”

When Jamil returned from fishing, his wife explained what had happened. “She will soon tire of it,” she said, “but it will keep her busy for a while and out of trouble.”

Jamil laughed and agreed, and, leaving Moon-Blossom to her new game, he and Fatima took the catch to Cairo, being certain that when they returned they would find that Moon-Blossom had already forgotten the egg.

But Moon-Blossom had not forgotten, and sat up with the egg, turning it whenever one side got too warm. She did not forget it for a moment in the days that followed either. She even stopped going out to wade in the reeds, and when she slept, she put the egg in its rag covering in a little basket and curled around it, warming it with the heat of her body. And so, in a few days, one morning she heard a cheeping noise from the basket, and when she opened it, there was a little heron chick pecking its way out of the shell.

“His name is Zuhayr,” Moon-Blossom declared, “and he will be my brother.”

Jamil and Fatima saw that there was nothing for it, because their daughter had made up her mind; so Zuhayr stayed with them, eating the by-catch from the nets, and soon sprouted feathers and grew into a splendid heron. He never left Moon-Blossom’s side. When she waded in the reeds he was by her side. When she slept he slept beside her, on one leg, his beak tucked under his wing.

The next year, a terrible drought struck the region; even the marshes began to dry up, and when Jamil took his boat out, there was hardly enough water in which to cast his net, and he caught almost nothing; at best he caught only just enough to somehow feed his wife and daughter.

The only one who did not seem to lack food was Zuhayr. The heron poked and prodded in the shallow water to find the fish that hid there, along with snails and frogs and other delicacies fit for a heron.

But Jamil had been embittered by the drought and the consequent loss of income. “That heron,” he said to his wife, “is eating all the fish that are left. Either he has to go or we will starve to death.”

Fatima protested. “Moon-Blossom will never forgive us,” she said.

“She does not have to know,” Jamil replied. “While she is sleeping tonight, I will catch the bird, take it outside, wring its neck, and bury the body. We will tell Moon-Blossom that Zuhayr flew away looking for more fish elsewhere.”

They were not aware that Moon-Blossom was at that very moment just outside the hut, and had heard everything. She rushed to where Zuhayr was wading, looking for fish, and clasped him to her bosom.

“You and I must run away at once,” she said. Without waiting a moment or looking back, she began running through the reeds as quickly as her little legs would carry her, Zuhayr flapping along by her side. By nightfall, when her parents discovered that she was missing and began looking for her, she had already gone too far for them to find her. That night, she slept curled up in a hollow by the river, Zuhayr standing by her side.

Early the next morning the frantic fisherman and his wife resumed their search. Meanwhile, the little girl had woken, but lay with her eyes closed, crying from hunger and thirst. Suddenly she felt a sharp blow and opened her eyes, to see that Zuhayr was urgently pecking at her arm.

Sitting up in astonishment at this rough treatment, Moon-Blossom had just opened her mouth to protest when she saw, crawling out of the river and almost upon her, an immense crocodile, jaws gaping wide. The great beast was already too close for her to scramble away in time, and she would undoubtedly have been eaten; but the heron flew on to the crocodile’s head and began furiously pecking at its eyes and snout. Unable to bear the blows, the gigantic reptile abandoned its quarry and slithered back into the river.

And this was just what Jamil and Fatima saw, as they came upon the scene – Zuhayr pecking at the crocodile and forcing it away from their daughter, who sat on the bank, her little fist held to her mouth in horror.

Rushing to her daughter, Fatima clutched the child to her bosom, but Moon-Blossom struggled furiously to get away. “I will never come back,” she said, “not unless Zuhayr comes with me.”

“He shall,” Fatima promised, tears streaming down her face. “I promise, nothing will ever happen to him.” She picked up the little girl and held her in her arms, while the heron flapped around overhead, keeping a lookout so that the crocodile did not return.

Then Jamil suddenly bent and poked at one of the footprints left by the beast in the mud of the river bank. “Look at this,” he said, and pulled out a small leather bag. It was old and beginning to rot, but had held together well enough to avoid spilling its contents.

Cutting the thong holding it closed with his knife, Jamil poured out a great number of shining dinars. “It must have been abandoned by some robber,” he said. “With this, our problems are over; we can buy food in Cairo until the rains come again."

“O father of Moon-Blossom,” Fatima said, “if you had killed Zuhayr as you had planned, we would never have found these coins; and, if our daughter had run away, as well she might have when she found the bird missing, to look for him, the crocodile would probably have devoured her. Do you now understand that injustice brings no reward?”

“You are right, wife,” Jamil agreed. And so they returned to their hut with their daughter and her brother the heron, and eventually the rains came and the river ran full again and rich with fish, so that life returned to what it was before.

And their two children, the girl and the heron, grew up together and by their presence lit up their days.

_________________________________________

Faizunnisa finished her tale and looked up at the jinni. “Do you understand why you must not kill this girl? Perhaps she has planned to do the princess harm, and perhaps she has not; but if you kill her and she has not, you will be doing an injustice which can never be reversed.”

“But what can I do, Grandmother?” the jinni asked. “If I do not kill her, it will be my head on the chopping block, for the wazir Tariq ul Hayah is as relentless as he is cruel. And if she is guilty, it would be unjust of me to let her go.”

“I have a solution,” the old jinniyah said. “I passed a large stone jar on the way here, near the fortieth torch; carry the girl to that jar.” The jinni picked me up and slung me over his shoulder, and the impact of my head on the heavy metal armour he wore nearly robbed me of my senses again. He carried me past a row of jars full of food and water, and flung me down in front of an immense blue jar.

“Open the lid, and put her inside,” Faizunnisa told him. “I will seal the jar so that none of we jinn can ever open it, not even I; and she will remain imprisoned for ever. That way, you will have fulfilled your duty, without having committed any irreversible injustice.”

The jinni did as told, pushing me into the darkness of the jar. Just before she put the lid on, though, Faizunnisa looked down on me, infinite sorrow on her face. “Dear granddaughter,” she said, “I cannot do more than this for you, but I will leave you one bit of hope; someday, someone, might be able to free you. But this person will have to be a human, because jinn cannot open this jar again; and humans are not likely to ever come here. Moreover, for your own protection, I have ensured that any such human must be without any kind of sin, not only in word or deed but also in thought, for I have no wish to see you fall in thrall to some foul sorcerer.” So saying, she shut the lid and left me in darkness.

For a very long time, how long I do not know, I lay there, only half aware of where and what I was. In time, little by little, my body healed its injuries, and only then did the full horror of my position become apparent to me. Far better, I thought, that the jinni soldier had killed me, than to consign me to this living death. And there was not a thing I could do about it. I could not even find the slight satisfaction of hoping that anyone was mourning for me, because no sound from outside the jar could I hear.

And so time passed. During the day, I could fall into a kind of sleep; and I would dream that I was free, running in the gardens with Sameera by my side, the breeze in our hair, the grass tickling our bare feet, both of us laughing and laughing. And from those dreams I would awake, to crushing despair and lamentation. And time passed.

Until one evening when I heard, for the first time, a noise from outside the jar; that of iron on stone; my heart leaped, I called out, and heard the most beautiful voice I ever remember hearing reply to me. And you know the rest, do you not?

********************************

As the jinniyah Hamdouna finished her story, Mumtaz-i-Duniya found her cheeks wet with tears. “O Hamdouna,” she sobbed, “I weep not just for you but for Sameera, whose heart must be assuredly ripped in twain forever, and who will have spent the rest of her life pining for you; and for your parents, who undoubtedly must have believed you dead and lost to them beyond retrieve.”

“There is little to be done about that,” Hamdouna said, with the wryest of smiles. “Living in the past is a luxury we do not possess, not while we have so much to do.” She pointed to the east. “Meanwhile, the sun will soon be up. There is a grove of date trees up ahead, among which we can rest during the day. I do not need the rest so much, for I am beginning to get my strength back; but you, O Mumtaz, will be exhausted and footsore. And although I doubt that any search party from the town can still be after you, it would only be prudent to rest from the heat of the day’s sun.”

“So be it,” Mumtaz, who in truth was tired out, said. They reached the grove just as the faintest trace of first light touched the eastern sky, and she threw herself down under the nearest tree. “Hamdouna, where should we go next…”

She never finished that sentence, for with a great roar and a noise like the earth being torn asunder, a gigantic ifrit descended from the tree. He was the colour of dark copper, his eyes flashed red and silver, and great tusks like radishes protruded from his mouth. “Who are you,” he thundered, “that dare enter my kingdom?”

Mumtaz was struck dumb with shock and fright, but the jinniyah – who was standing slightly further away – recovered quickly. “O unhappy ifrit,” she said, “who I am matters little; but that is the hero Rustam, of whom I am certain even a miserable ifrit like you must have heard.”

“The hero Rustam?” the ifrit blinked in confusion. “Who is the hero Rustam?”

“Why, Rustam the Ifrit-Slayer.” Hamdouna smiled with all her teeth and no humour at all. “Rustam, whose life’s purpose is to rid the world of your kind. Why do you think I called you unhappy, foolish ifrit? We did not know you were here, and we only wished to rest during the heat of the day and move on again; but you made yourself known, and now Rustam will kill you too.”

At these words the ifrit’s bowels turned to water, and he threw himself down and kissed the ground between Mumtaz’ hands a hundred times. “O master,” he said, “I beg a thousand pardons for my mistake; I did not know who you were. For many years I have guarded this, my tiny kingdom, against all comers. I have kept it free from ghoul and robber; had I known you were neither, I never would have disturbed you.”

Mumtaz rose to her feet and casually moved her sword halfway out of its scabbard and slipped it back again. “O ifrit,” she said. “It is true that it is my life’s mission to rid the world of your kind. But I have come to find that there are some of you who are not so vile as the rest, some who, in fact, have a noble character. And those I let live. So tell me how you came by this so-called kingdom of yours, and I will decide what to do with you.”

“It will be as my master wishes!” the ifrit said, and he began

THE IFRIT’S STORY

O master, my name is Balban, and I am from an ancient line of ifrits. I was born on a cliff top on a land very far to the north of here, overlooking a frozen sea. For centuries I lived there, where no sound but the crackle of ice, the blowing of whales, and the cry of birds disturbed the silence; and with all that, I was at first content.

But one day a voice whispered in my ear, “O Balban, there are worlds to see; you are wasting your life in this spot, where nothing can even be bothered to admit your existence.” No sooner had this idea come to me then I decided that I should at once leave those cliffs of my birth and see the world. And I at once set out towards the south, to find warmer climes and the haunts of men.

For many years I wandered, seeing for myself the villages and towns and cities of men, and watched them love and quarrel, be born and die, get richer and poorer. And the more I saw the more my desire grew to see more; but all this time I took great care not to myself be seen.

Eventually, one day, I found myself in a narrow valley between mountain ranges crowned with snow, where the ground was frozen almost as hard as stone and almost nothing grew. Ahead of me was a small dwelling of white stone roofed with gold, and a man in dark red robes, a great red turban on his head, burning incense in a bronze censer which he was busily waving around, and chanting all the while.

My curiosity grew, to the extent that I forgot myself and drew closer to see what he was doing and hear what he was chanting; when, all of a sudden, I saw that he had paused his waving around and was looking straight at me.

“I see that I have a visitor,” he said. “What do you want here, Master Ifrit?”

I was younger and more arrogant in those days; and the fact that this little man showed no fear of me struck at my pride.

“Why,” I said, “I only want to suck the marrow out of your bones.”

“You are more than welcome to it,” the man in red told me. “But, before you do so, will you not sit down and share some tea with me?”

“I will,” I said, confused at his response.

“Good!” he said. “Pray wait here and I will bring out the tea.” So saying, he went into his house and left me to my thoughts.

I was very perplexed, as you can readily imagine. Of course I had no desire to suck his marrow; I had only wanted to frighten him and assuage my pride; but his lack of fear only made me more taken aback. At first I thought his plan was to barricade himself in his little house and leave me waiting outside; that would have proved him afraid and salved my ego. But instead he kept the door open behind him, and shortly emerged with two bowls of tea on a platter and a small wooden box of some kind.

“Master Ifrit,” he said, handing me one of the bowls…

**********************************

At this point Shahrazad saw the approach of dawn and discreetly fell silent.

But when the one thousand and eighth night had come,

SHE SAID:

**********************************

“Master Ifrit”, the man began (the ifrit recounted to Mumtaz and Hamdouna), “here you are; have a taste and tell me what you think, for I pride myself on my tea.”

I took the proffered bowl and raised it to my lips; and in the next instant the world around me suddenly grew immense, the mountains on either side rushing away and rising until they touched the sky. Far above me the man’s red turban leaned over me, its shadow blocking out the sun.

“Suck my marrow, will you, ifrit?” he said, and, reaching out a titanic hand, snatched me up before I could move. “Did you dare think one such as you could suck the marrow of Ghiyas ad Din the sorcerer?”

Too late, I realised that it was not that the world had expanded, but I who had shrunk, and that I was a prisoner. Even if I could have, in my astonishment and fright, thought of admitting that I was only trying to frighten him, I had no time, for in a trice he popped me into the wooden box and slammed down the lid, sealing me in darkness.

“Tomorrow,” I heard his voice rumble, “I am going on a long journey to the south, and you are coming along with me. I will decide how to dispose of you on the way.”

I suppose it was the next day – I had no way to tell from inside the box – when I felt it being lifted, and then it began swaying and pitching as he moved, which went on for a very long time. Sometimes I would hear voices, as when he spoke to others, but it was never anything consequential, and nothing he said gave me any hope of escape. Meanwhile I lay in the box, terrified of whatever was to come, and bitterly regretting ever having left my ice cliffs above the frozen sea. And in my regret I whispered these words:

“My kingdom was a throne of ice

Silence was my benediction –

I threw it all away, because

Of a fancy to see another nation.

Could I turn back the wheel of time

And find myself on my throne once more

I would stay fast content with my lot

And bless all I wished to flee before.”

If the sorcerer heard my words, though, he made no mention of it, and my confinement continued unabated.

Much time – it must have been months – passed in this manner, and from the increasing warmth of the air inside the box I realised that we must have reached a hot land. Then one day I heard the sorcerer’s voice, speaking with unfamiliar deference.

“Old Mother, you know the object I seek for my magic; I know you can tell me where it is; and I am willing to pay for that knowledge.”

“O Ghiyas ad Din,” an old woman’s voice replied, “money means nothing to me, and none of your spells and baubles mean anything to me either. I, however, am willing to tell you where to locate what your heart desires. In return, though, I must demand something of you.”

“Whatever it is,” the sorcerer said, “tell me, and it is yours.”

“You have a box in your possession,” the old woman’s voice said. “In it there is an unhappy ifrit, whom you have confined. I ask that you set him at liberty.”

“Why do you demand that, Old Mother?” the sorcerer asked, astonished.

“I myself had to imprison an innocent young jinniyah once,” the ancient woman’s voice replied. “I have never ceased to regret the action, and to blame myself. Since then the thought of confining anyone or anything is abhorrent to me. Go and release the ifrit, and return; only then will I tell you what you seek to know.”

The sorcerer Ghiyas ad Din rose with much unhappy muttering and grumbling. Shortly afterwards I felt the box pop open, for just long enough for me to have a quick look around; it was night, the moon was near her zenith, and we stood in the midst of a stony waste. Nearby was a little hut made of stones piled together, its back to an immense amber rock shaped like a reclining woman. Before I could try to get out, though, the sorcerer shook his turbaned head and pushed me back in down.

“Not here,” he said. “I will take you somewhere far away, and set you free…but with conditions. I have to think of my own safety.”

Before he slammed the box’ lid shut again, I noticed that he had set off towards the south west. The box moved and swayed with his walking for many hours. Then, suddenly, the lid was popped open again, and the sorcerer picked me up between his thumb and forefinger, and held me up before his eyes.

“O ifrit,” he said, “for reasons that you do not need to know, I have decided to let you go. But, before I do, I will take a few measures to make sure I am never in any further danger from you; for even if you had had no actual reason to hate me earlier, you most certainly now do.” He turned me around, and I saw that we were in the middle of a grove of date palms.

“From this moment on,” Ghiyas ad Din continued, “this grove is your kingdom. You will stay here. You cannot leave it as long as this box is also here, or is not destroyed. And,” he laughed, “I doubt that anyone will be along to destroy it. You certainly can’t; I made sure of that.”

Setting me down, he dug with his knife into the soil at the roots of the nearest palm, dropped the box into the hole, and kicked sand and pebbles over it. “Fare you well, ifrit,” he said, turning on his heel. “I hope for your sake that we do not meet again.”

“Wait, Ghiyas ad Din,” I cried. “How can I rule over anything, tiny as I am?”

The sorcerer thought for the space of an hour, and then nodded. Reaching into the bag at his side, he took out a pouch, poured out a handful of glittering powder, and blew it over me. “You will return to your original size in a few hours,” he said. “By then I will be far away from here.” And, without a further word, he set off across the desert towards the north east, retracing the way we had come.

And so since then I have been king of this little grove. I have never been able to pass its boundaries; at first I was just happy to be out of the box, but soon this grove became as much a prison to me as the box was. And I grew to hate all those who could move around the world freely, while I remained trapped in this place; I resolved to slay all that entered, for only here could I reach them. But the only ones who have ever come here are the occasional ghoul or group of bandits, on the lookout for prey; and for many years now, they have stopped coming too.

Until you.

__________________________________________

Having finished his story, the ifrit Balban fell silent; but Hamdouna was staring at him with wide eyes.

“You said that the old female voice you heard talked about imprisoning an innocent young jinniyah? Can you tell me anything more about this woman? Did you see her?”

“In truth, mistress, I did not. But I do remember the hut and the stone like a reclining woman.”

Mumtaz and Hamdouna exchanged glances. “You will take us to this hut,” Mumtaz said. “Then I will decide what to do with you.”

“O master Rustam,” the ifrit said, “I cannot. I cannot leave the grove because of the box.”

“That is easily remedied,” Mumtaz said. “Where is this box?”

“It is buried at the foot of this tree,” Balban said, pointing to the palm from which he had jumped down. “I have tried many times to dig it out and destroy it, but it has always eluded me.”

Mumtaz scraped at the soil with the tip of her sword, and soon found the spot where it was looser, and, with only a little stirring, she unearthed the little wooden box. “I will keep this with me,” she said. “Come with us and take us to this old woman’s hut.”

“It may not be there any longer,” the ifrit said. “It was many years ago.”

“We will take that chance.” Hamdouna picked up the water jug and they started off, walking towards north east. The ifrit stretched his arms out and breathed deep with pleasure when they were out of the shadow of the palm trees.

“By heaven,” he said, “I had never thought I would be able to be in the open air again.”

“You may not be long in it,” Mumtaz said sharply, “if you do not pick up your pace.”

“I hear and obey, O Master,” the ifrit said hurriedly, and began walking so quickly that it was all that the two could do to keep up with him. Hamdouna, of course, could have flown, but she was laden with the heavy water jug and could not leave Mumtaz behind in any case. They walked for many hours, through the morning and the heat of the day, stopping only to drink a little water and eat some of the food Mumtaz carried, not speaking to conserve energy. Then at last the night came again with its cooler temperatures, by which time Mumtaz was almost staggering with exhaustion. She was just about to call a halt to rest when the ifrit stopped and pointed.

“There, Master and Mistress,” he said, pointing. “Do you not see the rock?”

Mumtaz and Hamdouna followed his pointing finger, and saw a great amber coloured monolith in the shape of a reclining woman. It was still a long way away, but the jinniyah’s keen eyes picked out the tiny shape of a stone hut at its base. “I see it,” she said.

“Then, O Master,” the ifrit said, “I have done what I promised.”

“You have,” Mumtaz agreed. “O Balban, what will you do if I set you free?”

“Why,” said the ifrit, “I will do what I have dreamt of for all these many years. I will return to my ice cliffs above the frozen sea, for there I was content, though I did not know it; and there I will be content again.”

“Very well, ifrit,” Mumtaz said. Taking out the wooden box, she struck it with her sword and it at once shattered into pieces. “Go in peace, and, remember, if you do not keep your word, my sword will come for your head.”

“Heaven forbid that will ever be necessary,” the ifrit Balban said, and ran away at such a pace that even a falcon or eagle would have scarcely been able to keep up with him. So much for him.

Hamdouna and Mumtaz watched until he was out of sight, and then the young woman turned to the jinniyah. “Do you really think it could be she?” she asked. “After all these many years?”

“There is but one way to find out,” Hamdouna replied. “She is of the jinn, but she was already ancient when I was born. We will see.”

Walking slowly, for Mumtaz was very weary and Hamdouna was burdened by the stone water jar, they approached the little stone hut at the foot of the great amber rock. And as they came closer they saw that the door was hung with a heavy leather curtain, behind which a lamp burned; and they heard a female voice from within, singing.

“Gold and silver, jewels, treasure

For these the poet writes

But dust and ashes poured to measure

Are all that is left when time bites –

What use are sparkling jewels when

One lies bound as in a tomb?

A free breath is far greater treasure then

Than golden shoes or silver comb.

And no sin on earth greater is

That free breath to take away

To pay for that my ancient sin

I tarry and await the day.”

Then Hamdouna called out, “Good Mistress, who dwells in the hut; there are two of us here who would like to talk to you.”

There was a long pause and then the curtain was drawn aside, and an old jinniyah stood in the doorway, the lamp raised in her hand. Her skin was lavender blotched with purple, and her nose and chin so long that they almost met. She peered at them uncertainly.

“At my age I am almost blind,” she said, “but you, young jinniyah; there is something familiar about you. Come in and let me have a closer look at you.”

“We will,” Hamdouna said, “but, first, mistress, tell us, about whom were you singing just now? What sin were you singing about, and whose free breath did you take away?”

The old jinniyah sighed. “It was a young and innocent jinniyah, long ago,” she said, “one who was about as old as you seem to be. I had to confine her to save her life from a soldier, but in doing so I condemned her to being locked away forever. I have never ceased to regret it; I have often thought that death by the soldier’s sword would have been kinder to her; and now I hold freedom as the one thing that is completely sacred.”

“I see,” Hamdouna said, as they followed the old jinniyah into the little hut. “May I guess your name, though? Is it Faizunnisa?”

The old jinniyah startled and nearly dropped her lamp. “How do you know that?” she asked. “For many long years I have stayed away from the affairs of the jinn, and hoped that I have been forgotten by all. How do you know my name?”

She looked distressed, and Mumtaz would have taken her hand to comfort her, but Hamdouna gestured her to stay back. “O Faizunnisa, before I answer that, can you tell me the name of the young jinniyah you imprisoned?”

“I can never forget it, for when that same jinniyah was a baby just born, I was called to read her fortune, and I saw that great danger would fall over her life. Her name was Hamdouna.”

“Grieve no more, O Faizunnisa,” Hamdouna said. “I am that very same Hamdouna, whom you bade the soldier put into the jar so many years ago.”

The old jinniyah was thrown into perplexity. “I can scarcely believe that,” she said, “though I would like to; for the seals I placed on the jar could never have been removed by jinn or sorcerer.”

“I can prove it, though,” Hamdouna said. She put the stone water jar on the table in the middle of the hut “Here, O Fainzunnisa, see and feel for yourself the design of curls and angles at the base of this jar; is it not of the same design as those from Fayn al Usud’s old palace?”

Faizunnisa bent to look, and then began running her fingers over the jar, the expression on her face a mix of hope and anxiety. “Furthermore,” Hamdouna said, “I can repeat for you exactly the words you said to that soldier so long ago, when he was about to behead me.” And she repeated it all, leaving out nothing, but it would serve no purpose to speak of it all again here.

Then Faizunnisa fell into her arms, weeping. “But how is it,” she said when she had recovered a little, “that you were able to get out of that jar? How could it happen?”

“You are right that neither jinn not sorcerer could open that jar,” Hamdouna said, “but someone pure and innocent in thought and deed could, and did; and here is that person. My friend, comrade, and the one to whom I owe everything, the lady Mumtaz-i-Duniya.”

“You are the one who saved me from this burden I have carried so long, then?” the ancient jinniyah asked, peering closely at Mumtaz. “But why are you dressed as a young man?”

So Mumtaz told her story, from the time her father set out on his journey to her finding Hamdouna in her jar; but there is no reason to repeat it all here.

“O Faizunnisa,” Hamdouna said, when Mumtaz had finished, “is there any way we can locate the pirates who captured Mumtaz’ father the merchant Dariush? We are sworn to rescue him.”

“O Mumtaz,” the old jinniyah replied directly to the human girl, “the seas stretch around the world and the islands are as the sands on the sea shore; you may search for lifetimes and not find those pirates, for they could be anywhere.” She paused. “To find them, you would need the aid of all the jinn, to search everywhere, and all at once; then the pirates may be found.”

Hamdouna sighed in frustration. “But who could command the jinn on such a mission? Nobody but the king could have such authority.”

“Precisely,” Faizunnisa said. “And all it needs is for you to ask him.”

“The king?” Hamdouna demanded, astonished. “Do you mean Fayn al Usud?”

Faizunnisa smiled. “I forget that you do not know what has been happening in the world of the jinn,” she said. “The war between Wadarb’ al Qitali and Tariq ul Hayah destroyed much of the jinni realms, and lasted for many long years, with neither of the two whey-faced wretches able to defeat the other; until it came to the point where their own troops refused to fight for them any longer. Then they were compelled to decide the issue by single combat, and in that single combat they both perished.

“And then the king Fayn al Usud could finally emerge from hiding, but it was a much ruined and destroyed world, and he had no heart to rebuild what had been. Therefore he ordered a new capital to be built among the mountains at the end of the world. That is where he reigns now.”

“The mountains at the end of the world?” Mumtaz asked, mystified. “Where are those, for I have never heard of them?”

“They are a long and difficult way away,” Faizunnisa said, “and a human, alone and unaided, could never find them. But Hamdouna is a jinniyah, and she can convey you there with my directions.”

“Tell us, O Faizunnisa,” Mumtaz said, “and I – we – will be indebted to your forever.”

“We shall have no talk of indebtedness,” the old jinniyah said. “O Hamdouna, you will have to fly with the girl holding on to your back, and even so, you will have to stop to rest, for it is very far away; and there will be dangers to face. I will provide you with directions and warnings, but more than that I cannot help you. I can only entreat you to take the greatest care of you both.”

“I hear and obey,” Hamdouna promised. “But, before you tell us the way, O Faizunnisa, can you tell me what became of the princess Sameera? Is she with the king?”

A great shadow seemed to fall over the jinniyah’s withered features. “No,” she said. “The wretch Tariq ul Hayah had her carried away somewhere, to keep her under his control and as leverage against the king. Only he knew where he had taken her, and, of course, it is now impossible to ask him. The king still pines in sorrow at the loss of his daughter, and tries to avoid anything that reminds him of her.”

Hamdouna sighed deeply. “There is no help for it,” she said. “Very well, O Faizunnisa, tell us where the mountains at the end of the world are to be found.”

“You must fly to the south,” the ancient jinnyah said, “until you come to the end of the desert and to a sea bound by cliffs of pink stone. Far away across that sea you will discern two islands. One is barren and grey, covered with spikes of rock sharp as sword blades, and nothing grows on it. The other island is covered with trees bearing brilliant flowers and heavy with enticing fruit, and in the middle of it, atop a hill, there is a golden domed pavilion from which you will hear sweet music.

“Do not, under any circumstances, stop to rest on the island with the pavilion, for if you do, you will never find your way again; instead, get what rest you can on the island of jagged stone. When you have rested, fly on again across the sea until you come to its far side, which is a desert of sand as white as bone. Do not alight on that desert, for that sand is without a bottom and will suck you down as surely as the sea would, but fly on until you come to the other side, where you will be faced with cliffs that reach halfway to the sky. From atop those cliffs you will be able to see the mountains at the end of the world, but there will be a forest between to get past, and that forest is full of great snakes that have no love for human or jinn, so you must not stop there. And once you get to the mountains, why, the king’s guards will find you.”

“A thousand thanks to you, O Faizunnisa,” Mumtaz and Hamdouna both said, and they both kissed the earth between the old lady’s hands, to her intense embarrassment. “We will leave at once.”

Then Hamdouna knelt and bade Mumtaz to climb on her back and hold on with her arms around the jinniyah’s neck; and, taking up the water jug in her own arms, she flapped into the air and flew over the desert due south.

As they flew, Mumtaz clung on to the jinniyah’s shoulders, her breasts pressed against Hamdouna’s back, her face buried in the latter’s hair and breathing in her scent; and with every flap of her wings, the jinniyah’s hips and bottom pressed against the spot between Mumtaz’ legs, until she began to feel quite light headed.

“Not only is Hamdouna kind, brave, and beautiful,” she thought, “she makes me feel things I never even imagined before, in my body and my heart.”

“Why do you sigh, O Mumtaz?” Hamdouna asked over her shoulder.

“I sigh for the king Fayn al Usud, and the sorrow he feels for his lost daughter,” Mumtaz replied. And to herself she thought, “Mumtaz, keep your feelings under control; she is far too good for you, and will never be for you.” But try as she might, every moment she felt thrilling sensations in her body and mind that she could not ignore.

At last, after many hours of flying, they came to the sea and the cliffs of stone, and just then the dawn came, turning the cliffs bright pink in the new sun’s light.

“I can just see the two islands,” Hamdouna said. “If we fly on, by noon we can reach them.” And she carried on across the sea.

By the time Hamdouna had flown to the vicinity of the two islands, the sun was high in the sky, and both the jinniyah and the girl were all but insensible from exhaustion. “Which island did Faizunnisa tell us to avoid?” Hamdouna asked.

“The rocky barren one has not a shred of shade, and would provide precious little by way of rest,” Mumtaz replied. “The pavilion on the other one just calls for us to alight and rest under its dome, and, listen, you can hear music so sweet that it would make a stone weep. She must have told us to avoid the rocky one.”

Hamdouna, who was so tired that she had quite forgotten Faizunnisa’s exact words, nodded in agreement, and alighted at the summit of the little hill at the centre of the wooded island. The two young women, jinniyah and human, then staggered in exhaustion under the shade of the golden dome, to find the floor covered with a deep carpet and the walls lined with bolster and cushions. There were low tables loaded with goblets of wine and platters of fruit and sweets, but Mumtaz-i-Duniya was too exhausted to touch them. Hamdouna ate one of the fruit, but she, too, was too tired to eat more or drink anything; and, reclining on the cushions, they both soon fell into a deep sleep.

When Mumtaz opened her eyes…

**********************************

At this point Shahrazad saw the approach of dawn and discreetly fell silent.

But when the one thousand and ninth night had come,

SHE SAID:

**********************************

O King of Time, when Mumtaz-i-Duniya opened her eyes, she discovered that night had fallen outside and that the pillars that held up the golden dome of the pavilion were now adorned with burning torches, which lit up the scene with a warm glow. But her eyes went directly to her companion, and she found Hamdouna sitting up, looking down at her with a tender smile.

“Mumtaz,” the jinniyah said, “will you watch the rising moon with me? I want very much to watch it with you.”

“With the greatest of pleasure,” Mumtaz-i-Duniya said. Hamdouna took her by the hand, gently pulled her to her feet, and led her to the side of the pavilion looking out on the east. The rising moon, only two days short of her fourteenth night, hung blood-red just over the edge of the sea.

“The moon is beautiful,” Mumtaz sighed. “The night is beautiful.”

“Neither is as beautiful as you,” Hamdouna whispered. Her hand slipped up Mumtaz’ back and caressed the nape of her neck. “O Mumtaz, you are the most beautiful thing that there is.”

Mumtaz laughed. “You jest with me, Hamdouna. I am worthy of no praise and my looks are not enough to turn the head of an ifrit, let alone someone as perfectly lovely as you.”

“I am not jesting.” Hamdouna leant her head so that her breath tickled Mumtaz’ ear. “Would you like me to show you?”

Mumtaz felt her heart pound and the breath catch in her chest as the lovely jinniyah put her finger and thumb on either side of Mumtaz’ chin and turned her face toward her. Hamdouna’s golden eyes were wide with warmth and another expression, one that Mumtaz recognised as desperate want. She began to say something, but fell silent when Hamdouna’s lips touched hers.

It was Mumtaz’ first kiss ever. She had never known what it might feel like, and the sudden unexpected softness of the jinniyah’s lips on her sent waves of sensation from her mouth to all parts of her being, and played around her heart. Her eyes closed of their own volition, and she sighed, swayed, and threw her arms around Hamdouna’s neck.

“I won’t let you fall,” Hamdouna murmured against her lips, and kissed her again. Mumtaz opened her mouth, their kiss deepening, their tongue tips dancing against each other. The human girl almost swooned at the sensations that her body was, for the first time ever, feeling.

“Mumtaz,” Hamdouna said, “Forgive me, but I cannot wait any more. I can no longer wait to do the things with you I have yearned to do since the first moment I saw you in that passage when you set me free. You burn so bright in your beauty and goodness, how could I wait?”

“What do you mean, O Hamdouna?” Mumtaz whispered, and then felt the jinniyah’s strong arms pick her up and carry her to the cushions against the far wall. Hamdouna set her down and a moment later Mumtaz felt her hands on her head, unwinding the cloth from around her hair, and then on her clothing, unfastening buttons and the drawstring of her breeches.

Hazily, the warmth of the kiss still flowing through her body, she opened her eyes. “Hamdouna, what are you doing?”

“I’m undressing you. No, don’t try to help me. Just lie back and let me do it.” She bent her head down to quickly kiss Mumtaz’ mouth again, and then moved down lower to pull off Mumtaz’ boots. “Even your feet are beautiful,” she murmured, and the girl felt the jinniyah’s lips brush across the tips of her toes. She felt her nipples tighten and harden, and something began to pulse in the spot between her thighs.

“What – what is happening to me?” she whispered, as, unresisting, she let the jinniyah pull her breeches down and off her legs. “My body…”

“Your body is getting ready to let me love it,” Hamdouna said, and kissed Mumtaz’ navel. Her hands deftly undid the last of the human girl’s clothes and laid back her tunic, baring her breasts to the warm light of the torches on the pillars. Mumtaz sighed.

“What…” she whispered, “what must I do?”

“Nothing, love of my heart. Just lie back and enjoy what I do to you.” Hamdouna’s mouth fastened on Mumtaz’ left nipple, her tongue flicking across the tip. Mumtaz’ hips bucked involuntarily, and she felt Hamdouna’s fingers slip between her legs and caress the crease there.

As Hamdouna kissed Mumtaz’ nipples, one after the other, her fingers slipped up and down the cleft between the girls thighs, wet now with her moisture. A sudden longing sensation filled Mumtaz’ body, as though there was an emptiness inside her, between her legs, aching to be filled. She instinctively thrust her hips up at the jinniyah’s fingers, and – with a soft gasp – felt them slide into her, rubbing back and forth. She moaned.

“I love your pleasure,” Hamdouna whispered. Her other hand slipped up to cup Mumtaz’ breast as her head dipped lower, the tip of her tongue trailing down the girl’s chest and stomach, briefly dipping into her navel, before moving further down, where her finger was already stroking slowly and lusciously back and forth. When her tongue found the tip of Mumtaz’ slit, the girl’s entire body shook with the force of the pleasure that coursed through her.

Mumtaz felt helpless with the sensations that flooded her body. Hamdouna’s fingers tweaking her nipple, Hamdouna’s other hand sliding back and forth inside her, Hamdouna’s tongue and lips just above them caressing the point at the top of her cleft – they all merged into one powerful throbbing that engulfed her, gathering together, and then broke into an exquisite crescendo of pleasure that made her throw her head back and scream.

When she recovered her breath a little and could open her eyes, she saw Hamdouna kneeling between her spread thighs. The jinniyah had stripped off the black cloak and was as naked as when Mumtaz had first seen her. She leaned back on one arm, smiling at Mumtaz. Her other hand was between her own legs, holding her own intimate parts open. Mumtaz’ eyes were drawn immediately to them, beautiful beyond compare, like the petals of a hibiscus flower. They glistened in the light of the torches with Hamdouna’s moisture.

As the girl watched, fascinated, the jinniyah moved her hips forward, until her lower lips brushed Mumtaz’ own. Their wetness mingled, and Hamdouna began rubbing herself up and down and side to side on Mumtaz, her own eyes closing as the pleasure took her.

The throbbing began again between Mumtaz’ legs, and this time it was like a rising flood, enfolding her as it came, spreading from the cleft between her legs to the crown of her head and the tips of her clenching toes. “O Hamdouna,” she cried out, as her vision faded with her pleasure, “I love you.”

“O Mumtaz,” she heard Hamdouna reply, “you are the most wonderful person in the all the world. I love nothing more than I love you.”

Mumtaz’ eyes were clenched shut, her hands curled into fists so tightly that her fingernails dug into her palms, as the pleasure took her. And then the pain from her palms and Hamdouna’s words simultaneously struck her mind as with a blow. “How can she love me?” she thought. “I am nothing; my stepmother could think of nothing better to do with me than to sell me as a slave. She is a wonderful and beautiful jinniyah. How can she love me? I am not worth loving at all.” She shook her head. “This cannot be real,” she thought.

Her eyes flew open. She was lying on the pillows, fully dressed. There were no torches on the pillars; the pavilion was lit only by moonlight. By her side Hamdouna lay, still clad in the black cloak. The jinniyah was asleep, but gasping in her sleep and moving her limbs rhythmically.

“Hamdouna?” Mumtaz asked, alarmed. “Hamdouna? Wake up! Something is very wrong here.”

Hamdouna made no response. Mumtaz shook her, but still she did not wake.

Suddenly filled with a sensation of imminent danger, Mumtaz leapt to her feet and hurried to the side of the pavilion. The hillside sloped away on all sides, plunged into darkness by the shadows cast by the trees. But amid those shadows there was movement, as though creatures that could only dwell where there was no light were slowly climbing towards the pavilion from all sides. There was something very horrible about that slow lurching movement, and Mumtaz absolutely did not want to see whatever was making it.

Now filled with terror, she rushed back to the jinniyah, and shook her again; but she still refused to wake. In a fit of desperation, Mumtaz did the only thing she could think of; she threw herself down on the jinniyah and kissed her hard on the mouth. Hamdouna’s eyes flew open.

“Mumtaz,” she gasped. “I…you…” Then she realised, from the girl’s expression, that something was wrong. “What’s happening?”

“We must leave here,” Mumtaz-i-Duniya said, her hands clutching the jinniyah’s shoulders. “At once. There isn’t a moment to waste.”

Hamdouna did not ask any questions. Pausing only to snatch up the precious water jug, she knelt for Mumtaz to climb on her back, and took to the air. As they flew out of the pavilion, the lurching movement on the hillside had almost reached the summit.

“What were those creatures?” Mumtaz asked, holding on as tightly as she could to the jinniyah.

“I do not know, and I think it’s better that we do not know.” Hamdouna swooped over the sea, which gleamed beneath them in the light of the moon. “O Mumtaz, once again you have saved me. How is it that you woke in time to know of the danger?”

Mumtaz thought briefly. “It was perhaps because I ate nothing when we went to the pavilion,” she said. “You had the fruit, and there was something in it that made sure you stayed asleep.” She hesitated. “I must offer my heartfelt apologies for the way I woke you; I could think of nothing else.”

Hamdouna turned her head as best as she could with Mumtaz’ arms around her neck. “Your apologies? There’s no apology to be made, O Mumtaz-i-Duniya! You remind me of the tale of the sheikh and the cobbler’s wife.”

“What tale might that be?” Mumtaz asked, grateful that her burning cheeks could not be seen in the darkness as she remembered what she had dreamt had happened in the pavilion. “Which sheikh, and what of the cobbler’s wife?”

“Oh, you do not know that story?” Hamdouna asked. “Very well, I’ll tell you, for we still have a long way to fly, and it will pass the time pleasantly.” And she began:

THE TALE OF THE SHEIKH AND THE COBBLER’S WIFE

Once, many years ago, in the great city of Damascus, there lived a cobbler.

He was a prosperous cobbler, with a large workshop where he made his wares, which were much in demand among the people, for they were as excellent in workmanship as they were reasonable in price. Even the governor was among his clients. His name was Qutb ad Din, and he had a wife, whom he loved very much, called Raziya, who helped him in the shop, keeping accounts, managing orders, and work of the like.

One day, just as Qutb ad Din had opened his shop, he was visited by a sheikh, who was obviously from among the Bedouin of the south; he looked around the shop with his proud flashing eyes before turning to the cobbler.

“I have heard that you are the cobbler who makes shoes for the governor,” the sheikh said. “My name is Mahmud al Dharawi, and I am visiting the city for a few days. I desire you to make a pair of boots for me.”

“With pleasure, O Sheikh,” Qutb ad Din replied. “What kind of boots do you desire?”

“Before I tell you that,” the sheikh replied, “I want to inform you of some things. The first thing is, that I have a horror of being touched by anyone. As such, I cannot permit you to measure my feet; you will have to make the boots by estimating my shoe size from what you can see. The second thing is, that I have an excellent piece of red leather, which has been in my possession for several years. I desire the boots to be made from that piece of leather and nothing else. And, third, if the boots are made to my satisfaction, I will pay you a thousand gold dinars; but if they are lacking in any way, I will not only not pay you anything, but I will have your shop and your business in compensation, for you will have ruined the leather that I have been hoarding for so long. I must warn you, moreover, that I have visited cobblers in Basra and Mosul, Baghdad and Cairo, Sana`a and Aleppo; and when they heard my terms they all declined. Are you brave enough to take the challenge?”

Qutb ad Din was, with justification, proud of his own abilities; he took only a moment to think before agreeing. “Very well, O Sheikh,” he said. “What kind of boots do you desire, and how many days do I have to make them?”

“Knee high boots, and three days.” The sheikh grinned. “I will have the leather sent this afternoon. Make sure you keep to the agreement, O cobbler! Or you will lose your shop, your reputation, and it will be the worse for you.”

Now Raziya had been listening to all this from the back of the shop, and as soon as the sheikh had gone, she rushed out and began berating her husband. “O Qutb ad Din,” she said, “I have never seen as obvious a trap as that pitch-faced Bedouin was laying for you. Why did you accept the commission? We are not so badly off that you need to risk all we possess for that money.”

“Wife,” Qutb ad Din tried to argue, “I’d be betraying my own confidence in my abilities if I did not take up that challenge. Has not the poet written,

“The bird that dare not flap its wings

The fish that fears to swim

They betray the one that created them

And owe an answer to Him.”

Raziya scoffed. “I remember other poets who wrote:

“The man who sticks his hand in the fire

Than him there is no greater fool;

None so blind as the man who refuses

To open his eyes and to see

He might as well be a mule.

“O Qutb ad Din, I love you; I am your wife; I cannot let you walk blindly into this danger. I will go now, and see what I can find out about this sheikh. And then we will see.” Covering her hair under her scarf, she pulled on her slippers and quickly left for the bazaar, which was always the most reliable source of information and gossip.

Soon after she had left, a man arrived carrying the sheikh’s roll of red leather, which he gave to the cobbler. “O Qutb ad Din,” he said, “the sheikh Mahmud al Dharawi bids you to remember well the conditions he made; the boots must be perfect in every way, and they must be ready in no more than three days.” So saying, he went on his way.

Qutb ad Din measured the leather, and visualised the sheikh, who had been a man of great stature. “With his height and foot size,” he thought, “there is scarcely enough leather here for the knee high boots he desires; I’ll have to use every scrap.” And he fell to planning just where and how he would begin cutting and stitching.

Meanwhile Raziya was in the bazaar, and she went around asking about the sheikh; and what she heard filled her with great alarm. She returned to the shop, just in time to stop her husband from making the first cut in the leather. “O Qutb ad Din,” she said, “nobody has a good word to say for this sheikh. He’s taken things from the biggest shops, promising to pay in gold if those things were up to satisfaction, but refusing to pay anything is they were not; and not one merchant has yet received even half a dinar from him. I found out that he is staying at such and such a khan; and he has not paid for his lodging there either. You must return the leather and decline the order.”

“I have already taken the commission,” Qutb ad Din said, “and it would be the heights of betrayal of my own position and my solemnly pledged word if I were to decline to fulfil what I’ve already agreed to do.”

“In that case,” Raziya sighed, “it is up to me to save you from your folly. Do your work calmly and well, my husband; I will in the meantime think of how to rescue you.”

Early the next morning the sheikh had just left the khan when he was met by a beautiful woman, clad, however, in the poorest clothing, her hair dusty and her feet bare. “O sheikh,” she said, “my name is Sabira, and I beg your indulgence for a moment, because I need your help desperately.”

The sheikh looked at her and his avaricious mind was stricken immediately by an idea. “She is very beautiful,” he thought. “I can easily take advantage of her, perhaps even take possession of her as a wife. Let me hear what she wants.”

“Mistress,” he said, courteously, “of course I have a moment for one as lovely as you; tell me what you need.”

“I am not a Damascene,” the woman said. “I am but only yesterday evening arrived from Egypt, where I have vast estates near Cairo; but just south of Damascus, my caravan was attacked by robbers, who stole everything, and left me in the state that you see before you. I need your aid in returning to my estates; nobody else is willing to help, for they see only a woman whom they do not know, who no longer has even a comb to her name.”

“Certainly,” the sheikh said. “I will furnish you whatever you need; indeed, I will even accompany you to Cairo, and see you safely home.” His mind immediately filled with visions of laying possession to the woman’s estates. “But, first, let us go and find you clothing more appropriate to your status, and shoes to cover your tender feet.”

“That is most generous, and I will repay you as soon as I am able,” she replied.

So the woman who called herself Sabira went with the sheikh to the bazaar, and headed straight to the shop of the most expensive clothiers. The owner, who of course knew who she really was, pretended not to recognise her; and she bought a great quantity of his finest apparel.

“If you will now pay the owner,” Raziya, for of course it was she, told the sheikh, “we will now go to the perfumers, for I need to scent my body to get rid of the stench of fear that has accompanied me ever since the robber attack. I will, of course, repay you double the amount when we reach my estates near Cairo.” The sheikh, as she had anticipated, had to pay, so as not to arouse the suspicions of his planned victim. She then led him to the biggest perfumers, and then to other shops, to buy hair oils and bags and mirrors, until she had forced the sheikh to pay out an enormous amount of money, all to people from whom he had previously taken things without paying, and whom she had that morning warned to charge twice their usual prices. “Now,” she said at last, “there is only the matter of shoes; my feet are tired and aching, for I am not accustomed to going barefoot.” They were near Qutb ad Din’s shop, where she immediately dragged the sheikh, who was now looking distinctly worried.

Qutb ad Din had only just begun cutting the red leather, and was astonished to see his wife, in ragged clothing, dusty hair, and bare feet, enter, followed by the sheikh and then a number of porters laden with bundles. Before he could speak, however, Raziya, whose back was to the sheikh, made her husband an imperative gesture to stay silent. She then told him the tale she had already told the sheikh.

“And so I need shoes,” she finished. “O Master Cobbler, that red leather you are working on looks perfect. I would dearly love shoes made from that.”

“Mistress,” the cobbler said, quite truthfully, “I cannot do that, for this leather belongs to the most excellent sheikh there, and he has commissioned me to make him boots out of it. If I make you shoes from the leather, there will not be enough left for the boots he desires.”

“That is a great pity,” Raziya said. “I’ve set my heart on shoes made of that red leather, and I will settle for nothing else; but I understand your position. The sheikh needs his boots, so you cannot make me shoes from it; therefore I have no option but to remain in naked feet. Perhaps I will in time grow accustomed to it.”

“There’s no need for that,” the sheikh said hastily. “O cobbler, I release you from the commission; use the leather to make shoes for this lady, and keep what is left over for yourself.”

“I hear and obey, O sheikh,” Qutb ad Din replied. “I will begin work immediately, but it will take several hours. Will you wait or return later?”

“I will wait,” Raziya said, “for I have no desire to go out in the streets at this hour of the day, when the sun is beating down, and the stones are hot enough to burn my soles. O gracious sheikh, you can leave the goods that I have purchased here, and return in the evening.”

“I will do so with pleasure,” the sheikh said. As soon as he had left, Raziya explained to her husband what had happened. “Now all you have to do,” she said, “is demand double the rate you would normally charge from him; and, unless I am much mistaken, he will rapidly depart the city, for I’ve made sure to exhaust his finances as much as possible.”

Then, resuming her normal clothing, she returned to the shops that she had visited earlier in the day, and returned the merchandise that she had bought from them. Along with the money that they had charged the sheikh, this fully compensated them for the amount that they were owed by him. Then Raziya returned to her husband’s shop, dressed in the tattered clothes again, filled the bundles with old rags and other rubbish, put the fine red shoes her husband had made on her feet, and settled down to wait.

As the sun was setting the sheikh returned. “All is ready, o gracious sheikh,” Raziya said. She held out her feet, one and then the other, for his inspection. “As you can see, the shoes are finished; if you will pay the good cobbler here and summon porters, we will leave right away.”

“You will, of course,” the sheikh said, after he had reluctantly paid over the amount that Qutb ad Din had asked, and left the shop after hiring another retinue of porters, “stay with me in my room at the khan.”

“I will do nothing else,” Raziya said. Night had fallen by now, and, as they made their way towards the khan, she suddenly darted into an alley. Since she knew the streets very well, she easily evaded the sheikh’s clumsy attempt at pursuit, and returned home.

The furious sheikh attempted to console himself with the thought that at least he had the merchandise he had bought. But when he arrived at the khan, and paid off the porters, he opened the bundles and found only rags and other rubbish.

Then the earth turned dark before the sheikh’s eyes, and he bit the very entrails of despair. Before he even had a chance to draw breath, though, the owner of the khan appeared, and asked him, very courteously, if he might be willing to settle his dues by the morning, for the governor’s accountants were coming for an audit.

“I will,” the sheikh said; and that very night he quietly left the khan, leaving all his goods behind for the owner, including everything that he had bought and not paid for; and so he fled Damascus, never to return. So much for him.

Meanwhile in the cobbler’s shop Qutb ad Din embraced his wife and kissed her tenderly. “I must apologise for doubting you,” he said.

“There is no need for an apology,” Raziya said. “What apology is there among lovers? It was only my duty to help you, and I did what I had to.” And, so saying, she kissed him back, and then again.

____________________________________

“And so, O Mumtaz,” Hamdouna finished her tale, “there is no need of apology from you; you did what you needed to do.” She seemed about to say something else, hesitated, and then quite obviously changed the subject. “See, the sun is coming up in the east.”

Mumtaz breathed deeply and told herself again that there was no way that this impossibly lovely jinniyah could ever love her; then she looked ahead, to the south.

“There is the beach of white sand now,” she said, “and I do recall that Faizunnisa warned us not to alight on it under any circumstances.”

“Do not worry,” Hamdouna laughed, “I remember it too. But...”

**********************************

At this point Shahrazad saw the approach of dawn and discreetly fell silent.

But when the one thousand and tenth night had come,

SHE SAID:

**********************************

“But,” Hamdouna said, “we’re still very far from the mountains at the end of the world, and there are a cliff and a forest to cross in between; are your arms weary of holding on to me?”

“I will never be weary of holding on to you,” Mumtaz said, and felt her face heat up again. “Please, do not worry about me. I’ll cling on to you as long as you need me to.”

They flew over the beach of sand white as bone, and in the fullness of time came to the cliffs, where they alighted briefly to rest, eat what remained of the food they had taken from the passage under the ruined palace, and drink what remained of the water. From the cliff top they could see, on the horizon, the great peaks of the mountains at the end of the world, painted red and orange and purple by the light of the rising sun.

“It is very beautiful,” Mumtaz said.

Hamdouna glanced at her and whispered something very softly. It sounded like “But not as beautiful as you,” but Mumtaz could not believe that she could possibly have said that, so she just swallowed the last piece of bread and washed it down with the last mouthful of water. “It’s time we moved on,” the jinniyah said. “I do not want us to be caught by darkness over this forest.”

So Hamdouna knelt for Mumtaz-i-Duniya to climb on her back, and they, taking to the air again, flew on over the great forest. Among the trees below them great serpents crawled and writhed, and sometimes tried to strike at them from out of the highest branches, but always fell short. And so, as the sun began to sink in the west, they finally soared over the foothills of the mountains at the end of the world. Hamdouna flapped her wings as hard as she could in the thin air, and flew on until they were among the jagged peaks, and, sunset closing in, they could go no further. She then landed on a stretch of flat earth between two sheer mountains.

Hardly had Mumtaz climbed off Hamdouna’s back then they were surrounded by warrior jinn with spears pointing in their direction.

“Who are you?” one demanded. “The mountains are barred to jinn from outside, still more to human beings. How dare you come here? Leave immediately, or you will feel our spears.”

“Be not so hasty, good jinni,” Hamdouna said. “We would speak to your commanding officer, and then to the king.”

“The king sees nobody, and our commander has better things to do than concern himself with the likes of you.”

“Your commanding officer, then, should take heed of the tale of the traveller and the doctor of Anbar,” Mumtaz broke in. “If he knew that tale, he certainly would not think of anyone or anything being below his notice.”

“What tale is that?” the jinni warrior asked suspiciously.

“I will tell you, good jinni,” Mumtaz said, “and once you have listened to it, engrave it in golden letters in your heart, for nobody is beneath anyone’s notice.” And she began telling

THE STORY OF THE TRAVELLER AND THE DOCTOR OF ANBAR

O jinni, it so happened, in the passage of an age and a moment, that there was, in the city of Anbar, a doctor by the name of Firdous.

He was a good doctor, learned and wise in the science of disease and medicine, and his fame had spread far and wide; but, unfortunately, as he grew more famous, he had also begun to feel that he was greater than any normal person, and that he held the power of life and death in his hands. So he dressed himself in fine robes of cloth-of-gold, wrapped an immense turban around his head, and when he was faced with a patient, looked at the sufferer down his nose as though at an ant or other insect. But for all that he never stopped studying the art and science of medicine, for he was convinced that there was always more to learn.

One day Firdous was sitting in his chambers, poring over a new medical treatise just arrived from al Andalus, when a man arrived, panting. “O doctor,” he cried, “my master has been taken ill outside the town, and lies close to death; he needs your aid desperately.”

Firdous sighed in annoyance, for the treatise was most absorbing; and the man was in all probability already dead, if what the man said was accurate. Still, he picked up his bundle of scalpels, lancets, powders, and potions, and followed the man into the heat of the sun.

The sick man was lying in the shade of a date palm by the side of the road, with another of his men fanning him with a piece of cloth. When the doctor arrived, he saw at a glance that the man was still alive, though desperately ill; kneeling by his side, he poured a potion down his throat that improved his condition slightly.

“Have him carried to my chambers,” he said to the men. “I will see what I can do for him there.”

After the sufferer had been carried to his chambers, Firdous took a good look at his symptoms and realised that it was an illness that he had never encountered before. “Our master was suddenly taken ill this morning while we were on the way to Mosul,” the two attendants said. “Until then he was perfectly fine.”

“And who is your master?” Firdous asked, not really paying attention, for he was searching his memory for anything that would identify the illness. Try as he might, he could not think of any, neither in his experience nor in his many books.

“His name is Salim, and he is…” Firdous did not even listen to the rest, instead turning to his new treatise, in the hope of finding something in it. Just as he was about to give up hope, on the very last page, he found a brief de***********ion of a malady with the exact same symptoms that Salim was suffering from, and the cure.

Quickly mixing the ingredients, Firdous fed them to the sufferer, who almost immediately began to improve. Within the space of an hour he had recovered entirely.

“Good doctor,” Salim said, “you have saved my life; how may I repay you? What is your fee?”

Firdous was eager to get back to his Andalusian treatise, for it had de***********ions of many other illnesses that he was not familiar with, and it was obviously accurate in at least this instance. “You do not need to pay me anything,” he muttered, already back in the tome’s pages, and not even bothering to look up at his erstwhile patient.

“Perhaps, then, one day I will be in a position to repay your kindness,” Salim said, and left.

Firdous snorted to himself as he turned the pages of the book. “Repay my kindness, indeed!” he thought. “As though someone I found dying on the roadside could ever do me any favours.”

Now it so happened that the governor of the territory had a favourite concubine, who one day had an accident when out riding. She was not badly injured, but, nevertheless, the governor immediately demanded that the best doctor in the province be summoned.

“The best doctor is Firdous,” his assistants said, and sent men to summon the doctor.

When the governor’s men arrived, Firdous was engaged in a most delicate surgery on a child who had fallen from a palm tree while plucking dates and hurt himself badly. He bluntly refused to see or even listen to them until the job was finished, ignoring their loud threats and imprecations.

When he was finally done, and the child was resting in his mother’s arms, Firdous was not even given a moment to wash his hands before being seized by the governor’s men and carried off to the palace. There he found the governor in a towering rage.

“Dog of a doctor,” he shouted, “you dare ignore my summons while my concubine could be at death’s door? Go and attend to her immediately, and if you do not cure her, it will be the worse for you.”

Firdous went to see the woman, and found that she had only suffered a cut across her forehead, which had bled profusely but in no other way was particularly dangerous. “It’s just a scratch,” he said, bandaging the wound. “It will heal on its own in a few days. There is no cure that will hasten her healing; it’s just a matter of time.”

“How dare you call yourself a doctor?” the governor stormed. “Do you think a man such as I, who am a governor, cannot tell the difference between a scratch and a deadly wound?”

“You may be the governor,” Firdous said, “but that does not make that scratch a grievous injury. She has a scratch; that is all.”



That reply, of course, did not fill the governor with happiness. “Throw him into the cells,” he screamed to his guards. “Let him stay there until he learns some proper medicine. And now fetch me another doctor, one who knows what he is doing.”

The doctor that the guards now fetched was a long-time rival of Firdous’; his name was Hassan, and he was everything Firdous wasn’t. He knew little enough of the medical art, but he knew all about how to flatter his clients and make them feel that to him there was no more important thing in the world than they. “This is my chance to get rid of that meddling old fool Firdous,” he thought. “Once I have disposed of him, I will be the most famous doctor in the land, and therefore the richest as well.”

When he had removed the bandage from the concubine’s forehead and examined the wound, which in truth had already begun the process of healing, he put his forefinger in the corner of his mouth and pretended to think very hard, tut-tutting all the while. “O governor,” he said, “it is indeed fortunate that you called me in; this wound is terrible and deep and undoubtedly would have carried away your concubine if another and lesser doctor had been tasked with treating it.”

“I knew it,” the governor said. “O Hassan, can you believe that the fool Firdous, who calls himself a doctor, had called it a scratch and said she would heal on her own in a few days?”

“Well can I believe that,” Hassan said. “O Master, this Firdous is a well-known fraud; if it were left to him he would have let your concubine die, for he hates you and everyone else in authority. You can ask around and see; he treats everyone with utter contempt.”

“I will have him dragged before the court for this tomorrow,” the governor roared. “I will have his books burnt, his potions and pills destroyed, his chambers demolished, and his head struck from his shoulders.”

“That would be indeed excellent,” Hassan said, smiling silkily. Then he painted the concubine’s forehead with some unguents which he knew would do neither good nor harm. “This will ensure that she recovers within a week,” he said, and went on his way, rubbing his hands together with glee. So much for him.

The next day, as promised, the governor had Firdous dragged out of his cell in the palace and taken before the court. He was already before the judge, shouting out his accusations. “And this whey-faced charlatan,” he finished, “would have not just killed my concubine, but who knows who next? What if it were you, O Judge, under his so-called care? What would he have done to you?”

The judge looked at the governor, looked at Firdous as the guards dragged him into the court, and looked to the governor again. “I suppose,” he said mildly, “if I were to be brought before him as a patient, he would search in all his books for a cure for what was ailing me. He would then bring me back from death’s door and not charge a dinar for his services.”

And that judge was Salim, the man who had been dying under the roadside tree.

So Firdous was released, despite the governor’s protests, and returned to his practice in honour; and perhaps he learnt to pay a little more attention to those he was treating as people afterwards, and not just as ailments that needed curing.

__________________________________

“Excellent jinni,” Mumtaz said, when her story was concluded, “your commander, I am certain, will…”

Before she could finish her sentence, there was a rush of wings overhead and a jinni warrior descended on them. He was dressed in the armour and tassels of a commander, and he had a truculent expression on his features.

“Who are these intruders you say wish to talk to me?” he began, and then, on seeing Hamdouna, he stopped short in astonishment. “By Heaven,” he said, “I had never thought to set eyes on you again.”

Hamdouna looked at him and suddenly recognised, behind the armour, the jinni warrior who had been about to behead her so long ago and had been persuaded by Faizunnisa to seal her up in the jar. “It is as you see,” she said. “I am free, and this is the lady Mumtaz-i-Duniya, who freed me. We must speak to the king, for it is a matter of natural justice for her that I seek, and which I owe her.”

“The king does not talk to anyone, for he stays in his chambers day and night, alone with his queen and his sorrow for his missing daughter,” the commander said. “I will, however, immediately take you both to the wazir. I think you will find that the wazir will be eager to help you.”

“Why should he be eager to help us?” Mumtaz asked Hamdouna, who shrugged.

“Doubtless we will see,” she said.

At the commander’s orders, the jinn warriors put down their spears and, to the two young women’s astonishment, formed an honour guard for both of them. They walked through a pass between the two towering mountains and suddenly before them stood a great crystal palace, ice-blue and white, its spires glistening in the last of the sunlight.

“I have already sent word to the wazir,” the commander said, “and he should be here momentarily.”

And the next moment two jinn rushed out of the doors of the crystal palace. One was an old jinni, in the garb of an officer of the diwan, the other a jinniyah who was clearly his wife. They threw themselves on Hamdouna’s neck, weeping.

“Father?” Hamdouna whispered. “Mother?” And she broke down crying too, for she had long ago given up all hope of ever seeing them again.

Mumtaz watched them, her own eyes stinging with tears, and wished she could throw her arms around them all and join in the joy of their reunion. When they finally calmed down a little, Hamdouna’s father the wazir Nahim turned to her. “And who is this young person?” he asked. “But first come to our chambers, for you must be exhausted, and we have so much to ask you.”

“Dear Father, this is the lady Mumtaz-i-Duniya, who saved me from my long imprisonment. She is the best thing that has ever happened to me; without her I could never have returned to you.” And, as the old couple conducted them to a set of rooms with luxurious carpets on the floor and rich velveteen hangings on the walls, Hamdouna told them the entire story of what had happened to her; and after that Mumtaz spoke of her own adventures, leaving out only the details of the dream that she had had in the pavilion; but it would serve no purpose to repeat it all here.

By the time she had finished, Hamdouna’s parents’ eyes were again bright with tears. “O Mumtaz,” Hamdouna’s mother said, “you are as dear to me as my own daughter, for it is only due to you that I have her back again. And I can see how noble you are; my daughter’s praise of you does not begin to do you justice.”

Mumtaz’ face grew hot with embarrassment. Meanwhile the wazir was busy thinking.

“There are thousands of places where these pirates could be hiding,” he said at last. “And it is perfectly possible that they have more than one hideout, and keep shifting between them. Clearly it will need an army to search all possible hiding places at the same time. I’ll give orders to send out search parties at once.”

“In the meantime, you must eat and drink, and then we have a hamam in which you can bathe,” Hamdouna’s mother said. “And I am sure after all your adventures, you’re both desperate for a night of undisturbed sleep.”

Almost in a dream, Mumtaz saw jinniyah ladies-in-waiting bring in sumptuous dishes, which Hamdouna’s mother insisted on feeding both of them with her own hands; after which the ladies-in-waiting led them to the hamam, undressed them gently, and then scrubbed, washed, and perfumed them. After that they were led, after being dressed in diaphanous silk shifts, to a room with soothing paintings on the walls and ceiling, and a single huge bed covered with the softest of mattresses.

Hamdouna’s mother came to wish them both a good night. “Sleep well,” she said. “I’ll see you in the morning.” She smiled at both of them. “It’s the first night in more years than I can count that I will be free of the crushing burden of loss and sorrow.”

Mumtaz was so tired that she barely had any energy to spare to realise the fact that she and Hamdouna were both almost naked and together in bed. She fell asleep almost immediately, and so did not notice how Hamdouna lay beside her, awake, and the adoring expression in her great golden eyes. Nor did she hear Hamdouna murmur these words:

“My heart was once mine

But it came to you

My soul was caged inside me

But it broke free too.

If in fire had I burned

You are the water that quenched it

And I live for you alone

If only you would realise it.”

Meanwhile, at the wazir’s orders, the army of jinn spread out across the world, each jinni with his own area to search. All the night they flew over land and sea, looking in inlets and islands and estuaries and old abandoned ports and fishing villages, for any sign of the pirates.

When Mumtaz awoke the next morning Hamdouna was already up, and dressed in the black cloak and short boots. “Here are your clothes,” she said, with a smile. “My mother’s ladies cleaned and perfumed them. They did offer us other clothing, but I said that we would wear these until your father is found and returned to you.”

Mumtaz’ heart leaped in joy at the jinniyah’s words, and she gave her a brief hug. After she dressed again in the clothes that made her look like a beardless youth, and tied on her sword, the two young women went to breakfast, at which they were joined by Hamdouna’s mother.

“Nahim is coordinating the search for the pirates,” the old jinniyah said. “He’s waiting for any message that their hideout has been discovered.”

Just as they finished eating the wazir himself appeared. “A message has just come in, that the pirates have been found,” he said. “They are on an island in the Purple Sea.”

Mumtaz gasped at the news, her heart beating wildly in excitement; but it was Hamdouna who spoke. “The Purple Sea?” she asked. “Where is that, Father? I have never heard of it.”

“It is at the far end of the world,” Nahim replied. “It is the deepest sea of all. The water is so deep that it is purple, and no ship normally ventures there. It is small wonder that the pirates have decided to make it their hiding place; they thought nobody would ever look for them in that remote place.”

“When shall we leave for this Purple Sea, then?” the young jinniyah persisted. “Right now?”

“No. We shall wait for the jinn who found it to return. Then we shall decide how to proceed.”

“They could do anything while we are waiting,” Hamdouna argued. “They could escape!”

“Some of the party that found them will continue to watch them,” Nahim replied. “Haste never made for success; do not think that just because something is done quickly it is done well. But come, and we will speak to the jinn, who should be returning at any moment now.”

The jinn were already waiting outside the palace when they reached there. At their head was the commander. “O wazir,” he said, “the pirates have made camp in a bay on one side of an island, which is surmounted by a steep mountain; there is no way of approaching them from seaward without being seen. There are no other islands close by either where we can gather forces before attacking them.”

“Did you see any captives?” Mumtaz asked anxiously.

The commander glanced at her briefly. “We could not get close enough to see, but there are numerous ships in the bay, both pirate ships and merchant vessels that they captured and siled to the Purple Sea; there are also huts on shore in which they could be holding captives.” He turned back to the wazir. “As you can see, it is a most difficult proposition. We can, of course, attack them, and undoubtedly we would win; but by the time we do so, they would just as undoubtedly have ample time to massacre any captives; and I gather that saving this young lady’s father is the purpose of the operation.”

“That is true,” Nahim said. “So how can we proceed? It seems to me…”

“Wait, Father,” Hamdouna said, “I have a suggestion. The pirates will keep a lookout for ships, and perhaps even for an army of jinn attacking from the air, it is true. But they will not expect just two people to land on the island in secret, to spy on them and, if at all possible, to release the captives and sow disorder and confusion. Then the rest of the army, who will have to wait at a distance, can come in and attack.”

“It could work,” the wazir said, after conferring with the commander. “But who would these two people be? As though I did not know.”

“You know it, Father. Mumtaz will never be able to hang back; she has to be at the forefront of any attempt to save her father.” Hamdouna took Mumtaz’ hand and squeezed it briefly. “And where she goes, I go; I owe her more than my very life.”

Nahim nodded. “In that case, my daughter, you should go now; do not wait to say goodbye to your mother, for she would never permit you to risk yourselves again, and that goes for Mumtaz as well, whom she already loves as another daughter. Take these candles and this tinder box; you may need light. Go now, and my commander will go with you as far as the island and show you where it is.”

So Mumtaz climbed again to her accustomed place on Hamdouna’s back, and they flew off behind the commander; meanwhile, Nahim went to gather the army and plan on how to attack the pirate base once the captives had been rescued.

“O Mistress Hamdouna,” the commander called over his shoulder, “you will need a weapon. I see your lady has a sword, but you do not. Do you wish me to give you mine?”

“Not at all, o good commander,” Hamdouna responded. “The only weapons I need are the ones I carry in my heart and mind, as it was with the Bedouin and the ghoul.”

“What Bedouin and ghoul are those?” the commander and Mumtaz inquired together.

“You do not know that story? Very well, I shall tell you.” And as they flew along, Hamdouna began

THE STORY OF THE BEDOUIN AND THE GHOUL

It so happened, that once, many years ago, in an encampment near the margins of the Rub al Khali desert, there dwelt a young Bedouin called Salah ad Din.

Like most Bedouin, he was brave to the point of foolhardiness, but he also knew the desert, and knew the dangers of it. By profession he was a shepherd, and herded not just his own sheep but those of his whole tribe; he was good at his job, and prided himself at never having lost any. Not a single sheep had ever gone missing from under his care.

One day when he was returning from grazing the sheep, his attention was suddenly drawn to the western horizon, where the setting sun had abruptly grown dim. Shading his brow with his hand, he saw…

**********************************

At this point Shahrazad saw the approach of dawn and discreetly fell silent. And her sister Dunyazad sat up from the foot of the bed, where she had been listening. “Sister,” she said, your tale grows more absorbing by the day.”

“It will get more absorbing yet,” Shahrazad replied, “if only this gracious Sultan gives me leave to tell it tomorrow night.”

But when the one thousand and eleventh night had come,

SHE SAID:

**********************************

Shading his eyes with his hand, Salah ad Din saw on the horizon the billowing clouds of an approaching sandstorm. Knowing well how these can blot out everything, he hurried the sheep homewards, but the sandstorm struck just as he had brought them to the gate of their enclosure. With great difficulty, he began getting them inside, and then sat down with them, covering his face with his kaffiyeh to keep out the sand; and so he stayed all night until dawn the next day, and with the rising sun the sandstorm was finally over.

As soon as the sand had settled, Salah ad Din fell to counting the sheep, to make sure that they were safe; and to his great distress found that one was missing. Worse, it belonged to the tribal sheikh himself; it was a handsome black ram by the name of Emad. The sheikh doted on Emad and there was no way that he would not immediately notice that the animal was gone.

“Maybe he has not wandered far,” Salah ad Din thought desperately. “I will go and look for him, and if I can find him soon enough I can get him back and take the sheep out as usual.” So, leaving the rest of the sheep in their enclosure, he set out to look for the missing animal.

Due to the enormous amounts of sand shifted around by the sandstorm, the landscape had changed significantly, and suddenly Salah ad Din suddenly realised that he was lost. He knew roughly in which direction the Bedouin camp lay, but that was all; the patch of scrub in which he had been used to grazing the sheep had disappeared somewhere under the sands.

Climbing on a low dune to see if he could find Emad, or any familiar landmark, he was astonished to discern, only a short distance away, an ancient building of weathered stone. He was quite certain that no such structure had been anywhere near the encampment, so it must have been uncovered by the sandstorm. Drawn by curiosity, he climbed down from the dune and approached it.

As he came closer, he heard a sound from inside the building, and suddenly realised that it was a sheep bleating. Breaking into a run, he pushed past the pile of sand partly obscuring the door and into the building.

Once his eyes had adjusted to the gloom, he saw that he was in a great hall whose roof was supported by columns thick around as great trees, and in the middle of which was a square pit that must have once been meant for a pool of water. Emad the ram was in the pit, into which he must have blundered in the dark, and which was just too deep for him to climb out of. Salah ad Din jumped into the pit, which was partly full of sand, with his hands piled it in a corner so that the ram could climb out, and then scrambled out after the animal.

He was just about to leave the old building with Emad when there was a roar of fury behind him, and he spun round to see a ghoul step out from behind one of the pillars. This ghoul was foul even by the standards of its despicable breed, stinking and scrofulous, altogether horrible to look upon. Salah ad Din took an involuntary step back as the creature advanced on him.

“What are you doing here,” the ghoul demanded, “and how dare you steal my breakfast?”

“Your breakfast?” Salah ad Din responded. “What breakfast of yours did I steal? I see no breakfast.”

“That ram,” the ghoul roared. “For a thousand years I have dwelt underground with my tribe, feeding on corpses in graveyards and on worms; and then, at last, I have been freed by the storm to come above ground, and drink hot blood, and eat living meat again. I have been waiting all night, building up an appetite, and anticipating my breakfast; and here you are stealing it from me.”

“O ghoul,” Salah ad Din said, “this ram is no breakfast of yours, for he is not your property, nor is he wild. You would be wise to forget him.”

The ghoul’s yellow eyes squinted craftily. “It does not matter so much to me if it is a ram I eat, or a man,” it said. “If you want me to let the ram go, I am willing to offer a fair exchange; I will eat you instead.”

“By Heaven,” Salah ad Din thought to himself, “this brute is quite capable of ripping me limb from limb; and I have no weapon on me, not even a knife.” Then his natural intelligence asserted itself.

“O stupid ghoul,” he said, “O ghoul of imbecility, I gave you fair warning to forget the ram; you should have heeded me then. Instead you make an offer to eat me instead, one I think you perhaps made in jest. But it isn’t the kind of jest that I appreciate.”

“Why,” the ghoul sneered, “what are you going to do to stop me? What can you do? I can see that you have not even a stick.”

“If you weren’t quite so stupid,” Salah ad Din said, “you’d ask yourself why I dared enter here unarmed. You might then have realised that is simply due to the fact that I do not need any weapon.”

The ghoul blinked at him warily, and slowed its advance, but it did not stop advancing. Seeing this, Salah ad Din crossed his arms on his chest.

“O ghoul, I see that you are determined to force me to prove what I say. Know, then, that I am no ordinary man, but an ifrit in the guise of one; and that the ram you wanted to eat is no ram either, but a jinni who is my ally.” Salah ad Din took a step towards the ghoul, which paused, suddenly uncertain. “We are on a mission so important that your primitive mind could not even begin to interpret it; and the only reason that I have not destroyed you already is that I do not wish to sully my hands with unnecessary slaughter.”

Salah ad Din took another step forward, and the ghoul shuffled a little back, but it still did not look fully convinced, and glanced over its shoulder as though thinking of calling for help from the rest of its foul breed. As its attention was momentarily distracted, Salah ad Din tapped the ram Emad on his head, and said, softly, “Now.”

Emad was a very large and powerful ram, and his heavy curved horns ended in sharp points. He was, besides, naturally highly aggressive, and distrustful of anyone he did not know; and the smell of the ghoul had made him uneasy ever since he had fallen into the pit hours before. Now, at the sight of the creature whose scent had been in his nostrils all night, his fear had turned to fury, and only Salah ad Din’s presence by his side had restrained him. All he had needed was to be freed of that restraint.

The ghoul knew nothing about rams, and had temporarily almost forgotten about the animal; so when Emad struck it in the midsection with all the force of an elephant, knocking it backwards to collide with a pillar and fall into the pit in the floor, it had no idea what had just happened to it.

“Mercy, Master Ifrit,” it cried, rolling in agony on the floor of the pit. “Have mercy!”

“Only if you go back to your tunnels and never emerge again,” Salah ad Din said. “I and my jinni are in this area and will remain here for a long time, and should I even smell you again, that will be the end of you.”

“I hear and I obey,” the ghoul said. Still groaning in agony, it clambered out of the pit and scuttled back into its burrow. So much for it.

Salah ad Din and Emad managed to find their way back to the Bedouin encampment, and just as he was about to lead the sheep out for the day’s grazing, the sheikh arrived. He looked over the flock approvingly, and especially at Emad.

“He seems very happy today,” he said. “You take such good care of him that you deserve a reward. What do you want?”

Salah ad Din did not hesitate. “O great sheikh, if it a reward you wish to give me, I would like nothing more than Emad; he is like a brother to me.”

The sheikh smiled. “Very well. I give him to you. Take good care of him.”

And so Salah ad Din and Emad now belonged together, and if the ghoul ever dared emerge again, it stayed as far as it could from either of them.

___________________________________

“O commander,” Hamdouna said, “just as Salah ad Din had only his wits as weapons, I have mine; and just as he had Emad to help, I have Mumtaz at my side. Do not worry about me; I am not, in any case, trained in swordplay, and am more likely to stab myself than an enemy were I to try and wield one.”

From her place atop the jinniyah’s back, Mumtaz laughed. “I’ll teach you if you want, but unfortunately we have no time for that today.”

“We have no time for anything now,” the jinni commander said. “Look below you, and you will see that we have arrived at the Purple Sea.” The water beneath them was indeed so dark as to be purple. “And there in the distance is the island where the pirates are.”

“Where is the bay with the pirate ships?” Hamdouna asked.

“It is on the other side of that mountain. You could never alight on that side without being seen.”

“In that case,” Hamdouna said, “we will land on this side, and work our way around the mountain. O commander, our heartfelt gratitude for the help that you have given us; please return now to gather your forces for the battle to come, once we have done what we came to do.”

“I hear and obey,” the commander said, turned around, and flew away.

Hamdouna flew down in a gentle dive until she was just over the sea, so that any pirate who might be looking in this direction would not see her silhouetted against the sky. As she, with Mumtaz on her back, flew closer, they saw that the shore of the island was marked with great jagged rocks on which the waves broke incessantly.

“It’s no surprise that the pirates keep to the other side of the island,” Mumtaz said. “The rocks would smash their ships to pieces.”

Hamdouna came down on a flat rock on the shore. Mumtaz climbed down off her and they stood looking around.

The shore on both sides of them was covered with a dense forest of trees, every one of which was studded with thorns long and sharp as daggers and curved as fishhooks. “Those would rip you to pieces,” Hamdouna said. “Not even my skin would last long among those thorns. We’d be much safer making our way up to the lower slopes of the mountain and then circle around it.”

Mumtaz agreed, and the two of them made their way slowly and carefully up from the shore towards the mountain. They had only just reached the foot of it when the human girl saw something.

“That looks like the mouth of a cave,” she said. It was quite low and partially hidden behind a rock, which is why they had not noticed it from further away.

“We have no time to spare to explore caves,” Hamdouna reminded her, but Mumtaz put her hand on the jinniyah’s arm.

“If that cave goes a long way into the mountain,” she argued, “it could bring us out a lot closer to our goal.”

“You are right as usual,” Hamdouna laughed under her breath, and the two young women bent low to get through the entrance.

Inside the entrance, the cave expanded into a much larger space, enough to allow them to stand upright. Small crevices in the rock wall above allowed a little light to filter through, but it shaded into the deepest gloom further inside. Mumtaz took out the tinder box the wazir had given them, and was just about to light candles for Hamdouna and herself when the jinniyah held up a hand.

‘Wait,” she said. “Look there, ahead of us; there is a faint light in the distance.”

Mumtaz looked, and after a moment also noticed the glow. “There may be someone here,” she said. “Is it the pirates?”

“We’ll find out,” Hamdouna said. “Walk very quietly and remain silent; we do not need to give notice of our coming.”

As they walked further, the light became brighter; it flickered slightly, as though cast by a torch or a lamp. And then, very far in the distance, they heard a voice singing.

“The darkness flees before the fire

But for how long, reply, reply?

The darkness will flood in again

When time and tide make the fire die.

Briefly knew I sky and sun

Long, so long ago,

Now all I do is sit and wait

For the fire to lose its glow.

Someday when the ending comes

As it comes, will come for all

I may still remember the sun

While I watch the final darkness fall.”

It was a very sweet voice, but Mumtaz was astonished at its effect on Hamdouna. The jinniyah gasped, staggered for a moment, and braced herself with a hand on the cave wall. “It can’t be,” she whispered.

“Hamdouna?” Mumtaz asked, confused and worried, but got no reply. Instead the jinniyah broke into a run down the cave, leaving Mumtaz to stumble in her wake.

The narrow walls of the cave suddenly opened into a huge round cavern; in the middle of it a fire burned, without smoke, throwing a bright and clear light. Along the cavern walls were piled jars like the ones containing food and water in the ruins of the jinn palace; but Mumtaz noticed hardly any of this.

Hamdouna had stopped just inside the entrance to the cavern, her hands clasped together at her heart, her great golden eyes wide; and, from near the fire, another jinniyah had arisen, and was staring back at Hamdouna with the same expression of stark disbelief.

She was dressed in only a single piece of cloth that wrapped around her shoulders, torso, and between her legs, leaving her limbs bare. Her skin was the colour of flickering flame, her hair the shade of autumn leaves, and her eyes were as blue as the cloudless sky.

It was the princess Sameera herself, who had been missing for so many long years.

SAMEERA’S STORY

O Hamdouna, (Sameera said, both she and Hamdouna had finally run out of tears to shed), when I last saw you, I did not know whether you were dead or alive; you looked at the point of death. I was desperate to go to you, to hold you to my breast, but as you know I was dragged away, still screaming your name.

I was taken to the presence of the wazir Tariq ul Hayah. He smiled at me oleaginously, but his eyes were full of contempt, as though I were nothing more than a piece of refuse on the floor. “I am glad to see that you are all right, Princess,” he said.

“I was all right before your soldiers snatched me,” I replied. “I demand to know why I have been dragged here in such a manner.”

“Princess,” he said, “it was entirely for your own safety; the vile traitor Wadarb’ al Qitali’s troops are searching for you and your family.”

“If that is indeed so,” I retorted, “why was I not taken to my family? Why have I been brought to you?”

“There is no need to worry your pretty head about all that,” he said, smiling unctuously. “They are safe and in hiding; you will be reunited with them as soon as possible. But in the meantime you must be taken somewhere else, where the traitor cannot find you.”

“And, no doubt, where my parents cannot find me either,” I thought. Aloud, I said, “O wazir, you should remember carefully the story of the wazir and the bookkeeper, lest you overplay your hand and suffer the same fate.”

“What wazir and what bookkeeper?” Tariq ul Hayah asked. “I have a few moments to spare, so amuse me with your pretty little tale.”

“It is not my intent to amuse you but to warn you,” I said, and I began

THE STORY OF THE WAZIR AND THE BOOKKEEPER

Once upon a time, O wazir, there was a small kingdom in the Maghrib with a king by the name of Abdelhakim.

His kingdom had neither natural resources nor a large population to be taxed. But the kingdom lay along the trade routes from the great African empires to the south to al Andalus and Egypt. So caravans of merchants travelled through his land, paid customs fees, and stayed over at the khans, spending money freely while they traded among each other. And over time King Abdelhakim grew very rich indeed.

One day the king’s old wazir, who had guided and advised him most excellently for many years, died; and the replacement Abdelhakim appointed was a man by the name of Azzam. This Azzam was actually a rank scoundrel, but he was very good at telling people just what they wanted to hear, and by these means had worked his way up from a lowly clerk to, now, the position of wazir.

“At last,” he thought, “now I can get my hands on the treasury and I will be set for all time.”

But the good old wazir had long ago made a practice of having the treasury audited every month, so as to know exactly how the king’s finances lay; and to Azzam’s baffled fury the audit continued, and was so thorough that he could not steal so much as half a dinar.

“Things cannot go on like this,” he thought to himself. “I must get rid of this bookkeeper.”

His first thought was to condemn the bookkeeper for incompetence, but a moment’s reflection told him that this would never work; this same bookkeeper had been doing the audits for twenty years and had never misplaced so much as a copper coin. Therefore he needed to take more drastic action.

Of course Azzam had connections among the lowlifes and criminals that constitute the underbelly of any city, let alone a rich one where caravans gathered, heavy with goods and gold. So he contacted some of the worst cutthroats that he knew.

“The king’s bookkeeper,” he said, “must go.”

“We hear and obey,” the cutthroats replied. “It will cost you a hundred dinars.”

“It is money well spent,” the wazir told them, and, after paying over the amount, went on his way. And that night assailants ambushed the old bookkeeper in the street; and he walked the world of the living no more.

The king was thrown into the greatest distress when the news came to him. “The old wazir repeatedly emphasised how important audits and accounting are,” he said. “A new bookkeeper must be found immediately.”

“O King,” Azzam said, “do not worry, for I will find one for you at once.” And, going to the colleges, he picked out a callow youth, with no experience and not too much in the way of brains. This man’s name was Belhadj.

And so Belhadj became King Abdelhakim’s new bookkeeper, and Azzam at once began to steal money from the treasury. At first he kept the amounts small, but as time went on he saw that Belhadj failed to notice the discrepancies, so he became bolder. Where he had been used to stealing a hundred dinars, now he purloined a thousand; and when such items as bags of jewels made their way to the treasury, they were considerably lighter after they had passed through Azzam’s hands. Over the next few months he became quite reckless, for he was sure Belhadj was too stupid to ever catch him.

But one day the bookkeeper Belhadj had just totalled his accounts when he noticed something that made him frown in perplexity. “I am sure that there should be over five thousand dinars more in the treasury,” he said to himself. “Maybe I am mistaken; I had better check again.” So he added it up, and still it showed more than five thousand dinars missing.

“This is most disturbing,” the young bookkeeper thought. “I should report this discrepancy to the king at once.”

He was hurrying on his way to the diwan when he came across the wazir. “O Belhadj,” the latter said, “why have you abandoned your post in the treasury, and where are you going with such a preoccupied look on your face?”

“I must report to the king,” the bookkeeper said, and told the wazir about the missing money.

“Do not worry, good Belhadj,” Azzam told him. “I, myself, will make a full report on this to the king; you had better return to your position.”

Feeling relieved to be rid of the responsibility, the young man returned to his labours, but the wazir was filled with dismay.

“This young fool has finally noticed,” he thought. “even if I somehow manage to cover it up this time, he will undoubtedly be on the lookout in future and will notice if I steal any more. Should I then stop stealing? No, by heaven! There is still so much to take; I want at least fifty thousand more. Should I have this bookkeeper’s throat cut as well? No, it is far too soon. If the king does not get suspicious, the other ministers at least will be; and I have many enemies among them.” He stood where he was, with his finger in the corner of his mouth, cogitating for the span of an hour. “I have it,” he thought to himself then, and went to the monarch.

“O King of Kings,” he said, “for some time now I have been suspecting that the old wazir of yours, the one who died, and his accountant, the one who, ah, also died, have been overstating your financial situation. To put it more clearly, they have been saying that you have much more money in your treasury than you actually do. But – being clever and crafty rogues – they have been certain to hide this fact so that your new bookkeeper, who is after all young and inexperienced, could not find it. So I have done my own investigation, and I find that your treasury has over fifty thousand dinars less than what it should.”

The king was flabbergasted. “But why should they have done such a thing?” he asked. “How did it help them?”

“O King,” Azzam replied, “the two wretches stole the rest of the money and kept it for themselves. It is late today, but come to the treasury tomorrow, and I will show you.”

The king was thrown into great disquiet, but agreed to go with the wazir to the treasury in the morning. Then Azzam went to the treasury and met the bookkeeper. “Rest easy, O Belhadj,” he said. “I have told the king, so you have no worries. Go home and rest.”

Belhadj breathed a sigh of relief, locked the treasury as usual, and went homewards. On the way he met his sister, Peri, who was out shopping in the bazaar. “How goes it with you, dear brother?” Peri asked. “After you took the job in the king’s treasury, my husband and I do not see you at all.”

Peri and Belhadj had always been very close, and the bookkeeper told her what had happened in the treasury that day. “I am glad that the wazir told the king,” he said, “or else I might have been blamed for the discrepancy.”

Peri’s face had grown graver and graver as she had heard the story. “O Belhadj,” she said, “my husband knew this pitch-faced wazir when he was a lowly clerk; there is not an honest bone in his body. Why, at this very moment he is probably laying a trap for you.”

The earth grew dark before the poor bookkeeper’s eyes. “What should I do?” he cried.

“You must immediately go and tell the king what you discovered,” Peri replied. “You can be certain that whatever Azzam told Abdelhakim, it was not the truth. I will go with you as support.”

“There is no help for it,” said Belhadj, and together with his sister he went to see the king.

Normally at this hour the king would retire to his private quarters, but this evening, after the news he had heard from the wazir, he was much disquieted and decided to take a stroll in the streets outside his palace, and mingle with the people and talk to them about their concerns, to distract his mind. The first thing he saw when he emerged was his bookkeeper, accompanied by a pretty young woman, coming to him in great haste.

“O King,” Belhadj cried, “I have something to tell you.”

“I know of it already,” the monarch said. “There are fifty thousand dinars missing from the treasury.”

“Fifty?” the bookkeeper and Peri exclaimed together. “No, O King, it is a matter of five thousand.”

“But the wazir told me fifty thousand, and he did his own investigation,” the king replied. “Surely he cannot have been wrong by such a large amount?”

“There is one way to make sure,” Peri said. “We can all go to the treasury right now, O King, and my brother and you can check for yourselves.”

So they went to the treasury, and at the door the king stopped in astonishment. “Why, the door is open, and it is supposed to be locked at all times,” he said.

“It was certainly locked when I left,” Belhadj replied. “I locked it myself, and gave the key to the wazir, who had just come to tell me to go home.”

The king was about to fling the door open and go rushing in when Peri raised a hand. “I think we should proceed in silence,” she said. “We do not know who or what might be there. In fact, I advise you, sire, to summon a few of your guards to accompany us…just in case.”

The king quietly agreed, and signalled Belhadj to summon some of the royal guards. Easing open the treasury door, they entered one by one and…

**********************************

At this point Shahrazad saw the approach of dawn and discreetly fell silent.

But when the one thousand and twelfth night had come,

SHE SAID:

**********************************

O King of Time, when the king Abdelhakim, his bookkeeper Belhadj, and the latter’s sister Peri, accompanied by the royal guards, entered the treasury, what should they see but the wazir Azzam crouched over the accounting ledgers, with a pen in his hand and a bottle of ink by his side; and, on the floor, a large leather sack, bulging with money.

“What are you doing here at this hour?” the king exclaimed.

The wazir went pale and his voice shook. “O King,” he stammered, “I was just checking the accounts again, to see if there was any mistake, for I did not want to waste your valuable time.”

“Does checking the accounts involve altering figures?” Peri demanded, pointing to the pen and the bottle of ink.

“And does it involve bags of money?” Belhadj hefted the sack. “From the weight, there must be quite fifty thousand in this thing.”

Then the wazir saw it was all up with him, and he fell to the floor begging for forgiveness; but that was something he was not about to receive from the king then, or later; so he was carried off to a cell in the dungeons, which was more than he deserved.

Then the king appointed Peri his new wazir, while as time went on, Belhadj grew in experience and ability until he was quite the equivalent of the bookkeeper he had replaced. And still the caravans came and the money rolled in once more.

__________________________________

I finished my tale (Sameera said) and looked up at Tariq ul Hayah. “O wazir, Azzam in the story would have prospered if he had only mastered his greed and merely stolen amounts that would never be noticed. You would do well to not overstep the bounds of your abilities either.”

He merely laughed. “Big words from a girl who has never set foot outside her chambers before,” he said. “Do not worry about me; in fact, do not worry about anything, for worrying will do you no good now.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I will show you,” he said, and made a signal. At once some of his men rushed on me, threw me down on the floor, and I felt chains around my wrists and ankles, and someone wrapped a blindfold over my eyes. “Tonight, O Princess,” he said, “you are going where you will be safe from everyone and everything, until I find it convenient to set you free.”

And so I was carried here, wherever this is; I still do not know. When the chains were removed from my hands and feet and the blindfold was taken off my eyes I found myself in this cavern, just as you see me now. The wazir Tariq ul Hayah stood before me with a sneer on his face.

“Your father will grovel to my words,” he said. “He will do anything I say, just to keep you alive and well. He is as putty in my hands as long as you are here.”

“I will get away,” I said. “I will escape and make my way to him.”

He laughed. “No you will not.” He pointed, and I saw that my right ankle was circled by a crystal manacle, which was in turn fastened to a crystal chain that leads, as you can see, to that wall over there. “This chain will give you freedom of movement within this cavern, but no more. Nobody will ever find you here. There is the fire to keep you warm, and food and drink aplenty. No,” he added as he saw me pull at the chain, “like the fire, that cuff and the chain are charmed; only iron can break them, and there is nothing of iron in this cavern. I have made certain of that.” With that, he turned to leave.

“Wait,” I called desperately. “Can you at least tell me what happened to my dear friend and companion, Hamdouna? Can you make sure she is taken care of?”

He paused and grinned at me over his shoulder. “You mean Nahim’s daughter? Oh, she is taken care of, all right; her head and body were parted on my orders hours ago.”

Then I fell into the deepest pit of despair, and have stayed in it ever since. I have had no knowledge of what was happening In the world outside; I have never seen a living creature, except a bat or two, in all this time; I cried tears until I thought I had no more to cry; and, little by little, I gave up hope forevermore.

Then, when I had finally decided I would be here for eternity, alone and never to see the sky again, here you are; and, so, tell me who your companion is, and how the two of you got here.

________________________________________

When Sameera finished her story, Hamdouna told hers, leaving out no detail; and at the end of it Sameera reached out and clasped Mumtaz to her bosom. “So you’re the one who is to thank for all of this,” she said. “There are no words in the world to express how much gratitude is owed to you.”

Mumtaz was deeply embarrassed by the praise. “O Princess,” she said, “we still have a mission to accomplish; my father still lies in the clutches of the pirates who are on the other side of this island.”

“I would gladly go with you,” Sameera said, “but this cuff and chain still hold me fast.”

“Oh, that is no problem at all,” Mumtaz said, and drew out her sword. “This is made of iron.” Saying so, she struck the cuff a sharp tap, and it immediately shattered and fell to the floor.

“I’d given up hope of ever being rid of that thing,” Sameera said, rubbing her ankle. “Ask me for anything you want, O Mumtaz-i-Duniya; I could never gainsay you.”

“There will be no talk of gratitude, O Princess,” Mumtaz replied, “it was but my duty.”

“At least, like Hamdouna, call me by my name, not my title,” Sameera said. “Now, you say the pirates are on the other side of this mountain. On that side of this cavern, opposite to the way you entered, there is another passage. I’ve, of course, not been down it, but I have seen bats fly from it into this cavern, which means that it must be connected somewhere to the open air; so, we shall proceed.”

Mumtaz lit candles from the fire and handed one to each of her companions; and the three of them made their way down the further passage, the human girl bringing up the rear. As she went, she felt a bitter pang in her heart.

“O Mumtaz,” she said to herself, “the princess is every bit as beautiful, brave, and brilliant as Hamdouna’s de***********ion had let you to believe; and now that Hamdouna has found her again, she will never even spare a glance for you. Better by far that you had not found the cave opening at all.”

“That is an infamous thought,” another part of her mind berated her in reply. “You are nothing; Hamdouna is as far above you as you are to the little crabs that scuttle among the pebbles on the beach. You have no claim to her affections, and it is unforgivable impropriety that you could ever imagine for a moment that you did.” And so, the two parts of her mind silently quarrelling with each other, she followed the two jinniyahs down the long dark passage, until Sameera, in the lead, held up a hand.

“I can see the end of the cave ahead,” she said. “There it is; and through it you can see a star.”

Blowing out their candles, they crept forwards silently until they stood at the opening. It was evening, the last of the day’s light still in the sky, with the Evening Star just visible. Sameera drew a long, ecstatic breath.

“I can hardly imagine seeing the sky again, or to breathe the open air,” she murmured. “I would happily remain here all night, watching the stars and the moon, but we’ve no time for that.”

“There will be plenty of time when we are done, O Sameera,” Hamdouna said gently. “Look, just below us is the pirate camp; they are coming ashore from their ships.”

“Look at the people they are driving along with whips,” Mumtaz pointed. “Those must be their captives, whom they use as slaves.” The people she indicated were bowed down with heavy loads, certainly the booty from the latest ship that the pirates had taken. The captives went to the biggest of the camp’s buildings, were driven inside, and shortly afterwards emerged with their hands empty.

“Let us wait and see where they put the captives,” Hamdouna said. The hurrying figures of the pirates, wielding their whips, drove the last of the captives into one long and low building. All around were others, all roofed with palm fronds woven together as thatch. The pirates then dispersed among the various buildings, leaving one of their number on guard outside the one where the captives were.

Then Mumtaz and the two jinniyahs crept silently down from the mountainside to the pirate camp, and Hamdouna quietly dispatched the pirate guard with one deft movement of her hands on his neck. On his belt was a key on a loop, which the jinniyah used to open the lock on the door.

“You go in there alone,” Sameera murmured quietly in Mumtaz’ ear. “The people inside will not be used to jinn, and the last thing we need is for them to panic. Hamdouna and I will stay out of sight for the moment.”

“I hear and I obey,” Mumtaz whispered, and pushed the door open. Inside was a single very long room with wooden bunks on the wall and a small glowing fire in the middle, by whose dim red light she saw all the captives turning as one to stare.

“My name is Rustam,” she whispered. “Do not be afraid. You are being rescued. Please come out quietly, and, whatever you do, do not make any noise and do not be surprised and alarmed by anything that you see.”

The astonished captives meekly complied. Mumtaz was hoping to see her father, but in the dim light and the crowd of captives pushing past she could not make out any familiar faces. As soon as the captives were all outside, she led them all up the mountain and up to the mouth of the cave.

“Go in this way,” she said. “You will come to a cavern with a fire and jars laden with food and drink set along the walls. Stay there and wait for me; in the meantime eat and drink, and refresh yourself.”

“What about you, young master Rustam?” someone asked from among the throng. “Are you going back to that den of pirates to fight them by yourself?”

The voice was immediately familiar, and Mumtaz recognised, under the heavy beard and the long hair, the familiar and dear features of her father, the merchant Dariush. She wanted to throw herself into his arms, but knew that would have to wait. Besides, if she identified herself, he undoubtedly would try to stop her from going back to the pirate camp.

“Please do not worry about me,” she said. “I am not alone; I have powerful friends. But we will be able to fight the pirates much more effectively if we know that you are all safe and sound.”

Dariush nodded. “It will be as you wish, young master,” he said, and shepherded the rest of the captives into the cavern. Mumtaz watched until she could see them no more, and then hurried down to the pirate camp, where Hamdouna and Sameera were waiting for her.

“While you were taking the captives to the cave,” Hamdouna said, “Sameera and I flew out to the ships and let them all loose from their anchors. The tide is going out; they will be swept out to sea, and the pirates cannot escape that way.”

“Good,” the human girl said. “Excellent work. What should we do now?”

Hamdouna looked up at the darkling sky. “The jinn army should be ready to attack by now, as soon as we give the signal,” she said. “But how do we give a signal that they would recognise from a great distance…..oh wait.”

“What?”

“You have the tinderbox with you, do you not?” Hamdouna gestured at the pirate encampment. “There’s all this lovely thatch. It would be a real pity if it went up in flames that could be seen from far out to sea.”

Mumtaz goggled at her, and Sameera giggled softly. “Did you not know your dear friend here could be quite ruthless when she needed to be?” she asked. “Fetch out the tinderbox, O Mumtaz; we have work to do!”

“Sameera is right,” Hamdouna said. “At any moment these pirates might come wandering around, or to relieve the guard. There is absolutely no time to waste.”

Crouching behind the building that had lately held the captives, she struck a spark from the flint in the tinder box, while the two jinniyahs gathered dried branches and anything near to hand that would burn. Soon Sameera and Hamdouna each held several sticks, twigs, and palm fronds, all blazing brightly.

“Make sure you don’t burn the building where they put the booty,” Mumtaz said softly. “The captives will need their goods back. Now move quickly; I’ll wait for you here.”

“We will be back before you know it,” the jinniyahs promised, and flapped into the air. Flying low over the pirate encampment, they began thrusting their makeshift torches into the thatch roofing of the pirate huts. In less time than it takes to tell of it, smoke and flame were everywhere, and the camp was in uproar. Pirates, some drunk, others half-dressed, all confused, furious, or terrified, came spilling out of the burning houses.

Sameera and Hamdouna came swooping back; the latter snatched up Mumtaz in her arms, and they flapped up the mountainside to the entrance of the cave.

“Now what?” Mumtaz asked, as they alighted.

“Now we wait and watch,” Sameera said. The blazing camp below was in total confusion, the pirates milling around, nobody apparently having thought of organising any attempt to put out the fire.

And then it was that the jinn army attacked.

They came swooping in from overhead, through the flame and the smoke, the light of the fires reflected on their armour and spear blades. There was no battle. The pirates, mostly unarmed and all completely disoriented and confused, scattered with shrieks of terror, but had nowhere to go; not one of their ships was where they had left them. They were quickly rounded up, and the jinn immediately put them to work as bucket brigades to put out the fires.

Then Sameera and Hamdouna went down the hill and met the jinni commander, to show him where the pirates had stored their loot and to tell him what had happened; and the jinni commander was stricken with astonishment to see the princess back from what most jinn had assumed to be the dead.

“That can wait,” Sameera said impatiently, as the jinn all attempted to bow to her and pay obeisance. “We have work to do, and I will work right alongside you.”

Mumtaz-i-Duniya, meanwhile, made her way back through the cave until she emerged in the great cavern, which was now thronged with the former captives. They crowed around her, demanding to know what had happened.

“The pirates have been defeated,” she announced. “We’ll remain here tonight, and tomorrow, once your ships have been brought back in to harbour, you can load your belongings on them and sail back to your homes.”

The former captives fell to rejoicing, while Mumtaz scanned their faces, looking for her father. She finally found him, on the far side of the cavern, looking dejected. She made her way over.

“Why do you look so sad, o merchant?” she asked, still unwilling to reveal her identity so publicly. “Everyone else of your fellows is celebrating, but you look plunged in sorrow.”

“O good Rustam,” Dariush said, “I have a daughter back at home, whom I love most dearly; she wanted to come with me on this journey, but I forbade her. Ever since I was captured by the pirates, I worry about her, and I wonder if my wife Aminah, her stepmother, is treating her well or cruelly. For in captivity I have learnt to tell the evil in men’s eyes, and unless memory serves me wrong, I saw the same cruelty in my wife’s eyes.” And he murmured these lines:

“A glance upon a summer’s day

From the corner of a lass’ eye,

Speeds a warrior on his way

To kill and perhaps to die.

But a glance far crueller yet

Belongs to the wielder of whip and lash,

What kind of glance belongs to her

Who can burn a life to ash?”

“Do not worry, good merchant,” Mumtaz replied. “Now that you’re free, you will soon be on your way homewards, and you will see your daughter again.”

“I thank you very much for your help, O Rustam,” Dariush said, “and for your kind words. Will you sit with me a while? For some strange reason I feel myself drawn to you. It is almost as though I have known you before.”

“I had better keep him from thinking too much about me,” Mumtaz thought. Then she remembered something else: that it was her father who had, in childhood, told her all manner of fearsome tales about the jinn, and how she should never have anything to do with them.

“I need to prepare him for what he will face in the morning,” she thought. “O merchant,” she said aloud, “I have a moral conundrum that has been knocking around my head for a while, and of which I wish to speak to you, for your opinion; for you are clearly a learned man experienced in people’s ways.”

“What conundrum is that?” Dariush asked.

“To explain that, I will need to tell you a story,” Mumtaz said. “But we have much of the night before us, and, unless I am mistaken, you are not in need of sleep.”

“I am not,” Dariush agreed. “Pray, tell your story.”

“I hear and I obey!” Mumtaz said, and began:

THE STORY OF THE SCHOLAR AND THE JINNI

O good merchant, there was once, in the passage of an age and of a moment, in the city of al Najaf, a young scholar of matters both secular and divine.

His name was Haider, and he had come up from the provinces to study under the great masters; and so avidly had he taken to their instruction that, before he had attained the age of twenty, most of his teachers had acknowledged him as their equal, if not even greater than they.

This, not unnaturally, aroused the envy of his fellow students, most of whom were ox-wits armed with, at best, low cunning, who could never memorise a verse or understand the meaning of a mathematical equation. “This Haider,” they said among themselves, “harms us in two ways. Firstly, he makes us look stupid before the teachers. Secondly, he sets such a high standard that the teachers demand similar high effort from us all.”

“Clearly,” they agreed, “something has to be done about him. But how?”

“Perhaps he could be introduced to debauchery?” one suggested.

“That is not going to happen,” another snorted. “He does not touch wine. He does not consume opium. And I have never even seen him so much as glance at a woman. The very idea of debauching him is absurd.”

“Well, then,” the first one, whose name was Ayman, said, “I will just have to think of something else.”

“It’s not as though we can even knock him over the head in a dark alley,” the second one, whose name was Zulfiqar, replied. “He’s never away from his books, for one moment, during all his waking hours.”

“That suggests an idea,” Ayman mused. “If we could entice him away from his books, we could get rid of him permanently, in a way that does not bring down any suspicions on us.”

“What have you in mind?” Zulfiqar asked.

“I’ll tell you,” Ayman said. “But, first, we will need some old parchment, the older the better. I also need pens and ink. Fetch them, and we will begin.”

The next evening, Haider had just sat down to his studies when Ayman appeared at his side. “O Haider,” he said, “I was just now at the bazaar when I was accosted by a kind of wandering Bedouin from out in the desert. He said he had important scrolls to sell, and was just looking for a student to sell them to.

“I was, of course, immediately suspicious, for you know how many of these people are just rogues. I asked to see the scrolls, and he produced one from under his dirty cloak. I glanced at it, and it seemed genuine enough; but I have not the knowledge to parse it further. I told him to wait while I brought it to you, for your opinion; for you are much more learned in these things than even our teachers are.”

“I do not deserve such praise,” Haider murmured, “but let me see the scroll.” He took the proffered sheet of parchment, unrolled it, and scanned it briefly. His mouth fell open with astonishment.

“By heaven,” he said, “this scroll purports to be part of the state records of the kingdom of the great Sulayman ibn Daud himself; I had thought all such archives fallen to dust hundreds of years ago. Where is this Bedouin of yours?”

“He refuses to come indoors, for he claims that he has only lived in tents all his life, and stone buildings make him feel as though he cannot breathe. He is waiting just outside, in the street.”

Haider rose hurriedly and went to the street, where in the near darkness he found Zulfiqar, dressed in the garb of a Bedouin, with a cloth thrown across the lower part of his face. “Good Bedouin,” he exclaimed, “where did you find this scroll?”

“I was journeying outside the city,” Zulfiqar said, pointing vaguely, “on my camel, when I found an old ruin. Sometimes those ruins have valuables in them, so, dismounting, I made my way inside. I did not find any gold or jewels, much though I looked. But, just as I was about to leave, I saw, in the middle of a little courtyard, an old well with crumbling sides.

“Peering into that well, I saw, on the dry bottom far below, an upturned little chest, which had fallen and smashed open, spilling out rolls of parchment on the stones. One piece was caught in a crevice just within reach, and I managed to pry it out. I do not know anything about these things, but it looked very old and important, and likely to be worth money to a scholar in the city. So, what do you think?”

“It would be worth a good deal, yes,” Haider said cautiously. “Of course, the monetary value is immaterial; what is so valuable is the store of knowledge those scrolls contain inside them. O Bedouin, where is this well of yours?”

“It is out in the desert,” Zulfiqar said, “a long way from here. You will never find it by yourself, young master; but if you wish, and you are willing to pay my price, I am willing to take you there.”

“How much are you asking for?” Haider asked, bracing himself.

Now Ayman and Zulfiqar had had much discussion among themselves about how much the supposed Bedouin would ask for his scrolls and guide services. Too much and Haider would not be able to afford it; too little and his suspicions would be aroused. They had finally decided on the sum of a hundred dinars as an acceptable compromise.

“A hundred dinars?” Haider said. “That is all I have and will leave me with nothing, but the scrolls are beyond all price. O Bedouin, I agree; let us set out in the morning.”

“I cannot wait till morning,” Zulfiqar said. “I am on a long journey to Aleppo, and I have no time to waste. I really only entered al Najaf to sell my scroll. If you wish to be guided to where the ruins are, young master, we must leave right away.”

“All right,” Haider agreed. “I will just go and get the hundred dinars and…”

**********************************

At this point Shahrazad saw the approach of dawn and discreetly fell silent.

But when the one thousand and thirteenth night had come,

SHE SAID:

**********************************

“I,” Haider said, “will go and fetch the hundred dinars for you, and we can leave immediately.”

“That is excellent,” the fake Bedouin replied. “I, in the meantime, will go to the khans of the merchants and hire a camel for you.” So saying, he departed.

Haider reached the street with the hundred dinars at his belt just as Zulfiqar arrived, leading two camels. “That one is yours,” he said. “You are to return him tomorrow, to his owner, who is staying at such and such a khan.” He tapped on the camel’s neck, and it knelt for the scholar to mount. “Hold on tightly, for we will be moving quickly, and a speeding camel is far from comfortable.”

Haider clambered on as best he could, and clung on as the beast followed the alleged Bedouin’s own camel out of the city and into the desert. Hours passed as the camels ran on, with the scholar barely able to keep his place in the saddle and quite unable to summon the ability to speak or even notice where they were going. As dawn was just colouring the east, the so-called Bedouin reined in his beast, and Haider’s mount drew to a stop.

There were, of course, many old ruins scattered around the desert around al Najaf, and Zulfiqar had been confident of finding one sooner or later. Just as it had grown light enough, he had seen this one, and it looked as likely as any other for his purposes.

“There you are, master,” he said, pointing. “I will stay here and hold the camels while you go in and get your scrolls. Once you have them, I will guide you back as far as the gates of al Najaf; you can pay me off then. After that I resume my journey to Aleppo.”

Intensely relieved to be off the camel’s back, Haider rubbed his aching limbs and walked into the ruins. They were quite fascinating, with arcane carvings, mostly effaced by sand and time, on broken walls, and little shards of pottery and shattered statues lay littered around. He wandered for a while, entranced despite himself, before remembering to look for the courtyard and the well. But, though he walked through the ruins from one end to the other and back again, of courtyards and wells he found none.

“I must ask the Bedouin to come and show me where the well is,” he thought to himself. “Surely he can hobble the camels for a little while if he is afraid of them wandering or running away.” So thinking, he returned to the spot where he had entered the ruins; but there was no sign of the Bedouin or the camels.

“They must be somewhere nearby,” Haider thought, and looked all around. “Perhaps they have gone to look for shade before it gets too hot.” But there was nothing nearby that could throw shade, not even a date palm, just flat wastes of stony desert; and there was no sign of either Bedouin or camels.

Then Haider grew alarmed. “It is getting hot already,” he thought. “The sun is already climbing into the sky. I’ve no food, water, or shelter. I don’t even know which way al Najaf lies, let alone how far it is. Whatever should I do? All my studies never taught me how to deal with any of this.” And in his despair he cried out these lines:

“Like a shadow flees the sun

Always pointed the obverse way

Like the moon flees the dawn

Crawling to escape the day.

Had I but a way to run

Some idea of where to flee

I would not be crying here

Knowing it’s all up with me.”

Unbeknownst to him, those ruins were the home of a jinni by the name of Karam ibn Kamran. This jinni was gigantic and fearsome in appearance, with three tremendous horns sticking out of his head in three different directions, claws like swords at his fingertips, and eyes the size of saucers and red as clotting blood. He had only returned from a long trip to the isles of India and China in the small hours of the night, and had just settled down to sleep in a buried underground chamber, when his rest was disturbed by Haider’s lamentations.

“What is this?” he thought to himself, annoyed. “Can an honest jinni not even get a little sleep?” And he rose out of his crypt, to find out what the matter was and make it go away.

When Haider saw the gigantic jinni burst out of the ground before him, his bowels turned to water and he fell swooning to the ground. “This is a fine specimen,” Karam ibn Kamran thought to himself in disgust. “He cries and weeps until I come to put a stop to his crying and weeping, and then he faints so that I don’t know why he was crying and weeping, and therefore I cannot help him stop his crying and weeping. Let me see what I can do.” Slinging the unconscious Haider over his shoulder, he sank back down into his crypt.

Haider regained consciousness and was immediately preparing to faint again on finding himself in a little stone chamber, lit by a torch set on one wall, with the gigantic form of the jinni looming over him. Karam ibn Kamran, however, gave him no opportunity to do so. “Tell me why you are disturbing my sleep,” he demanded.

Once Haider understood that the jinni was not going to tear him limb from limb, he stammered out his tale, of the Bedouin and the scroll and the camel ride, but it would serve no purpose to repeat it all here.

Karam ibn Kamran heard the story and laughed. His laughter almost made the poor scholar swoon away again. “O little human,” he said, “someone has played a cruel jest on you. But fear not, I will help you turn the tables on them.”

“How?” Haider asked, fascinated despite himself.

“Do not worry your head about that. Rest here for the day; if you are hungry and thirsty, you will find food and water in those jars along the wall. I am leaving now, but I will return with the evening; I will see you then.” So saying, he rose up through the only entrance, a trapdoor in the ceiling of the closed chamber and disappeared.

Haider was still terrified, but his hunger, thirst, and exhaustion caught up with him, and after eating and drinking his fill he fell into a deep sleep.

Haider woke when Karam ibn Kamran returned, carrying a large sack in his arms, which spilled over with books, scrolls, and loose pieces of parchment and papyrus. “O scholar,” the jinni said, “here are all the documents that still exist from the diwan of Sulayman ibn Daud. I, and my fellow jinn, have scoured the world for them for you.”

Haider began stammering his gratitude, but then another thought occurred to him. “I still have no idea where we are,” he said. “I can’t get back to al Najaf, without dying in the desert of exposure; so these documents will go to waste.”

“You worry too much,” the jinni replied. “I’ll fly you back to al Najaf tonight, as soon as it is properly dark and nobody can see me.”

“But what can I give you in recompense?” Haider asked. “I have nothing in the world but these hundred dinars.”

The jinni laughed. “Money means nothing to me, o man; I could get all the gold and jewels I wanted if I ever needed to. But it is very simple; I want and need nothing from you. Indeed, my recompense will be to be able to sleep uninterrupted by your lamentations.”

Meanwhile, in al Najaf, the rogue Zulfiqar had rested after his return from the desert, and that evening went to meet his fellow conspirator Ayman. “It is done,” he said. “I successfully abandoned Haider far away in the desert without food or water; he will undoubtedly perish soon, if he has not already.” He sighed. “My only regret is that I could not take the hundred dinars from him.”

“It could not be helped,” Ayman said. “Even such a clod as he would have been suspicious if you had demanded payment in advance. But it will all be worth it, now that we no longer have his example to poison our teachers against us.”

“I have an idea,” Zulfiqar said. “We should go to Haider’s lodgings and get all his books and papers. We can sell them to other scholars just come to al Najaf from the provinces, and that will fetch us a lot of money.”

“That is an excellent idea,” Ayman said. “We’ll go tonight, when it is dark and there is nobody around.”

So that night they went to Haider’s lodgings, and were stricken by surprise when they saw the light of a lamp at the window. “Who could be there at this time?” Zulfiqar asked.

“It must be someone else who has noticed Haider is missing, and is out to steal his books before we can,” Ayman replied, bristling at the idea of such perfidy. “Let’s go and confront the thief.”

And so they went in, and there are no words to adequately express their astonishment at finding Haider himself, sitting at his accustomed place, poring over a great heap of scrolls, books, and papers. “Ah, friends,” he said, looking up, “I am most grateful to that Bedouin; because of him I have acquired all these irreplaceable documents and records. These will be worth many years of study.”

Once Ayman and Zulfiqar had got over their astonishment, their minds filled with fury. “Maybe the desert didn’t kill you,” the former ground out, “but we will make sure of you now.” Before the astonished Haider could utter a word, he snatched up a heavy silver ink stand and advanced on the scholar, holding it high to bring it down on his head.

Then there was a great rush of wings and Karam ibn Kamran swept into the room through the window. “I had been expecting you rogues,” he said, snatching up both the wretches, the ink stand falling to the floor. “Haider is far too innocent to suspect you, but as soon as I heard his story I knew his fellow students must be to blame, and I was lying in wait.” With a great roar he flew out of the window with the struggling Ayman and Zulfiqar in his arms, and vanished into the night.

So Haider spent many years studying and classifying, and then, later, writing on and teaching about the diwan of Sulayman ibn Daud; and, being the only scholar in the world with access to the original materials, on that topic he became by far the most famous that ever was.

And what happened to Ayman and Zulfiqar? Karam ibn Kamran paid them back for their sins by setting them down far away in the western desert of the Maghrib, to wander through the Sahara from one oasis to another, all their efforts now going to just keeping themselves alive. Al Najaf never saw either of them again.

_________________________________________

“O good merchant,” Mumtaz finished, “here is my question: we all have heard endless tales of how evil and malevolent jinn are, and how we must abhor them. But Karam ibn Kamran was completely good to and protective of Haider, and his fellow jinn no less helpful than he. Should we then believe the old tales, or should we accept that the jinn can be as good and righteous as humans, if not more so? What do you think?”

Dariush pondered for a while before he answered. “O Rustam,” he said, “those old tales were written by people who perhaps had never met jinn themselves, or at best had only met evil jinn like those who rebelled against Sulayman ibn Daud so long ago. After hearing your story, I think that it would be unfair to regard all jinn by those standards. As such, I believe that jinn like Karam ibn Kamran must be considered righteous and estimable, and deserving of all praise and approbation.”

Mumtaz heaved a secret sigh of relief. “O merchant, you have told me of how desperate you are to return to your daughter. Suppose now, just for the sake of discussion, that jinn had not only rescued you from your captivity, but had brought your daughter here and restored her to you. How would you feel about them then?”

Dariush blinked in confusion. “Why, if such a miracle were possible, I would owe the jinn everything; more than mere gratitude, I would be willing to lay down my life for them.”

“That will not be necessary, good Dariush,” Mumtaz said, and, stripping away the cloth wrapping her features, turned to the merchant. “Behold, I am your daughter Mumtaz, and it is all due to my friends the jinn that I found you and could free you.”

Then Dariush fell weeping on his daughter’s neck, and Mumtaz too could not keep her tears from flowing. After they had recovered somewhat, she told him of her adventures, leaving out only the dream that she had had in the golden pavilion on the island; but it would serve no purpose to repeat it all here.

“Now, Father,” Mumtaz said, tying the cloth back over her head and face, “dawn will soon be here. I will lead you all back to the pirate encampment; my friends will help to load the ships back with all the goods the pirates stole, and we can sail back home after that right away.”

So Mumtaz roused the former captives, and she, with Dariush by her side, led them back through the cave to the mountainside over the pirate encampment. By the time they had all emerged into the open air, it was morning, and all over the bay the ships that Hamdouna and Sameera had cut loose from their anchors were being sailed back to their moorings by jinn soldiers who had flown out to them.

“There is Hamdouna,” Mumtaz pointed out to her father, “and that is the princess Sameera.” She introduced them to her father, who threw his arms around them, one and then the other in gratitude for his own liberty and for his reunion with Mumtaz.

Meanwhile the other former captives had got over their astonishment at the sight of all the jinn, and Sameera told them to go with the jinni commander to the building where all the pirates’ booty was stored, and to pick out their own merchandise. Once they had done so, she, Hamdouna, and the jinni commander made the captured pirates carry out the goods and load them all on the merchants’ ships.

Meanwhile Mumtaz hung back, watching Hamdouna, trying her best to remember every gesture she made, every movement of her limbs, every smile that touched her lips. “These memories will have to last you for the rest of your life, O Mumtaz,” she told herself. “Make sure you treasure them. She was never for you; and even these memories are a lot more than you deserve.” And she whispered to herself these lines, so softly that none but she heard them:

“Mountains in the distance far I saw,

Purple, beautiful, capped with snow;

Painted red and purple by the rising sun

But none could match your glow.

For a moment I was by your side

Adoring like the moth does the flame

If the moth throws itself into the fire

Is it the blaze that is to blame?

A privilege it was to love you

Though a love not meant to be

At least it was a secret I kept from you

And you will soon forget me.

You are the sky; I am the pebble below

Not worthy of a second glance

But in my dreams you will dwell, dear

In breath and gesture, song and dance.”

One by one the laden merchant ships began to pull away from the shore, until only Dariush’ own ship remained, which the captured pirates began loading up. “What will you do with the pirates?” he asked Sameera.

“That is a decision for the wazir,” the princess said, “but I rather think that they will be put to work for the rest of their lives, to serve the people that they were preying on. I rather think that ports and harbours will soon have a glut of cleaners and porters and menders of ropes and nets.”

Then suddenly there was a stir from among the jinn, who all began looking up at the sky. Following their gaze, Mumtaz saw, far in the distance, a great number of other jinn approaching. Soon they flew close enough to see clearly, and great was her astonishment to see in their midst the wazir Nahim and his wife, Hamdouna’s mother. They alighted on the beach and rushed to where Hamdouna and Sameera waited.

“Princess,” Nahim said, after he and Hamdouna’s mother had hugged their daughter and bowed – to her intense embarrassment – before Sameera, “your father the King is on his way here with your mother the Queen, and will arrive soon; when he heard that you had been found, your father shed the shackles of sorrow as though they had never been, and it is as though a thousand years rolled off his shoulders. It is a pleasure to see you again.”

“It is entirely due to Hamdouna and Mumtaz-i-Duniya,” Sameera said with a smile. “O wazir, if it were not for you, I would never have met Hamdouna, and if I had never met Hamdouna, I would never have been rescued by her and Mumtaz; so if anyone should be filled with pleasure it is I.”

“Where is Mumtaz-i-Duniya?” Hamdouna’s mother asked.

“Here she is,” Hamdouna said, and, taking Mumtaz by the hand, drew her forward. “She is well, and she has found her father, the merchant Dariush here.”

Hamdouna’s mother threw her arms around Mumtaz and hugged her to her bosom. “I was so angry with Nahim when I heard that he had let you and my daughter put yourselves in danger,” she told the young woman. “If a single hair on your head had been harmed, I would never have forgiven him.”

“I would never have allowed any harm to come to a hair on her head,” Hamdouna said.

Her mother glanced at her and smiled a little strangely. “I can see that,” she said. “I have known that for some time.”

As the jinn began busily preparing for the arrival of the king Fayn al Usud, the former pirates finished loading Dariush’ ship with all the goods he had sailed with so long ago. Mumtaz saw this, saw that the jinn’s attention was for the moment distracted, and decided that this was the right time for her to go aboard and to sail away, so as to be spared the agonising pangs of saying goodbye to Hamdouna; it was taking all the effort she had to not just burst out crying in heartbroken sorrow. Taking her father’s hand, she urged him towards the ship, which his old crew, who had also been among the captives, had been preparing for sail. Just as her feet touched the deck, however, she heard a voice behind her.

“Leaving, Mumtaz? Are you not forgetting to take something with you?”

Mumtaz-i-Duniya turned to see Hamdouna standing on the deck behind her, and, behind her, Nahim, his wife, and the princess Sameera. “You left something very important behind, Mumtaz,” Hamdouna said.

“I don’t understand,” Mumtaz replied. “What did I leave?”

“It’s not a what, it’s a who.” Hamdouna stepped forward and took both Mumtaz’ hands in her own. “Where you go, I go. You cannot possibly sail away and leave me behind.”

“She’s right,” Hamdouna’s mother said. “The moment I laid eyes on you together, I saw the love that was between you. It shone in every word and gesture. It is the kind of love that is impossible to mistake, the kind of love nobody can break.” She sighed. “I know that you brought my daughter back to me, but I also know that you have to go to your people; and that means my daughter will go with you. She knows it too.”

“Yes, she does,” Hamdouna said. “Dear Mumtaz, I love you more than the sun loves the moon and the night sky loves the stars. I could not exist a moment without you.”

Mumtaz gasped. “Hamdouna…but…you and the princess…”

Sameera smiled. “O Mumtaz, Hamdouna and I will always be the dearest of friends and comrades; but she is your love and your soul-mate for the ages. Like everyone else, I saw immediately the love that glowed in her eyes for you and in yours for her. She goes with you with my blessing; I’m overflowing with happiness for both of you.”

Mumtaz’ legs gave way under her with the force of her emotion, and she would have fallen had Hamdouna not quickly stepped forward, taken her in her arms, and kissed her tears away. “This is no time for weeping,” she said. “We have the future wide open before us.”

And so Dariush, Mumtaz-i-Duniya, and Hamdouna sailed away on the merchant’s ship, Hamdouna adopting the guise of a young man just like Mumtaz. Now that Dariush had recovered his daughter, he no longer had such a need to immediately hurry home, but decided to make the trade voyage that he had originally been planning. The ports that he visited were nearly empty of competing ships, for the depredations of the pirates had made merchandise hard to come by. Therefore Dariush traded at a most excellent profit. And if any merchants had plans to cheat Dariush, one look at the two burly young men who stood at his shoulder always made them decide it would be a very bad idea, though they never could tell exactly why.

So it was that when Dariush finally sailed back to his home port, his ship was loaded with merchandise and gold enough to restore his fortunes and more. Word was already spreading before his ship had even dropped anchor; and it rapidly reached the ears of the woman Aminah, Dariush’ wife and Mumtaz’ stepmother, who had planned to sell her as a slave. Stricken with panic, she rushed out of the house, with no more than the clothes she was wearing, and fled the city, never to be seen or heard of again. So much for her.

Dariush returned to his house, and, with Mumtaz and Hamdouna by his side, ceremonially brought back the old nurse from where she was staying with her relatives, and established her back in her old rooms, with comforts enough to last the rest of her days. At the very same moment, at Fayn al Usud’s direct command, the jinn commander and his troops were also conducting old Faizunnisa from her stone hut by the amber rock to the royal palace, where she was welcomed with honour by Sameera herself, and appointed a cherished advisor to the king.

When night fell, at last, Hamdouna and Mumtaz were alone in their room, which had been Mumtaz’ room alone, and were able to speak freely. After the jinniyah and she had kissed until they were weary of kissing, Mumtaz let her tears flow. “I was certain that you would forget me,” she said. “I was certain you could never love me.”

“O Mumtaz,” Hamdouna said gently, “I loved you from the moment I first saw your face, bowed over mine while I was lying in that stone passage under the ruins, my head in your lap. My love for you never faltered for an instant since then, and…” she suddenly blushed violently.

“What is it?” Mumtaz asked.

“That night in the pavilion on the island,” Hamdouna said, “when you woke me with your kisses, it was from a dream where you and I were together and we were…” she hesitated.

“Making love?”

“Yes,” Hamdouna whispered. “How did you know?”

“I had that exact same dream,” Mumtaz said, and drew the jinniyah into her embrace.

“We should do it for real now,” she said. Hamdouna nodded and buried her head in Mumtaz’ bosom.

And that night they were not separated.

**********************************

“O King,” Shahrazad said, “I can see morning approach, so it is time for me to halt my tales for today.”

Then little Dunyazad spoke up from the foot of the bed. “O sister, what happened to Mumtaz and Hamdouna afterwards? I cannot rest if I do not know more about them.”

Shahrazad smiled at her. “Mumtaz and Hamdouna’s love grew with every passing moment. They helped Dariush expand his business and went on voyages together for him; and, once a year, they went for a month to the palace of the jinn at the mountains at the end of the world, where they visited Sameera, Nahim, and Hamdouna’s mother. And, of course, they had plenty of other adventures, many far more startling than these that I have recounted; but those will wait – with this gracious king’s permission – for another night.”

And the King Shahryar agreed; and it was the dawn of another day.

KHATAM SHUD

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