One Thousand and One Nights by Hanan al-Shaykh

Author:Hanan al-Shaykh
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307958877
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-06-10T21:00:00+00:00

The Mistress of the House’s Tale

y case is so strange, and my tale so bizarre, that if I engraved it with needles at the corner of my eye, it would be a lesson for those who wish to consider it. My Caliph, those two bitches are none other than my bewitched sisters, and I must whip them three hundred times each night in order to keep them alive.

But let me start at the beginning, when we were five sisters enjoying the love and tenderness of our caring parents. Then my father, the great merchant, died and we divided the fortune he left us between us and our mother. Soon our mother joined our father in death and so we divided her money equally among us five sisters. As soon as the period of mourning ended my two elder sisters married, took their share of the money and left Baghdad with their husbands to settle in a foreign country. I remained at home to care for my two youngest sisters, postponing the idea of marriage until they matured and immersing myself in working as a merchant, continuing my father’s business. Two years later, one of my elder sisters returned home, dressed like a beggar in tattered clothes. Shocked and filled with pity, I embraced her and asked what had happened. She wept and told me that her husband had wasted all their money, sold their house and disappeared from the face of the Earth. I took her in, cared for her, served her unconditionally and even shared my money with her. When I thanked God that the black storm had passed over our family, my other elder sister collapsed on our doorstep one day, barefoot. As she sobbed and struck her face she told us that her husband had plundered all her money and deserted her in that foreign land without even a morsel of bread. She had wandered from one country to another until she reached Baghdad. I squeezed her to my bosom as I had done with our eldest sister, showed her love and the utmost kindness, and then divided my money with her too.

“You’re much wiser and more insightful than us, though you’re younger, and now we feel that you have taken the place of our mother, may God pray for her soul. We promise you with all our hearts that the word ‘marriage’ will not cross our lips again,” my sisters told me, weeping.

“Let us hire a ship and go to Basra with our merchandise and trade there, for we must depend upon ourselves and not on men,” I told them.

They accepted my offer and suggestions, and when we came back victorious, having made a big profit, they thanked me and were grateful for my kindness towards them.

Two years passed, during which we enjoyed great stability and prosperity. Then one day, my sisters shocked me with disastrous news: they had decided to marry for a second time because they didn’t fancy living without husbands.

“After all God created

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