The Arabian Nights II (39 page)

While the people were attempting to dissuade him, King Ghaiur heard their shouting and clamor and said to the vizier, “Go down and bring me this astrologer.” The vizier went down and brought back Qamar al-Zaman, who, when he came in to the king, kissed the ground before him and recited the following verses,

Eight glorious elements are met in you:

Knowledge and piety, munificence and fame,

Wisdom and eloquence, honor and victory;

To serve you thereby, fortune to you came.

When King Ghaiur saw him, he made him sit beside him, treated him courteously, and said, “For God's sake, son, do not call yourself an astrologer, and do not submit yourself to my condition, for I have bound myself that whoever goes in to my daughter and does not cure her, I will strike off his head, and that whoever cures her, I will marry her to him. Do not be deluded by your beauty, elegance, and grace, for by God, by God, if you do not cure her, I will strike off your head.” But Qamar al-Zaman replied, “I accept your condition.” Then King Ghaiur asked the judges to bear witness and handed him to the eunuch, saying, “Take him to Princess Budur.”

The eunuch took him by the hand and proceeded with him through the corridor, but Qamar al-Zaman hurried ahead of him, while the eunuch followed him, saying, “Hey, don't hasten to your own destruction, for, by God, I have never seen an astrologer in such a hurry to destroy himself, except you. You don't know the calamities that await you.” But Qamar al-Zaman turned his face away from the eunuch and recited the following verses,

I know your beauties, but helpless I stand

To do justice to them, not knowing what to say.

If I compare you to the sun, you always shine,

While the sun always sets and fades away.

Your beauties are so perfect they defy

Description and the eloquent dismay.

The eunuch made Qamar al-Zaman stand behind the curtain that hung over the door, and Qamar al-Zaman asked, “How do wish me to proceed? Shall I treat and cure your mistress from here, or go in and cure her inside the curtain?” The eunuch wondered at his question and said, “It would be more to your credit to cure her from here.” So Qamar al-Zaman sat behind the curtain and, taking out the inkwell and pen, wrote on a sheet of paper the following, “He whose affliction is deprivation, his cure is fulfillment. Miserable is he who has despaired of his life and become certain of his demise, whose grieving heart there is no one to comfort or help, whose sleepless eye finds no relief from distress, whose day is on fire and whose night is in torment, whose body has wasted, and whose beloved has sent him no messenger.” Then he wrote the following verses,

I write you with a heart devoted to your name

And wounded eyelids shedding tears for you

And body with the dress of leanness clad

By grief, as it does long and waste and rue.

To you I now complain of painful love,

And my forbearance has become outworn.

Then be generous, merciful, and kind,

For my heart is with love to pieces torn.

And beneath these verses he wrote the following sayings, “The cure of hearts is union with the beloved; he whose beloved rejects him, God is his physician, if either of us betrays, may the betrayer fail; and no one is more charming than a lover faithful to a disdainful beloved.” Then at the bottom of the letter he wrote, “From the distracted lover, the distraught lover, the one afflicted by longing and love, the captive of passion and desire, Qamar al-Zaman, son of Shahraman, to the peerless of her age and most beautiful maid of Paradise, Princess Budur, daughter of King Ghaiur. By night I am sleepless, by day perplexed, wasting with love and passion and pain, full of sighs and tears, the slave of love, the victim of passion, tormented by desire, and befriended by sickness. I am the restless one whose eyes never sleep and the lover whose tears never dry. The fire of my heart is ever burning, and the flame of my desire is ever blazing.” Then in the margin he wrote the following admired verses,

Peace from the stores of God's grace from above

On her who holds my life and has my love.

He also wrote the following verses,

Grant me some word of yours that you may

Show me pity or bring my heart some peace.

My love and longing for you make me bear

The torment of my lowly state with ease.

God keep the lover whose abode was far,

Whose secret I have guarded everywhere.

Now fortune has turned kind to me at last

And cast me on her soil and brought me near.

When I saw Budur in bed by my side,

My life's moon shined, for her sun light supplied.

Then he sealed the letter and in the place of the address wrote the following verses,

Ask of my letter what my pen has writ;

Its characters will show my love and pain.

My hand writes, while my tears flow, and desire

Does to the paper of sickness complain.

My tears continue to flow down my cheeks,

And if they cease, my blood this page will stain.

And he added the following verses,

The day we met, I took a ring of thine.

I send it back to you, please send me mine.

For he had enclosed Princess Budur's ring in the letter.

Then he handed the letter to the eunuch, who took it and went in with it to Princess Budur. She took it from his hand and, opening it, found in it her very ring, and when she read it and understood its contents, she realized that her beloved was Qamar al-Zaman and that it was he who was standing outside the curtain. She jumped with joy and, feeling extremely happy, recited the following verses,

Long have I rued the day of severance,

And long, long have my eyes shed tears of pain.

And vowed that should fortune unite us two,

I would never mention that word again.

Now joy has so overwhelmed me that it has brought

To my sad tearful eyes tears of relief.

Tears have become a habit to you, eyes.

So that you always weep whether in joy or grief.

As soon as Princess Budur finished reciting these verses, she set her feet to the wall and pulled with all her strength on the iron collar until she broke it from her neck and snapped the chains. Then she rushed out and, throwing herself on Qamar al-Zaman, embraced him passionately, kissed his mouth, like a pigeon feeding its young, and said, “O my lord, is this true, or is it a dream? Has God indeed granted us reunion?” Then she thanked God and praised Him for reuniting her with him, after she had despaired.

When the eunuch saw her in that condition, he went running to King Ghaiur and, kissing the ground before him, said, “O my lord, this astrologer is the wisest of all astrologers, for he has cured your daughter, and he did it from behind the curtain, without even going in to her.” The king asked him, “Is this true?” And the eunuch replied, “O my lord, come and see how she has broken the iron chains and rushed to the astrologer, hugging him and kissing him.” The king arose and went in to his daughter. When she saw him, she stood up, covered her head, and recited the following verses,

I like not the toothstick, for when I mention it,

It sounds as if I am saying, “other than you.”

But I like the tree whence it comes, whose name

Sounds as if I am saying, “I see you.”

The king rejoiced at her recovery and kissed her between the eyes, for he loved her dearly. Then he addressed Qamar al-Zaman courteously and asked him from which country he had come. Qamar al-Zaman informed him about himself, saying that his father was King Shahraman. Then he related to him all that had happened between him and Princess Budur from beginning to end and how he had taken her ring from her finger and she had put on his ring. King Ghaiur marveled and said, “Your story must be recorded in books and read after you, generation after generation.” Then he forthwith summoned the judges and witnesses and performed the marriage contract between Princess Budur and Qamar al-Zaman and gave orders to decorate the city for seven days. The city was decorated, and a banquet was prepared, and the troops put on their best uniforms, and the messengers announced the happy news. The people praised the Almighty God for having caused Princess Budur to fall in love with a handsome young man who is the son of a king. Then they unveiled her to him, and the two looked alike in beauty, elegance, and coquettish charm. Then he went in to her and slept with her that night and fulfilled his desire, and she too enjoyed his beauty and grace, and they slept in each other's arms till the morning. On the following day, the king prepared a banquet, covering the tables with all kinds of food, and invited visitors from the Inner Islands and Outer Islands, for an entire month.

After a while, Qamar al-Zaman began to think of his father, and he saw him in a dream, and his father was saying to him, “Why do you treat me in this way?” and reciting the following verses,

The moon has by his absence racked my soul

And to watch his own stars, my eyelids charged,

Yet stay, O heart, for he may yet return,

And forebear, soul, the pain he has discharged.

When Qamar al-Zaman saw his father reproaching him in the dream, he awoke in the morning, feeling sad, and told his wife Princess Budur about it. Then he went with her to see her father and, telling him what had happened, asked his permission to depart. The king gave his permission, but Princess Budur said, “O father, I cannot bear to part from him.” Her father replied, “Very well, go with him,” bidding her to stay a whole year and visit him annually thereafter. She kissed his hand, and Qamar al-Zaman did likewise.

The king proceeded to equip his daughter and her husband for the journey, providing them with horses and dromedaries, as well as a litter for his daughter, and loaded the dromedaries and mules with gear and provisions. On the day of departure, he bestowed on Qamar al-Zaman a magnificent gold robe, adorned with jewels, presented him with a great sum of money, and charged him to take care of his daughter. Then he accompanied them on their journey until they reached the farthest limits of the Islands, when he bade Qamar al-Zaman good-bye. Then he entered his daughter's litter, began to embrace her and weep and recited the following verses,

Be patient you who wish to part;

For to embrace is lovers' joy

And fortune's nature is deceit,

And at the end does love destroy.

Then he left his daughter and, coming up to Qamar al-Zaman, bade him farewell again and kissed him. The he bade them proceed and returned to his capital with his troops.

Qamar al-Zaman and his wife Princess Budur journeyed with their retinue for a whole month, after which they stopped at a spacious meadow, abounding with grass, where they pitched their tents and ate and drank and rested. Then Princess Budur went to sleep, and when Qamar al-Zaman went in, he found her asleep, clad in a transparent silk dress of apricot color and a golden head cover, adorned with jewels. The breeze had lifted her dress up to her breasts, revealing her navel and her snow-white belly with its folds, each of which contained a pound of benzoin ointment. His love and desire for her stirred within him, and he recited the following verses,

If I was asked, while the flames raged about

And set my heart and soul on hellish fire,

Which would you rather have, the one you love,

Or water cold?” I'd say, “Her I desire.”

He desired her and put his hand to the ribbon of her pants, but when he pulled it loose, he saw, knotted to the ribbon, a blood-red jewel engraved with two lines of unfamiliar characters. He marveled at
that and said to himself, “If she had not attached a great importance to this jewel, she would not have tied it to the ribbon of her pants and hidden it in her most precious part, in order to guard it. I wonder what she does with it and what is the secret behind it.”

He took the jewel outside the tent to look at it in the light. As he was examining it, a bird swooped down and, snatching it from his hand, flew off with it and alighted on the ground, at a little distance. Fearing for the jewel, Qamar al-Zaman ran after the bird, while it kept flying just ahead of him from valley to valley and from hill to hill, until night descended and it grew dark, when the bird roosted on a high tree. Qamar al-Zaman stood under the tree, feeling perplexed, and faint from hunger and fatigue and giving himself up for lost. He wanted to turn back but did not know the way, for all was dark. So he said to himself, “There is no power and no strength save in God the Almighty, the Magnificent,” and went to sleep under the tree in which the bird roosted.

When he awoke in the morning, the bird rose and flew from the tree. He followed it, and it flew slowly before him at the same speed at which he walked. Qamar al-Zaman smiled and said to himself, “By God, this is a strange thing. This bird yesterday flew at the same speed at which I ran, and today, knowing that I am tired and unable to run, it flies at the same speed at which I walk. This is strange, but I must follow this bird, and whether it leads me to my life or to my death I will follow it wherever it goes, for in any event it lives only in an inhabited part.”

Qamar al-Zaman walked, while the bird flew above him, roosting on a tree every night, and he kept following it for ten days, during which he fed on the vegetation of the land and drank the water of the streams, until he came to the outskirts of a populous city. Suddenly, the bird darted into the city and disappeared in a wink from Qamar al-Zaman, who did not know where it had gone. He wondered and said to himself, “God be praised for preserving me and bringing me to this city.” Then seating himself by some water, he washed his face, as well as his hands and feet and rested for a while, reflecting on his former comfort and his present distance from home and on his hunger and weariness, and recited the following verses,

I tried to hide my love, but I could not,

And sleeplessness has now replaced my sleep.

I cried out with a heart oppressed by care,