THE STORY OF SINDBAD THE SAILOR
ON THE TWENTY-THIRD NIGHT
Sheherazade said:
The old man, extremely delighted with my answer, ordered his slaves to fetch the kadi and the witnesses, who soon arrived. And the old man married me with his daughter, and gave us a huge feast and a splendid wedding. After which he took me and led me to his daughter whom I had not seen yet. I found her to be the perfection of beauty and kindness, of delicacy of size and proportions. Moreover, she was adorned with sumptuousness, silks, brocades, jewels, and precious stones; and what she had on her was worth thousands and thousands of pieces of gold, and no one could even estimate it exactly.
Also, when I was with her, I liked her. We fell in love with each other. And we stayed together for a long time, bordering on cuddling and happiness.
Some time later, the old man, father of my wife, passed away in the peace and mercy of the Most High. We gave him a nice funeral and we buried him. And I seized all that he had, and all his slaves and his servants became my slaves and my servants, under my sole authority. In addition, the merchants of the city appointed me their leader, in his place, and I was then able to study the customs of the inhabitants of this city and their way of life.
Indeed, I noticed one day, to my amazement, that the people of this city experienced a moult every year, at the time of spring: they moulted from one day to the next, changing in form and appearance; wings sprouted from their shoulders, and they became birds. They could then fly to the highest of the aerial vault; and they took advantage of their new state to fly away from the city, leaving only the women and children who did not have the power to have wings.
This discovery surprised me at first, but I ended up getting used to these periodic changes. Only, a day came when I began to be ashamed of being the only man without wings, and of having to guard the city alone with the women and children. In vain then I inquired with the inhabitants of the means to employ so that wings grow on my shoulders, no one could or did not want to answer me on this subject. And me, I was very mortified to be only Sindbad the Sailor, without being able to add to my nickname the quality of aerial.
One day, as I despaired of ever being able to make them confess this secret of the growth of wings, I saw one of them, to whom I had rendered many services, and, taking him by the arm, I say: "By Allah upon you, at least render me once, because of what I have done for you, the service of letting me cling to you, and to fly with you in your race to through the air. This is a trip that tempts me a lot, and that I want to add to the number of those I have made at sea!" At first the man would not listen to me; but by dint of prayers I finally persuaded him to consent. I was so delighted with the thing that I did not even take the time to warn my wife and the people of my house; I hung on to him, taking him by the waist, and he carried me through the air as he flew away, his wings spread wide.
Our course through the air was first upward in a straight line, for a considerable time. So we ended up arriving so high in the celestial vault, that I was able to distinctly hear the angels singing their melodies under the dome of heaven.
Hearing these wonderful songs, I was on the verge of religious emotion, and I too exclaimed: “Praise be to Allah in the depths of the heavens! Blessed be he and glorified by all creatures!"
Scarcely had I uttered these words when my winged bearer uttered a fearful oath, and suddenly, in a clap of thunder preceded by a terrible lightning, descended with such rapidity that the air ran out of me and I nearly fell, fainting and letting go at the risk of falling into the unfathomable abyss. And, in the blink of an eye, we arrived on the summit of a mountain where my carrier, casting me a hellish look, abandoned me and disappeared, resuming his flight into the invisible.
So, left alone on this deserted mountain, I no longer knew what to do or which way to go to return to my wife, and I exclaimed, bordering on perplexity: "There is no recourse and no power except in Allah the Most High, the Omnipotent! Every time I end up with a calamity, I start over with an even worse one! I really deserve everything that's happened to me!"
I then sat down on a rock to think about how to remedy the present, when suddenly I saw coming towards me two young boys of marvelous beauty who looked like two moons. Each of them held a red gold cane in his hand, on which he leaned as he walked. So I got up quickly, I met them and wished them peace. They kindly returned my wish, which encouraged me to speak to them, and I said to them: "By Allah be upon you two, O wonderful young boys, tell me who you are and what you are doing!" They replied: "We are worshipers of the true God!" Then one of them, without adding another word, waved to me in one direction, as if inviting me to direct my steps in that direction, left his golden cane in my hands, and, taking his handsome companion by the hand, he disappeared with him from my sight.
So I took the golden cane in question and did not hesitate to head in the direction that had been indicated to me, while marveling at the memory of these two handsome boys. As I had been walking in this way for some time, I suddenly saw emerging from behind a rock a gigantic snake which held in its mouth a man three-quarters swallowed and of which I could only see the head and arms. The arms were struggling desperately and the head was crying: “O passerby, save me from the mouth of this serpent, and you will not have to repent of your action!" I, then, ran after the snake and struck it from behind with my red-gold cane such a well-aimed blow that it lay motionless instantly. And I reached out my hand to the swallowed man and helped him out of the serpent's belly.
When I had looked better at the man in the face, I was on the verge of surprise to recognize in him the bird that had made me do my aerial journey and had ended up rushing with me, at the risk of damaging me, from the top of the vault of heaven on the top of the mountain, where he had abandoned me in danger of dying of hunger and thirst. But I still didn't want to show him any grudge for his wrongdoing, and just said quietly: "Is this how friends treat friends?" He replied: “First of all, I have to thank you for what you have just done for me. Only you do not know that it is you, thanks to your inopportune invocations while pronouncing the Name, who, in spite of myself, threw me from the top of the air! The Name has this effect on all of us! So we never pronounce it!" So, for him to pull me from this mountain, I said to him: “Excuse me and do not blame me, because really I could not guess the disastrous consequences of my homage to the Name! I promise you not to say it again, during the trip, if you will now agree to take me to my house!"
Then the bird bent down, took me on its back and, in the blink of an eye, deposited me on the terrace of my house, and returned home.
When my wife saw me, coming down from the terrace, entering the house after such a long absence, she understood all that had just happened, and she blessed Allah who had once again saved me from perdition. Then, after the effusions of the return, she said to me: “You must no longer associate with the inhabitants of this city: they are the brothers of the demons!" I said to her: "But how did your father live with them?" She replied: “My father did not belong to their society, and did not do like them and did not live their life. In any case, if I have any advice to give you, we have nothing better to do, since my father is dead...
At this point in her narration, Sheherazade saw the morning appear and quietly fell silent.
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