THE STORY OF THE VIZIER NOUREDIDNE, HIS BROTHER THE VIZIER CHAMSEDDINE, AND HASSAN BADREDDINE
Harun al-Rashid
Source
Chamseddine put Hassan in the nuptial bedroom with El-Hosn, who pretends that it is the same night as several years ago. So, Hassan cannot decide what is a dream and what is reality.
Then, in the morning, Chamseddine explains the whole charade.
ON THE SEVENTEENTH NIGHT
Scheherazade said:
The carpenter, next to them, continued to make the wood of the execution and from time to time cast on Hassan a furtive glance, as if to say to him: “Wow! you deserve it! »
Meanwhile, night fell. So they seized Hassan and made him return to his box. And the vizier cried out to him: "It's for tomorrow, your crucifixion!" Then he waited a few hours until Hassan had fallen asleep in the box. So he had the crate loaded on the back of a camel and gave the order to leave, and they marched until they finally arrived at home, in Cairo!
And it was only then that the vizier wanted to reveal the thing to his daughter and his sister-in-law. He said to his daughter Sett El-Hosn: “Praise be to Allah who has finally allowed us, O my daughter, to find your cousin Hassan Badreddine! He's here! Get up, my daughter, and be happy! And take great care to replace the furniture and carpets of the house and your nuptial chamber in exactly the same condition as they were on the first night of your wedding! And immediately Sett El-Hosn, although overwhelmed with emotion and bliss, gave the necessary orders to the servants, who immediately got up and set to work and lit the torches. And the vizier said to them: “I will help your memory! And he opened his cupboard and took out the paper on which he had the list of furniture and all the objects with their respective places. And he read them this list slowly and saw that everything was put back in its first place. And things were done so well that the most attentive observer would have thought he was still attending Sett El-Hosn's wedding night with the hunchbacked groom.
Then the vizier placed, with his own hand, in their place occupied formerly, Badreddine's clothes: his turban on the chair, his nightgowns in the disorderly bed, his breeches and his coat on the divan, with, below them, the purse containing the thousand dinars and the label of the Jew, and he did not fail to sew up the fold of oilcloth between the cap and the canvas of the turban.
Then he told his daughter to dress the same as on the first night, to enter the nuptial chamber and prepare to receive her cousin and husband Hassan Badreddine, and, when he had entered, to say to her: "Oh! how late you waited at the toilet! By Allah! if you are indisposed, why don't you say so? Am I not your thing and your slave?" He also recommended him, although Sett El-Hosn had little need of this recommendation, to be very kind to his cousin and to make him pass the night as pleasantly as possible, without forgetting the talk and the beautiful verses of the poets.
Then the vizier marked the date of this happy day. And he headed towards the side of the room where the crate was located where Hassan was tied up. He had him taken out of it while he slept, untied his legs, which were tied, undressed him, and put only a thin shirt and a cap on his head, just like on the wedding night. This done, the vizier quickly slipped away, opening the doors that led to the nuptial chamber, and left Hassan to wake up by himself.
And Hassan soon woke up and, bewildered at finding himself thus almost naked in this marvelously lighted corridor which did not seem to him unknown, said to himself: “Come on, my boy! are you in deepest dreams or a waking state?"
After the first moments of amazement, he ventured to get up and take a few steps out of the corridor by one of the doors which opened there. And immediately he stopped breathing: he had just recognized exactly the room where the famous party had taken place in his honor and to the detriment of the hunchback, and, through the open door leading to the bridal chamber, at the far end, he saw on the chair his turban, and on the divan his breeches and his clothes. Then the sweat came to his brow, and he wiped it away with his hand. And he said to himself: “Lah! Lah! am I awake? am I asleep? Tsoh! Tsoh! Am I crazy?" However, he began to advance, advancing with one foot and retreating with the other, without daring anymore and still wiping his forehead damp with cold sweat. Then at last he exclaimed: “But, by Allah! there is no longer any doubt, that is it, my boy! It's not a dream! And you were, you're right, locked up and tied up in a crate! No, it's not a dream!" And, saying this, he had come to the door of the nuptial chamber and cautiously ventured his head there.
And immediately, from within the net of fine blue silk, Sett El-Hosn, lying in all her naked beauty, gently lifted the ledge of the net and said to him: “O my dear master! how late you have been in the toilet! Oh! come quickly! come!"
At these words, poor Hassan burst out laughing like a hashish eater or an opium smoker and began to scream: “Wow! Hi! hoo! what an amazing dream! what an incoherent dream!" Then he continued to advance, as if walking on snakes, with infinite precaution, lifting the tails of his shirt with one hand and feeling the air with the other hand, like a blind man. or a drunk.
Then, exhausted with emotion, he sat down on the carpet and began to think deeply, waving his hands wildly in amazement. Yet he saw there, in front of him, his breeches as they were, puffy and with very regular folds, his Basra turban, his pelisse, and, below, the strings of the purse, which were hanging down!
And, again, Sett El-Hosn spoke from inside the bed and said to him: “What is the matter with you, my darling? I see you very perplexed and a little trembling. Ah! you were not like this in the beginning! Is that, by any chance…?"
Then Badreddine, while remaining seated and holding his forehead with both hands, began to open and close his mouth in a movement of mad laughter, and was finally able to say: “Ha! ha! you say that I was not thus in the beginning! What beginning? And what night? By Allah! but I have been away for years and years! Ha! Ha!"
Then Sett El-Hosn said to him: “O my darling, calm down! By the name of Allah upon you and all around you! calm down! I am talking about this night that you have just spent in my arms, of this very one where the ram entered my breach fifteen times powerfully! My dear! You just went out to go to the lavatory to do something. And you were there for almost an hour! Oh! I see you must be upset! Come then, let me warm you up, come, my friend, come, my heart, my eyes!"
But Badreddine continued to laugh like a madman, then he said: “Perhaps you are telling the truth! Nevertheless…! So I must have certainly fallen asleep in the lavatory, and there, very quietly, had a very disagreeable dream! Then he added: “Oh yes! very unpleasant! Imagine that I dreamed that I was something like a cook or a pastry chef in a city called Damascus, in Syria, very far away! Yes! And that I spent ten years in this profession! I also dreamed of a young boy, certainly a nobleman's son, accompanied by a eunuch! And such and such an adventure happened to me with them…” And poor Hassan, feeling the sweat wet his forehead, wiped it, but, in this movement, he felt the trace of the stone which had wounded him, and he jumped up, shouting: “No! Here is the trace of a blow from a stone struck by this child! Needless to say, this is very violent!" Then he thought for a moment and added: "Or rather no! It is indeed a dream! This blow is perhaps a blow that I received just now from you, Sett El-Hosn, in our antics!" Then he said: "I continue my dream to you. In this city of Damascus, I arrived, I do not know how, one morning, there, as you see me, in only a shirt and a white cap! The hunchback's hat! And the locals! I don't know what they wanted from me! I inherited, like that, the shop of a pastry chef, a good old man!... But yes! But yes! it is not a dream! I made a dish of pomegranate seeds which, it seems, did not contain enough aromatics!... And then!... Let's see!... Did I really dream of all this? And isn't that the reality?…”
Then Sett El-Hosn exclaimed: “My darling, what an extraordinary dream you had! Please tell me in full! »
And Hassan Badreddine, while interrupting himself to exclaim, told Sett El-Hosn the whole story, dream or reality, from the beginning to the end. Then he added: “And to think that I was almost crucified! And I would have already been, if, fortunately, the dream had not dissipated in time. God! I'm still sweating from that crate!"
And Sett El-Hosn asked him: “But why did they want to crucify you?" He replied: “But always because of the lack of aromatics in the dish of pomegranate seeds! Yes! the terrible pillory was there waiting for me with the cart drawn by a pair of Nile buffaloes! But anyway, thanks to Allah, it was all just a dream, because really the loss of my pastry shop, ruined from top to bottom, like that, would have caused me a lot of pain!"
Then Sett El-Hosn, unable to bear it any longer, sprang from the bed and came and threw himself on Hassan Badreddine's neck and pressed him against his chest, embracing him and devouring him with kisses. And he didn't dare move. And suddenly he exclaimed, “No! No! this is not a dream! God! Where am I? Where is the truth?"
And poor Hassan was carried gently to bed in the arms of Sett El-Hosn, stretched out exhausted, and fell into a heavy sleep, watched by Sett El-Hosn, who heard him murmur, in his sleep, sometimes these words: "It is a dream!" sometimes these words: “No! it is reality!"
With the morning, calm returned to the minds of Hassan Badreddine who, on waking up, found himself in the arm of Sett El-Hosn and saw in front of him, standing at the foot of the bed, his uncle the vizier Chamseddine, who immediately wished him peace. And Badreddine said to him: “But is it not yourself, by Allah! who had made me tie my arms and who had caused my shop to be ruined? And all this because of the small amount of aromatics in the dish of pomegranate seeds?"
Then the vizier Chamseddine, having no longer any reason to be silent, said:
“O my child, here is the truth! You are Hassan Badreddine, my nephew, the son of my late brother Noureddine, the vizier of Basra! And I only made you suffer all this treatment to have one more proof of your identity and to make sure that it was really you who got into my daughter's bed, the first night of her wedding. And this proof, I had it by seeing you recognize (because I was hidden behind you) the house and the furniture, then your turban, your breeches and your purse, and especially the label of the purse and the sealed envelope of the turban which contains the instructions of your father Noureddine. So you will excuse me, my child! because I had only this means in hand to recognize you, I who had never seen you before, since you were born in Basra! Ah! My child! All this is due to a little misunderstanding, which arose quite early on between your father, who is my brother Noureddine, and me, your uncle!"
And the vizier told him the whole story, then he said to him: “O my child! as for your mother, I brought her from Basra, and you are going to see her, as well as your son Agib, the fruit of your first wedding night with his mother! And the vizier ran to fetch them.
At this point in her narration, Sheherazade saw the morning appear and quietly fell silent.
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