The Unwritten Nights

7 April 603 A.D.

The candles burn low, and the vizier’s house sleeps, but rest escapes me. I lay my burdens on the page to free myself of the weight of sin and meet the morning washed clean.

Alhamdulillah.

On my fifteenth name day, I was given to the king in marriage. I had grown to look forward to my future as his queen in the years of our engagement. In my naivety, I worshiped him for his handsomeness and regality. Like most girls, I had grand hopes for my marriage, and I could not believe that Shahrayar had chosen me to be his bride. Though I was from a noble family of good standing and moderate wealth, I thought others more beautiful than I, and certainly bolder in their pursuits of the king. I was a quiet girl, reserved, focused on my studies and my ambitions, not knowing they would one day mean my ruin.

In reflection, I see that my demure nature was what attracted Shahrayar. While I imagined he admired my quiet intellect, I now know that he was only ever interested in what he perceived to be my weakness of will. Shortly into our marriage, the excitement of infatuation wore off; I began to see what Shahrayar expected of a wife and that it was not a role I could fulfill with happiness. The king wanted a queen in name only, a woman whose beauty and loyalty were her only contributions to the kingdom. Shahrayar disregarded and dismissed at every turn my input and my desire to be a true partner to his majesty.

My adoration, over years of disappointment, was turned to bitterness. I resented the unwillingness on the king’s part to include me in his decisions or his thoughts, and his ever-present treatment of me as no more than a steed to mount with the arrival of dusk. I dwelt much on Mas’ud during these dark days, remembering our easy comradery, and his willingness to treat me as an equal in gender as well as a superior in station. So sharply contrasted was my relationship with Shahrayar, who had turned from my husband to my captor. I was trapped in the palace and a cycle of resentment and sadness, my worth diminished to that of a trophy wife. So began my descent into a type of madness, a madness of spirit and a sickness of the soul, which invaded my mind and turned me away from honor.

My eyelids grow heavy with the dawn. As I turn to sleep, I pray:

Let hatred be turned into love,

despair to hope,

oppression to liberation,

that violent encounters may be replaced by loving embraces,

and peace and justice could be experienced by all.

Alhamdulillah.

9 April 603 A.D.

The candles burn low, and the vizier’s house sleeps, but rest escapes me. I lay my burdens on the page to free myself of the weight of sin and meet the morning washed clean.

Alhamdulillah.

My meetings with Ma’sud began in innocence, though I knew in my heart of hearts that they could lead only to ruin. In the beginning, we met weekly in the garden, where I delighted in conversing with my old friend. We reminisced about our childhoods, carefree days spent among the lilied fields of my family’s estate, evening swims in the brackish rivers of Istakhr. Though I knew that even these platonic meetings were dangerous for the wife of a king, I reasoned that Shahrayar cared little enough to notice - why should I be denied the company of a dear friend? I had so little else to fill my days at the palace, and certainly, no others who cared to know my mind as did Ma’sud.

My ladies always accompanied me and were a witness to my propriety, though including them in my illicit acts is now one of my deepest regrets. Ma’sud and I would walk the garden paths and wile away the hours in Shahrayar’s absence. So happy was I becoming in Ma’sud’s company that I began to feel pity for the loneliness which I imagined my companions felt in their servitude to me. Against my better judgment, I sought to acquire for them walking companions, which Ma’sud delivered one afternoon in the form of 10 men that served in his master’s house. Soon my ladies and I so looked forward to our time in the gardens, away from the stifling air of a palace of commanding men, that we began to be reckless in our affections and abandon all discretion, a choice which would eventually mean our doom.

If asked to identify the exact moment when our meetings turned from companionship to flirtation, from innocence to immodesty, I could not. I can say only that I knew I walked a dangerous path and yet, in my selfishness, I dragged my ladies down it to meet their bloody end. Intimacy of thought and feeling blossomed into intimacy of the flesh, brought on by both a want of a lover of my choosing and a bitter resentment towards the king. I reveled in my foolish lust, drunk with the power of sharing what Shahrayar considered his property with another, with a slave. The thought of the king’s ignorance spurned my passion, and I wore my secret like a badge of honor which armored against Shahrayar’s inattentions.

The weight of these confessions sits on my eyes like a river stone. As I turn to sleep, I pray:

Let hatred be turned into love,

despair to hope,

oppression to liberation,

that violent encounters may be replaced by loving embraces,

and peace and justice could be experienced by all.

Alhamdulillah.

15 April 603 A.D.

The candles burn low, and the vizier’s house sleeps, but rest escapes me. I lay my burdens on the page to free myself of the weight of sin and meet the morning washed clean.

Alhamdulillah.

I am ashamed to say that I felt no remorse for my transgressions until the killings began.

So betrayed was Shahrayar that he turned from the race of women, forsaking love and all the daughters of his kingdom. The king was not content to live in solitude with his anger – his very nature required the dominance of the gender which dared betray him. Shahrayar felt entitled to the carnal pleasures only a woman could provide him, though what small value he once held for womankind was vanished. He devised a plan which, mired in cruelty, he deemed a fitting punishment for the evil creatures of my sex.

Every night, Shahrayar chose a beautiful woman to share his bed. The ladies of the kingdom were eager to gain favor with the handsome king in the beginning, imagining they could heal his heart and win a place at his side. Excitement quickly turned to fear, however, as news of the girls’ disappearances spread and the horror of Shahrayar’s deviance became known throughout the realm. With each dawn came the end of another woman of Istakhr. As morning overtook the king, he had the women with whom he’d lain the night before dragged from his bed and slain by the vizier, whose new role as executioner weighed heavily on his conscience. In blood, then, the king repaid my transgressions on all the women of my beloved land, my supposed death not enough to satisfy his righteous anger.

Shaharayar had been committing this ritual for a fortnight, as my heart wept with the guilt of knowing my selfish desires led to the ruin of our nation when I devised a plan.

The stories of my childhood, which I had been passing to the vizier’s daughters each night before they slept, had instilled in them the same values that blessed the spirit of our nation. The ritual of telling these tales of bravery, courage, and adversity, of beggars and tramps and kings, was the fiber that formed the bonds of morality. All I had learned in my youth about the beauty of our people and the ideals which unified all of Allah’s children was borne of these tales, tales which the king had told me, in a moment of half-sleep, that he had never heard.

Shahrazad was an incautiously brave girl from a small age. I remember her, at the age of three years, braving the waters of the eastern coast as our party celebrated the new marriage of the king and queen. This courage lent itself to a stubborn and willful nature in her later years and, when she first told me of her desires to risk herself to save the women of the kingdom, I dismissed it as the boasting of a foolish girl. As Shahrayar’s body count mounted, though, I grew ever more fearful for the daughters of our nation – it appeared the king would stop at nothing to eradicate his empire of all womankind. I began to appreciate Shahrazad’s growing beauty and her purity of spirit, a purity which complimented well her surreptitious capacity for cunning intelligence.

Though I loathed putting my dear Shahrazad, the vizier’s most beloved daughter, and my closest companion, in danger, I feared that no other woman in the kingdom could accomplish what she could. Shahrazad alone could bring out the best of in all that she met, so strongly did she inspire the admiration of others. Her youth, her courage, her naivety – I could see that these all would serve to entice the king at dusk, and the stories of our people would let her live to see the dawn.

Shahrazad’s eagerness to do her duty to our nation when I could not eventually convinced the vizier to part with his beloved for the sake of the sisters and daughters of Istakhr. I believe the plan we had devised was no small comfort to Najjad, as he undoubtedly knew that his daughters would one-day fall victim to Shahrayar’s blood lust if the king was allowed to continue his reign of terror.

And so we began.

These recollections are a burden I must lay down before the dawn. As I turn to sleep, I pray, now and always:

Let hatred be turned into love,

despair to hope,

oppression to liberation,

that violent encounters may be replaced by loving embraces,

and peace and justice could be experienced by all.

Alhamdulillah.