"Just breathe deeply. You can do this, just remember the plan," Scheherazade thought to herself as she sauntered into the bed chamber. She knew she would not sleep at all tonight. As she laid down on the floor pillows, she wondered how many women had slept in that spot. Correction, not slept. Laid awake next to a monster, waiting to be strangled the next morning. Scheherazade could not imagine a worse way to die. Just as fear threatened to take over her body, she looked over and saw her sister Dinarzade staring at her. Dinarzade gave her a small smile, and it filled Scheherazade with hope. The smile turned into a stone-faced grimace as they both heard shuffling down the hallway, and the sultan stumbled in the room. Luckily he was so drunk from the festivities that he passed out snoring a few feet from the girls and did not try to touch either one.
Scheherazade thought of the conversation with her father earlier in the day: "Father, I can do this! I am clever and brave, and if there is any woman that can stop this endless tirade of murder, it is me. If I die trying, it will be for an honorable cause. Dinarzade and I have come up with a plan that will work. I will beg the sultan to let Dinarzade be with me on my last night. An hour before dawn, before he plans on killing me, Dinarzade will wake us and beg me to tell them a story. I will weave a story so enticing, so interesting with such a cliffhanger that the sultan will have no choice but to let me live until the next night to finish the story."
"That is all fine and well daughter," said the grand-vizir, "but what of the next night? Or the next? You cannot possibly continue to spin stories for the rest of your days! Furthermore, I will not let you marry such a man, when you could have any bachelor in this land!"
"Father, this is beyond my marital needs. This is beyond even my life. Women are dying, every day. This cannot continue, I cannot hear their screams every night as they lay there waiting to die. I can do this, I can continue the story by adding layers and layers. The sultan only hates women so much because his first woman deceived him so badly that he had to kill her. I just have to keep spinning stories until I can show him that he can love me, a good woman who will not deceive him. With my beauty and my wit, it should not take too long. Father, this is important. I feel it in my heart that this is my duty."
Scheherazade felt a tear slip out of her eye as she thought of the way her father shook his head in a resigned manner. She knew the toll bringing girls every day had taken on him, and the last thing she had wanted to do was add to that burden by letting him think he was losing his daughter. Scheherazade gave herself a little shake. This was not the time for emotion. She saw the sky begin to turn a faint purple, and Dinarzade begin to stir. It was time to begin her tale.
"
The Sultan Pardons Scheherazade", by Arthur Boyd Houghton (1836-1875). Engraving on wood
Author's Note: This story is based on the
Arabian Nights' narrator, Scheherazade. The sultan of the land had a wife whom he loved, but she deceived him terribly. So he killed her according to the law, but this caused him so much grief that he thought that all women were terrible and the world would be better if there were less women in it. So every night he ordered his grand-vizir to bring him a new girl and every morning he had her strangled. Scheherazade, the grand-vizir's daughter, who was well-educated and beautiful, begged her father to let her wed him and distract him with stories so that he would not kill her. This is how the Arabian Nights narration begins. I wanted to show the story from Scheherazade's point of view, because even though she was so courageous I cannot imagine how terrifying that would have been.
Story source:
The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang and illustrated by H. J. Ford (1898).
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