But Shahrazad went to him and she said: “I have thought upon the deeds of this King, and it may be that I shall be the means of saving the girls of this land from death, and of ridding fathers and mothers of the anxiety that oppresses them.
He turned away from her and he sat apart. The Wezir was made very angry by the speech of his daughter. When he had finished speaking she said to him, “O my father, take me and bring me to the King, that I may be his bride.” He did not know that his daughter Shahrazad already knew of King Shahriyar-his story, and the marriages and slaughters that he made. So the Wezir said, telling of his distress. Is it a wonder, then, that I am oppressed with sorrow and solicitude?” I, who am his Wezir, have to deprive fathers and mothers of their daughters, so that he may have a bride whom he will kill. Now for three years he has been doing this, and it will soon come about that the girls of this land will all be married by the King and slaughtered. He took to marrying girl after girl, marrying one in the evening, and in the morning having her head taken off. “King Shahriyar made a vow that he would never permit a woman to deceive him, and he made the dreadful decision that he would let his wife live only as long as he himself might be beside her. And it happened to the King also that he was shown a woman who had been carried away by a powerful enchanter, and it was made known to him that, although the enchanter brought this woman down to the depths of the stormy sea, she found ways to deceive him and to make him a mockery. But the King’s own story is a grievous one: he was deceived and injured by a wife whom he loved and trusted not only that, but he saw his brother whom he loves deceived and injured in the same way. The King, my master, makes me his partner in deeds that have raised the people’s outcry against him and that have caused fathers and mothers to flee with their daughters from his dominion. “Know, O my daughter,” he said, “that in all the world there is no office more dreadful than the one I hold as Wezir of King Shahriyar. Her father, hearing the verses, ceased to sigh then looking upon his daughter, he began to speak of the troubles that oppressed him. Tell him whom anxiety loads that anxiety will not stay: As happiness passed, so will this, too-anxiety travels away. Thereupon Shahrazad said to him, quoting from one of the verses that were in her memory:
He sighed heavily, and he would not speak. His daughter, having watched him for some time, went to him and asked him to tell her why he was so troubled and anxious. He sighed often, he ate nothing, and it seemed that he would not be able to sleep. One day the Wezir appeared in his home looking downcast, and troubled, and dejected, and ill at ease. Her father was the Wezir of the King of that country-King Shahriyar. Her memory, too, was stored with the verses of poets and the sayings of kings and sages moreover, this girl was wise and prudent and witty. It is related of her (but God is all-knowing, as well as all-wise and almighty, and all-bountiful) that she had read a thousand books of histories and chronicles and stories. There was in ancient times, in a country between China and India, a young girl who had read histories, and chronicles of ancient kings, and stories of people of old times. Such are the “Tales of a Thousand and One Nights,” with their romantic stories and fables. Extolled be the perfection of Him who hath thus ordained the history of former generations to be a lesson to those which follow. To proceed: the lives of former generations are a lesson to posterity that a man may review the remarkable events which have happened to others, and be admonished and may consider the history of people of preceding ages, and of all that hath befallen them, and be restrained. Praise be to God, the Beneficent King, the Creator of the Universe, who hath raised the heavens without pillars, and spread out the earth as a bed and blessings and peace be on the lord of apostles, our lord and our master Mohammad and his Family blessing and peace, enduring and constant, unto the day of judgment. In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate! The Beginning of the Stories: Shahrazad The Beginning of the Stories: Shahrazad
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