One Thousand and One Nights

Hanan al-Shaykh,Tim Supple

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781408159620
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

One of the world's great folk story-cycles adapted for the stage by leading theatre maker Tim Supple, from the stories written by the seminal Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh. This unique edition will unlock the ancient tales for a new generation of readers and performers. Written by Arabic writers from tales gathered in India, Persia and across the great Arab Empire, the One Thousand and One Nights are the never-ending stories told by Shahrazad night after night, under sentence of death, to the king Shahrayar who has vowed to marry a virgin every night and kill her in the morning. Shahrazad prolongs her life by keeping the King engrossed in a web of stories that never ends - a fascinating kaleidoscope of life, love and destiny. The tales that unfold are erotic, violent, supernatural and endlessly surprising. The web of tales woven by Shahrazad were exoticised and bowdlerised in the West under the title of the Arabian Nights. This adaptation unearths the true character of One Thousand and One Nights as it is in the oldest Arabic manuscripts. In turns erotic, brutal, witty, poetic and complex, the tales tell of love and marriage, power and punishment, rich and poor, and the endless trials and uncertainties of fate. The great cities and thriving trade routes of the Islamic world provide the setting for these stories that employ supernatural mystery and intense realism to portray the deep and endless drama of human experience.

PART ONE
1
Shahrayar and Shahrazad

In which a great king called Shahrayar,
having witnessed his wife in an orgy with her slaves,
vows never to trust women again, and takes a virgin
to his bed each night only to kill her in the morning.
After months of bloodshed, the Vizier’s daughter
Shahrazad comes to him with her sister Dunyazad,
and in the long hours of the night, with her sister
cowering under the bed, she begins to tell him a story …

Narrator 1 A long, long time ago lived two kings who were brothers.

Narrator 2 The elder, King Shahrayar, ruled India and Indochina.

Narrator 3 The younger, Shahzaman, ruled Samarkand.

Narrator 2 Shahrayar was so powerful and strong that even savage animals feared him.

Narrator 3 But at the same time, he was fair, caring and kind to his people.

Narrator 1 Just as the eyelid protects the eye.

Narrator 2 And they, in turn, were loyal, obeyed him blindly and adored him.

Narrator 1 Shahrayar woke one morning and experienced a pang of longing for his younger brother.

Narrator 3 He realised, to his amazement, that he hadn’t seen Shahzaman in ten years.

Narrator 2 So he summoned his Vizier, the father of the two girls Shahrazad and Dunyazad, and asked him to go immediately to Samarkand and fetch his brother.

Narrator 1 The Vizier travelled for days and nights, until he reached Samarkand and met King Shahzaman, who welcomed him.

Vizier King Shahrayar is sound and well; he needs only to see your face and so he has sent me to ask that you visit him.

Narrator 3 Shahzaman was filled with happiness and excitement.

Narrator 2 He rushed to his wife’s quarters to bid her goodbye, but to his horror he found her lying in the arms of one of the kitchen boys.

Narrator 3 He dragged them by the heels and threw their bodies from the very top of the palace into the trench below.

Narrator 1 Then he left his kingdom with his brother’s Vizier and entourage, his heart bleeding with sorrow and grief.

Narrator 3 After a long voyage, the royal procession reached India.

Shahrayar As the days passed, Shahzaman grew ever paler and lost his appetite. King Shahrayar noticed his brother’s decline and assumed that he must be missing home and kingdom.

Dear brother, would you like to hunt with me? We shall track the roaming deer for ten days and return when you are due to set out for your kingdom.

Shahzaman I am unable to accompany you this time. I am too depressed and preoccupied. I have a wound on my soul.

Shahrayar Maybe the excitement and action of the hunt will revive you, my brother, and heal your wound.

Shahzaman No, you must leave me here, and go with God’s blessing and protection.

Not wishing to put pressure on his brother, King Shahrayar embraces Shahzaman and, with his entourage, goes out to hunt.

Shahzaman Shahzaman remained alone in the palace. He heard a bird cry and opened his shutters to look out, wishing this creature would lift him away into the sky, where he might forget the sorrow that had befallen him on earth.

He heard a commotion below him and to his bewilderment saw a private gate from his brother’s palace opening, from which his brother’s wife emerged, swaying like a dark, kohl-eyed deer. She was followed by a train of slave girls, half as white as the jasmine flower, and half as dark as ebony.

As he observed unseen, they chatted, sang and laughed around the fountain below his window. Gradually they began to undress in a leisurely fashion, with a complete lack of inhibition, and Shahzaman nearly cried out in surprise when he realised the ten black slave girls were in fact men, who stood with their penises erect like bayonets.

Shahzaman looked to see how his brother’s wife would react; but she just called out lustily –

Shahzaman/Shahrayar’s Wife Mas’ud … Mas’ud!

Shahzaman Another slave jumped over a wall and fell on her.

At this, the ten white slave girls and the black slave men pair off and begin to make love as though they have each been waiting for a signal from their queen, while Mas’ud makes love to her in the centre, and the sounds of their ecstasy and pleasure rise up to where Shahzaman stands hidden.

When Shahrayar comes back from his hunting trip, Shahzaman greets him with great joy and vigour. Shahrayar notices that his brother has regained colour in his cheeks and life in his eyes. The brothers sit down to eat and Shahrayar sees how Shahzaman falls upon his food with great alacrity and relish and he sighs with relief.

Shahrayar You worried me very much, brother. How delighted I am to come back and find you brimming with energy, cheerful and happy. So tell me what had made you so miserable when you arrived, and what has brought about this speedy recovery?

Shahzaman I had a great wound to my soul and my heart was set on fire, for I caught my wife in the arms of one of the kitchen boys in her quarters before I set out to come to you. My anger took control and I avenged myself by slaying both of them and hurling their bodies in a trench, like two dead cockroaches.

Shahrayar Shame, shame, I am filled with horror at this revelation of the deceit and wickedness of women. Never have I heard of such a thing! Had I been in your place I should have lost my mind, gone insane and slaughtered with my own sword hundreds, thousands of women. Let us celebrate and praise God for saving you from this turmoil. But now you must explain to me how you have managed to rise above your calamity and sorrow.

Shahzaman I beg you, my brother, in God’s name, to forgive me for not answering this question.

Shahrayar I wish you would tell me how this miracle happened in just ten days.

Shahzaman My King, I fear that if I tell you, you will suffer greater devastation and desolation than my own.

Shahrayar Your talk is strange and weird, brother. I do not understand what you are saying and my curiosity to know what you mean has risen. For God’s sake, tell me everything.

Shahzaman I witnessed your misfortune with my own eyes.

He whispers all he has seen into his brother’s ear.

Shahrayar In my garden?

Shahzaman Yes, beneath my window. So, as I watched your own misfortune unfold, I told myself that my brother is king of all the world, and yet this has happened, even to him. What he has suffered is far worse. And so I began to eat and drink again and forgot my strife and sorrow.

Shahrayar I will not, I cannot believe one word of what I have heard, until I have seen it with my own eyes.

Shahzaman Then let us think of a plan. Summon your Vizier and ask him to prepare a hunting trip. Then we will sneak back to the palace and sleep in my room, and in the morning you shall see for yourself everything that I have described.

Shahrayar Shahrayar agreed to carry out his brother’s plan and ordered his Vizier to arrange a hunting trip.

Shahzaman The news of the journey spread through the palace like wildfire and with the beat of tambourines, the blowing of trumpets and great commotion, the hunt departed.

Shahrayar As they’d planned, the two kings sneaked back, disguised, to Shahzaman’s quarters.

Shahzaman Shahrayar tossed and turned on his bed all night long, as if it were made of burning coals.

Shahrayar When day broke, he lay listening to the chirrup of birds and water tumbling from the fountain.

My brother must have been hallucinating, and all he told me was a figment of his imagination.

Just then the two brothers hear Shahrayar’s Wife call out from the garden ‘Mas’ud … Mas’ud!’ and a solid, heavily built slave jumps from the tree to the ground.

Mas’ud What do you want, you slut? Allow me to present Sa’ad al-Din Mas’ud.

He points to his prick and Shahrayar’s Wife giggles and falls on her back and opens her thighs, ready for him. As Mas’ud begins to make love to her, the ten male slaves mount the girls.

Shahrayar almost cries out, like a lion fatally wounded by an arrow in the eye. Quick as a bolt of lightning he reaches the garden with his sword in his hand, thirsty for revenge. All of a sudden the moans of pleasure and ecstasy in the garden become screams and yelps, piercing cries and wails, as Shahrayar strikes off his Wife’s and Mas’ud’s heads, in one stroke. And then like an insane gardener, he severs every head and body, on each side, as if he is chopping every stem in the garden, leaving the heads to fall and roll into the earth. Seeing that no head is left on its body, Shahrayar throws his sword on to the ground, takes off his stained robe and walks with heavy steps until he reaches a rock, sits on it and rests his head in his hands.

Shahrayar I, Shahrayar, shall each night marry a virgin, kissed only by her mother. I shall kill her the following morning and thereby protect myself from the cunning and deceit of women, for there is not a single chaste woman on the face of this earth!

Narrator 2 Shahrayar ordered his Vizier, the father of Shahrazad and Dunyazad, to find him a wife among the daughters of the princes of his lands....