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Now if you ask his courtiers, they would say the two kings were betrayed by their wives, that’s why.
The story begins with the younger brother, King Shah Zaman of Samarkand. He saw his wife with his servant, drew his scimitar and cut the two in four pieces with a single blow.
His brother Shahryar, who ruled over both India and China, was a greater king so a greater calamity befell him. He saw his queen and 10 concubines clasped with slaves in his garden, like button loops clasp buttons.
He was so shocked that he decided to abandon his throne, the kingdom and the palace and persuaded his brother to do the same. Together, they decided to wander the earth till they found someone who was as unfortunate as they were.
After much wandering, they did find one who suffered a worse betrayal and it was not a frail human but a mighty and ferocious Jinni.
The Jinni kept his woman under seven padlocks of steel and yet she betrayed him to five hundred and seventy men and kept their rings as tokens of her treachery.
She added the two brothers to the list and kept their rings too, in a knotted string.
When they left her, they said to each other: “We seek refuge from women’s malice” and rode back to Shahryar’s kingdom. He sat on his thrown and ordered his prime minister to smite the queen to death. Once this was done, Shahryar slew all the concubines and slaves he had seen engaged in the orgy in his garden.
But this did not quench his anger. So, he asked his minister to bring him a bride and in the morning, he asked the executioner to strike off her head. This continued for three years till his own subjects raised an outcry against him, cursed him and prayed to God to destroy him.
Women made an uproar. Mothers wept. And parents fled with their daughters till there remained no young woman in the kingdom except two, the daughters of the prime minister: Sheherazade and Dunyazad.
Now this is the story you will hear from the kings’ sycophants who dominate all the courts. But if you went to those whose daughters were slain to quench the king’s thirst for blood, you would have heard a different story.
They said that the two kings were impotent. That they should have never married a woman but when faced with tremendous pressure from the public to produce heirs to their thrones, the two brothers agreed to marry, thinking that they would find a woman who would not divulge their secret.
They might have found one, as it is not uncommon for women to be married to impotents and spend their entire lives bragging about their husbands’ masculinity.
But they were not just impotent. They were also cowards. And since they were never faithful to anyone, they did not trust the women they married, so they resorted to what all coward men always do: violence.
They were kings outside their bedrooms, inside they were worse than mice. Since they did not want others to know this, they silenced their wives, each with a single blow of the executioner’s sword.
This went on for three years until they met their match in Sheherazade. She was beautiful. She was wise. She had read books and had a skill men never do, that of power, a woman’s soft power.
Her sister Dunyazad was equally wise and beautiful and she too was aware of a woman’s soft power and knew how to use it.
So, together they decided to teach King Shahryar a lesson.
But their father, the prime minister, being a man, did not know what this soft power was and how a woman could defeat a mighty king as well if she was determined to do so.
Being a man, the prime minister went for the easy option and decided to flee the kingdom when Shahryar hinted that now was the time for him to bring his daughters for the king to marry and slay.
Sheherazade, however, was ready for it. Actually, she had been waiting for this opportunity ever since the king had started shedding the blood of innocent women to hide his weakness.
So she said to her father: “I wish you would give me in marriage to King Shahryar, either I shall be triumphant and live or destroy him before I am killed.”
“You don’t know what you are asking for,” said the prime minister. “I am your father, I cannot lead my daughter to her death. Go, ask your mother to pack and be ready to flee like others.”
“No, my blood is not more precious than those of the hundreds of others who have been sacrificed on the ego of this mad king,” said Sheherazade. “Like them, I may perish too but before I do, I will put an end to this heinous crime.”
“You do not know the rage of a king. I do because I am his wazir,” said the prime minister.
“I may not know the rage of a king but I have a woman’s wisdom,” said Sheherazade.
“Prepare me for this good deed, and let him kill me as he will. I shall only die a martyr.”
Before we go any further, let me share a secret with you: all men are impotent before a woman’s soft power. This impotency is a state of mind, not a physical handicap. And all men have this weakness.
[To be continued…]