The king's daughter finally kills the efreet but in the fight, the saâlouk lost his left eye. Also, the king's daughter dies, as a consequence of the fight. And the saâlouk set out to go to Baghdad.
Sheherazade said:
The second saâlouk continued his story:
Then the rooster began to cry and flap its wings and wave to us with its beak, but we did not understand his language or what he was saying to us. Then he uttered such a terrible cry, towards us who did not understand him, that it seemed to us that the palace had collapsed on us. Then the rooster began to circle about in the middle of the yard and search for the grain until he found it in the hole of the basin, and he rushed upon it to peck it, when suddenly the grain fell into the water, in the middle of the basin, and changed into a fish which sank in the water. Then the rooster changed into a monstrous whale that jumped into the water and plunged there in pursuit of the fish and disappeared from view for a long time. Finally, we heard loud cries and we trembled with fear. And immediately we saw the efreet appear in his hideous form of an efreet, but he was all on fire like a hot coal, and from his mouth went forth flame, and from his eyes and his nostrils went forth flame and smoke; and behind him appeared the maiden, in her form of the king's daughter, but she was all on fire, like molten metal, and she set off in pursuit of the efreet who was already approaching us! Then we were all terribly afraid of being burned alive and of losing our lives, and we were about to throw ourselves into the water, when the efreet suddenly stopped us with a terrible cry and jumped on us in the middle of the room which overlooked the courtyard, and blew fire in our faces! But the girl reached for him and breathed fire on his face too. But all this caused the fire to reach us, too, coming from her and him; but her fire did us no harm, but his fire on the contrary! Thus a spark reached my monkey's left eye and damaged it beyond repair! And a spark struck the king in the face and burned his entire lower half, including his beard and mouth, and knocked out all his lower teeth. And a spark struck the eunuch in the chest, and he fully caught fire and burned and died that very instant and hour!
Meanwhile, the girl was still chasing the efreet and breathing fire at it. But suddenly we heard a voice saying: “Allah is the only great one! Allah is the only powerful! He crushes, dominates, and abandons the renegade who denies the faith of Mohammad, master of men!" Now, this voice was that of the king's daughter, who beckoned to us and showed us the efreet, which, completely burnt, had become a heap of ashes. Then she came to us and said, “Quick! bring me a cup of water!" They brought it to her. Then she spoke incomprehensible words over it, then sprinkled me with water and said to me: “Be delivered, in the name and by the truth of the only Truth! And, by the truth of the name of Allah the Almighty, return to your first image! "
Then I became a human being, as in the past, but I remained blind! Then the young girl, by way of consolation, said to me: "The fire has become fire again, my poor child!" And she said the same thing to her father, who had a burnt beard and fallen teeth! Then she said: “As for me, O father, I must inevitably die, for this death has been written to me! As for the efreet, I wouldn't have had so much trouble annihilating him if he had been a mere human being; I would have killed him the first time! But what tired me and gave me trouble was the scattering of the pomegranate seeds, because the seed that I hadn't been able to peck at first was precisely the main seed, which alone contained the soul of the genie! Ah! if I had been able to catch it, this grain, this efreet would have been destroyed instantly. But unfortunately! I did not see him. Because it was the fate of fate! And so I was compelled to fight him so many terrible battles underground, in the air and the water; and, each time he opened a door of salvation, I opened a door of perdition for him, until at last, he opened the terrible door of fire! Now, when the door of fire is once opened, one must die! But fate still allowed me to burn the efreet before I was burned myself! But, before killing him, I wanted to persuade him to embrace our faith, which is the holy religion of Islam; but he refused, and I burned him! And me, in my turn, I will die! And Allah will take my place with you and comfort you!"
At these words, she began to beg for fire until, at last, black sparks sprang up and rose towards her chest and her face. And when the fire reached her face, she wept, then she said: “I testify that there is no God but Allah! And I testify that Muhammad is the Apostle of Allah!"
As soon as she spoke these words, we saw her become a heap of ashes, right next to the heap of the efreet.
So we grieved for her. And I, I would have liked to be in her place, rather than to see under the aspect of a heap of ashes that radiant face of yore, that young girl who had rendered me such a blessing! But there is nothing to reply to the command of Allah.
When the king saw his daughter become a pile of ashes, he tore out what was left of his beard, slapped his cheeks, and tore his clothes. And I did the same. And we both wept over her. Then came the chamberlains and heads of government, and they found the sultan in a state of annihilation, sitting weeping beside two piles of ashes. They were very surprised and began to circle around the king without daring to speak to him, and that for an hour. Then the king came to his senses a little and told them what had happened to his daughter with the efreet. And they cried out: “Allah! God! What a great misfortune! what a calamity!"
Then came all the women of the palace with their female slaves; and for seven whole days all the ceremonies of condolence and mourning were performed.
Then the king ordered the construction of a large cupola for the ashes of his daughter, had it completed in great haste, and had the candles and lanterns lighted there day and night. As for the ashes of the efreet, they were scattered in the air under the curse of Allah.
But the sultan, after all these pains, fell so ill that he nearly died. This illness lasted a whole month. And, when his strength had returned a little, he sent for me, and said to me: "O young man, all of us here, before your arrival, we lived our lives in the most perfect happiness, sheltered from the misdeeds of the spell! And it took your coming to us to bring us all the afflictions. May we never have seen you, neither you nor your face of ill omen, your face of misfortune which threw us into this state of desolation! Because, first, you were the cause of the loss of my daughter, who, certainly, was worth more than a hundred men! And, secondly, because of you, it happened to me, in fact of burning, what you know! and my teeth are lost and the others damaged! And, thirdly, my poor eunuch, that good servant who raised my daughter, was killed too! But it is not your fault, and now your hand cannot remedy it: and all this has happened to us and you, by the order of Allah! Besides, Allah be praised who allowed my daughter to deliver you by losing herself! It's fate! Get out, my child, of this country! Because what has already happened to us because of you is enough for us. But all this was decreed by Allah. Get out and go in peace!"
So I, O my mistress, left the king's house, not quite believing in my salvation. And I didn't know where to go. And I remembered, in my heart, what had happened to me, from the beginning to the end: how the brigands of the desert had left me safe and sound, my journey for a month and my fatigues, my entry into the city as a stranger, and my meeting with the tailor, my meeting and my delicious intimacy with the adolescent girl underground, my deliverance from the hands of the efreet who first wanted to massacre me, and finally everything since the beginning to the end, including my change into a monkey become the servant of the sea captain, my purchase by the king for a very expensive price, because of my beautiful handwriting, my deliverance, in short everything! Even and above all, alas! the last incident that caused the loss of my eye. But I thanked Allah saying: "Better the loss of my eye than of my life!" After that, and before leaving town, I went to the hammam to take a bath. It was there that I shaved my beard, O my mistress, to be able to travel in safety in this state of saâlouk! And, since then, I haven't stopped crying every day and thinking about all the misfortunes I had endured and especially the loss of my left eye. And, each time I think of it, tears come to my right eye and prevent me from seeing, but will never prevent me from thinking of these verses of the poet:
Of my perplexity, does Allah merciful suspect?
Misfortunes fell on me, and too late I felt them!
Yet I will be patient in the face of my unbearable ills,
So that the world will know that I have waited patiently
On a thing even more bitter than patience itself!
Because patience has its beauty, especially practiced by the pious man!
Anyway, what Allah has decided on his creatures must run!
My mysterious beloved knows all the secrets of my bed.
No secret, even the secret of secrets, could be hidden from him.
As for the one who says that there are delights in this world,
Answer him that he will soon taste days more bitter than the juice of myrrh!
So I set out and I left this city, and I traveled through the countries, and I passed through the capitals, and I went towards the City of Peace, Baghdad, where I hoped to reach the emir of the Believers to tell him everything that had happened to me.
After long days, I finally arrived in Baghdad that very night. And I found this brother, the first saâlouk, who was there very perplexed, and I said to him: “Peace be upon you!: And he replied: "And be upon you peace! and the mercy of Allah! and all its blessings!" So I began to talk with him, and we saw our brother approach, this third, who, after the wishes of peace, told us that he was a foreign man. And we said to him: “We others also, we are two strangers, and we have arrived this very night in this blessed city!" Then the three of us walked together, and neither of us knew the other's story. And fate brought us to this door, and we entered your home!
And such are, O my mistress, the motives of my shaven beard and of my damaged eye!
Then the young mistress of the house said to this second saâlouk: “Your story is really extraordinary! Also, you can go! smooth your hair a little on your head and go and see the state of your path on the path of Allah!"
But he replied, “Truly, I will not leave from here until I have heard the story of my third companion!" Then the third saâlouk came forward and said...
At this point in her narration, Sheherazade saw the morning appear and quietly fell silent.
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Fourteenth Night
