Thousand & One Nights: 66th Night:

When the wind began to blow, we set sail, and we sat chatting, my sisters asked me, "Sister, what will you do with this young man?"

I replied, "I will make him my husband." Then I turned to him and said, "O My lord, when we reach Baghdad, I offer myself to you, and we will be husband and wife." The young man replied, "Yes, indeed, for you are my lady, and my mistress."
I turned to my sisters and said, "Whatever goods we have are yours, my only reward is this young man. He is mine and I am his."
We sailed under fair wind until we entered Sea of Safety and began to approach Basra.

Night came. The young man and I fell asleep. My two sisters turned green with envy over him and harboured ill will towards me. They had been waiting patiently to get an opportunity. They carried me in my sleep, with my bed and threw me into the sea. They did the same to the young man. He was drowned. I wish I had drowned with him. But I was escaped. I was cast on a raised island. When I came to myself, the sight of ship sailing on like a lightning pierced through my heart. Deserted by my sisters I stood alone 
through the night.

At dawn, I saw a dry strip of land connecting the island to the shore. I crossed it, then wrung out my clothes, spread them on dry land in the sun. When they were dry I took it and put on me. I ate some dates and drank fresh water. I continued to walk. It remained two hours between me and the city. Suddenly I saw a long serpent as thick as the trunk of a palm tree, gliding sideways and sweeping the sand in her way, charging towards me. When she drew near I saw that she was being chased by a long and slender serpent as slender as a spear and as long as two. He had seized her by the tail, while she, with a tongue about ten inches long, rolling in the dust and eyes streaming with tears, wriggled right and left, trying to escape. Feeling pity for her, I ran towards big stone, picked it up  and hit him with it and killed him. As soon as he rolled dead, the serpent opened a pair of wings, flew up, and disappeared in the sky.

After this excitement, I felt tired and sat down to rest and dozed off. When I awoke, I saw a black girl with two bitches, sitting at my feet, massaging them. Sitting up I asked, "O friend, Who are you?"

She replied, "How soon you have forgotten me. I am she for whom you have done the good deed and sowed the seed of gratitude. I am the serpent who was in distress until it pleased you with the help of God the Almighty to kill my foe.  In order to reward you I hurried after the ship and carried to your house everything that belonged to you. Then I ordered my attendants to sink the ship, for I knew how you had been kind to your sisters all your life, and how they treated you, how out of envy over the young man, they threw you both into the sea, and caused him to drown. Here they are, these two black bitches, and I swear by the creator of the heavens that if you disobey my command, I will take you and imprison you under the earth." The girl shook, and turning into a bird, picked up me and my two sisters, and flew up with us, until she set us down in my house, where I found all my property, which she had brought from the ship. Then she said to me, "I swear by 'Him who made two seas flow' - this is my second oath - that if you disobey my command, I will turn you into a bitch like them. I charge you to give them every night three hundred blows with the rod, as a punishment for what they did."

I replied, "I shall obey." She departed. Since that time I have been forced to punish them every night until they bleed. I feel very sorry for them, and knowing that I am not to blame for their punishment, they forgive me. This is the cause of my beating them and crying with them, and this is my story and the end of my history.

When she finished, the Caliph was greatly amazed. Then he ordered Ja'far to ask the second girl to explain to them the cause of the rod marks on her sides and chest.

She said, "O Commander of the Faithful, when my father died...."

The Night was over and the break.



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