Free One Thousand and One Nights by Hanan al-Shaykh Page A

remain alert for our encounter. But in reality I missed my opportunity and once more the sun woke me, slashing me with its hot whips, and I found myself staggering for home, weeping. There I found Aziza, the tears running down her cheeks as she sang:
            “My heart is shattered,
            My body is bleeding.
            Yet whatever pain my cousin inflicts on me
            I welcome it with all my soul.”
    I felt furiously angry, I reproached and cursed her and threw the items my beloved had left on my stomach at her. But my cousin ignored my tantrum and my angry words and knelt before me, saying, “This large dice means that although you were waiting for her, your heart was absent. With the date stone she is telling you that were you her true lover you would have stayed awake, for your heart would’ve been on fire, just as the date stone ignites the coal. As for the carob seed, she means that you must prepare yourself for separation from her and endure it with the patience of Job.”
    When I heard the word “separation” I clutched my cousin’s dress and wept and pleaded, “Help me, Aziza, and save me before I perish and die.”
    And my cousin, who seemed on that day distant and distracted (although I didn’t care to know by what), answered me in a low voice. “I feel as though my thoughts are tossed upon a raging sea.”
    She fell silent for a while but then seemed to take pity on me, for she said, “Go to her tonight and reconcile with her. I cannot give you advice other than these words, ‘Do not eat. Do not eat.’ ”
    Then she prepared me a delicious meal and fed it to me herself, as if I were a lamb, so that I would not be tempted by the aroma of the delicacies that would be laid out before me in the garden that evening.
    And so I returned that evening, dressed in a new suit which Aziza had sewn for me, and which she had carefully dressed me in, making me first promise to say to the girl:
            “Lovers, in the name of God,
            Tell me how can one relieve this endless desperation?”
    I found myself once more in the garden, tense and waiting for the woman, just like a tiger ready to pounce. So attuned was I to the tiniest of sounds that I heard even the minute rustling of a nightingale preparing itself for sleep. But the silence and tranquillity, with the moon and stars hanging above me, and the intensity of my desire and passion, made me relax a little and pour myself a glass of wine, so confident was I that I would not fall asleep. I poured myself a second glass, pulling my eyes open all the while to ensure that they were not drooping, for I thought that a little more wine would help me to be lucid and eloquent when I finally met my beloved. And then, when she again failed to appear, mymood changed to one of utter irritation and impatience and so I drank glass after glass, until I lost count of how much wine I had consumed. And then I slept, just as I had on the two previous evenings. I was woken again by the fierce rays of the sun, and found that I was stretched out in the garden, with a knife and a copper coin upon my stomach.
    I raced back home with the knife in my hand, and I must have looked insane, for people shrank back and even ran to avoid my path. As I reached our home, I heard the keening of my cousin:
            “I am alone in this cursed house.
            Its walls tighten around my soul
            Its windows waft towards me the foulest fumes
            Its doors clench me by the throat.”
    Her words moved me as if she was expressing what I myself felt so powerfully in my heart and mind. It seemed that I lost consciousness for a time and then I woke to find my face drenched in rose water.
    “The coin is her right eye and the knife is for slaughter,” Aziza told me.
    I screamed in horror, “Oh God, is my beloved going to take out her eye?”
    But my cousin said, “No, don’t be alarmed, she is telling