Free Scorpion Soup by Tahir Shah Page A

clockmaker, than the bird began to sing rapturously.
    ‘That’s him!’ exclaimed the princess’s attendant. ‘Release him. Princess Amina is awaiting him this very moment!’
    With a sigh the jailer unlocked the chains a second time.
    Filthy, bleeding, and reeking of fear, the clockmaker was brought to the princess’s private salon. He stood in the doorway, his shoulders hunched low, while the hoopoe’s cage was hung near to the window.
    It wasn’t long before the princess stepped in from the garden.
    The clockmaker found himself unable to speak, having never before been in the presence of such beauty. And the princess was silent too, her heart warmed by the gentle sensitivity of the stranger.
    ‘Last night, I had a dream,’ she began, explaining why she had called the clockmaker to her chambers.
    The couple spent the afternoon together in conversation and laughter. They felt drawn to each other, as if nothing in the world could keep them parted.
    Then, suddenly, the clockmaker put a hand to his mouth in fear.
    ‘How will I ever get back to my mechanism?’ he asked despondently.
    Princess Amina leaned forwards and touched her fingers to his cheek.
    ‘I shall help you,’ she said.
    But word had swept through the palace that a convict had been taken to the princess’s private apartment, news that eventually reached the ears of the Caliph himself.
    Enraged that his favourite daughter should be fraternising with a common prisoner, Harun ar-Rachid ordered for the machine, the hoopoe, the clockmaker, and Princess Amina, to be brought before him at once.
    Setting eyes on his machine, the clockmaker’s heart beat all the faster. The bird, the mechanism and the Caliph’s signet ring were all in the same room.
    But there were armed guards in every corner.
    One wrong move and he would be hacked to the floor.
    ‘If Your Majesty should like a demonstration of the machine,’ said the clockmaker plucking up courage to speak, ‘I would happily oblige.’
    The Caliph signalled to the guard for the prisoner’s chains to be unfastened.
    ‘Try and escape,’ he said, ‘and you will be cut down before you can touch a finger to your nose.’
    The perspiration beading into droplets on his brow, the clockmaker picked up the hoopoe’s cage and fixed it into position.
    ‘With the bird installed,’ he said, ‘the contrivance is ready to be used, Your Majesty. The administrator sits in the chair like this, and arranges the instruments like so. And then…’
    Before he could finish his sentence, the clockmaker, the hoopoe and the machine disappeared – leaving the Caliph, his daughter and the guards in astonished silence.
    Anyone with sharp eyes may have noticed that the ring on Harun’s finger vanished as well.
    A moment after it had done so, there was a loud grinding sound, and the mechanism reappeared in plain sight.
    Calmly seated on the velvet-covered chair, was the clockmaker. On his finger was the signet ring of Harun ar-Rachid.
    In one movement, he reached forwards, took the hand of the princess, and invited her to sit beside him. She did so and, instantly, the machine vanished once again.
    Back in his own time, the clockmaker presented the ring of Caliph Harun to his own sultan, but not before he was wed to the Caliph’s favourite daughter.
    Then, making his way to the palace for his audience with the sultan, the clockmaker dispatched his last duty.
    He opened the door of the bird cage wide, and released the hoopoe as he had promised.
    The sultan was at first sceptical that the ring had indeed come from the Caliph’s hand. Striding through into his private library, he reached up and removed a golden box from a shelf. It was ornate, the edges carved with figurines, the sides inlaid with the finest mother-of-pearl.
    With care, the sultan pressed the side of the ring into the lock.
    The box snapped open.
    Inside was a papyrus scroll that had not been read since the pen of Majnoon the Sorcerer had touched it a