The Story of the Fisherman with the Efreet
In the black palace, the king finally meets a young man who is in a very strange position.
The young man starts to tell the king his story, which, once again, contains a black man that copulates with an adulterine woman! In these stories, black people are very rarely seen as good people.
ON THE EIGHTH NIGHT
Sheherazade said:
When, in the black palace, the king heard the murmured complaints, he got up and walked to the side from which he heard them coming. He found a door over which a curtain fell. He raised this curtain, and in a large room, he saw a young man sitting on a large bed raised one cubit. This young man was handsome, of bendable stature, gifted with soft and eloquent speech; his forehead was like a flower, her cheeks like a rose; and in the middle of one of the cheeks, there was a mole like a drop of black amber. And the poet says:
Slender and sweet, the young boy! Hair of darkness, so black that they are darker than the night!
A front of clarity, so white that it illuminates the night!
Never had the eyes of men been at such a feast as at the spectacle of his graces.
You will recognize him among all the young boys by the unique mole he has
On the rose of his cheek, just below one of his eyes!
Seeing him, the king rejoiced and said to him: “Peace be with you!" And the young man continued to remain seated on the bed, dressed in his robe of silk embroidered with gold; but, with an accent of sadness spreading over his whole person, he returned the salutation to the king and said to him: “O lord, excuse me for not rising!" But the king said to him: “O young man, enlighten me on the history of this lake and its colored fish, and also on this palace and on your loneliness and on the cause of your tears!" At these words, the youth shed copious tears which ran down his cheeks, and the king wondered and said: “O young man, what makes you weep?" And the young man replied, "How could I not cry when I am in this state?" And the young man stretched out his hand towards the long tails of his robe and lifted them. And then the king saw that the whole lower half of the young man was made of marble, and the other half, from the navel to the hair of the head, was that of a man. And the young man said to the king: "Know, O lord, that the story of the fishes is a strange thing, which, if written, would be a lesson for the attentive reader!"
And the adolescent told this story thus:
STORY OF THE BEWITCHED YOUNG MAN AND THE FISH
“Lord, know then that my father was king of this city. His name was Mahmoud, and he was the master of the Black Isles and these four mountains. My father reigned for seventy years, after which he passed away at the mercy of the Retributor. After his death, I acquired the sultanate and I married my uncle's daughter. She loved me with such a powerful love that, if by chance I absented myself far from her, she would not eat or drink until she saw me again. And she remained under my protection for five years, until one day she went to the hammam after ordering the cook to prepare the dishes for supper. And I entered this palace and fell asleep in the usual place where I slept, and I ordered two of my female slaves to blow me air with a fan. Then one went behind my head and the other at my feet. But I was seized with insomnia thinking of the absence of my wife and no sleep wanted me: because, even if my eye closed, my soul remained awake! Then I heard the slave who was behind my head say to the one who was at my feet: “O Massaouda, how our master has an unfortunate youth! And what a pity for him to have our mistress, that perfidious, that criminal, for his wife!" And the other replied: “May Allah curse adulterous women! How could this adulterous girl ever have such a good character as our master, she who spends all her nights in various beds!" And the slave who stood behind the head answered: “Really our master must be very careless not to take into account the actions of this woman!" And the other said: "What are you getting at, here? Can our master suspect what she is doing? Or do you think she lets him act freely? Learn then that this perfidious woman always mixes something in the cup that our master drinks every night before going to sleep: she puts a soporific liquid in it, and he falls asleep. In this state, he cannot know what is happening, where she is going, or what she is doing. Now, after having made him drink the wine, she dresses and goes away, leaving him alone, and she is absent until dawn. When she returns, she burns something under his nose for him to smell, and then he wakes up from his sleep."
When I heard, lord, the words of the slaves, the light changed in my eyes to darkness. And I longed very much to see the night approach to be with my uncle's daughter again. She finally came back from the hammam. So we spread the tablecloth and ate for an hour, pouring each other drinks as usual. After which I asked for the wine I was drinking every night before I slept, and she handed me the cup. So I was careful not to drink it; but I pretended to raise it to my lips, as usual; and I quickly poured it into the hollow of the top of my robe, and that very hour and that very instant I lay down on my bed pretending to be asleep. And then she said: “Sleep! And may you never wake up again! For me, by Allah! I hate you, and I even hate your image, and my soul is tired of your frequentation!" Then she got up, put on her best clothes, perfumed herself, girded on a sword, opened the palace door, and went out. So I got up and followed her until she left the palace. And she crossed all the souks of the city, and finally, she arrived at the gates of the city. Then she addressed the doors in a language that I did not understand, and the bolts fell and the doors opened, and she went out. And I began to walk behind her, without her noticing it, until she had arrived at the hills formed by the accumulation of rubbish and a citadel surmounted by a dome built in terracotta: she entered by the door, and I went up to the terrace of the dome and watched her from above. And behold, she entered the house of a black man. This horrible man had his upper lip like a pot lid and his lower lip like the pot itself, and both of those lips hung so low they could sort the pebbles from the sand. And he was rotten with diseases, and he was lying on a bit of cane straw. At the sight of it, my uncle's daughter kissed the earth between his hands; and he raised his head towards her and said to her: “Woe to you! Why did you delay until this hour? I invited the black people who began to drink the wines and mingle with their lovers. As for me, I didn't want to drink because of you." She said: “O my master and the darling of my heart! don't you know that I am married to my uncle's son, whom I hate even in his image; and that I am horrified to be with him? Besides, had it not been for the fear of seeing you yourself wronged, I would have long since ruined the city from top to bottom and caused only the voice of the owl and the crow to have been heard; and I would have transported the stones from the ruins behind Mount Caucasus!" The black man replied: "You are lying, O debauchee! Now, I swear on the honor, and on the virile qualities of the black men, and on our infinite superiority compared to the white men, that if another time, from this day, you are thus late, I will repudiate your friendship and I will no longer put my body on your body! O perfidious traitor! you are thus late only because you satiate your female desires elsewhere, oh rottenness, oh the tiniest of white women!"
— At this point in her narration, Scheherazade saw the morning appear and quietly fell silent.
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