Scheherazade – Part III: She Gets Into Your Head

Scheherazade by Marie-Éléonore Godefroid. Credit: Wikipedia Commons

The morning sun beat on my shoulders as I trudged down the leafy street toward the university. The smell of warm asphalt curled up from the street, and the bottoms of my shoes pulled at the sticky surface. Lines of bawabs, apartment managers, sat like ancient sphinxes in front of their buildings.

"What time is it, effendi?" A voice rang out. I looked at my watch with a dramatic flourish.

"It is nine o'clock, effendi."

"Your Arabic is very good, effendi."

"Thank you, effendi, you honor me."

We performed this ritual every morning for months.

But I was still late to class. This morning was to be devoted to translations from the classics—a dreary prospect. I strode through the university gates and slid into a chair in the back of the small classroom. The students were busy, heads down, translating some unimaginable text. I made myself small to escape the instructor's notice.

It didn't work.

"You're late, as usual," the instructor said, as she thumped a worn leather binder in front of me. "Let's see what you can do with this."

“Alf Layla wa-Layla.” I didn't need a dictionary to read the words: A Thousand and One Nights. I leaned back in my chair and wondered, The Arabian Nights are sitting open before me, and they are real. I began to translate. The words jumped off the pages, first the flowery beginning, and then the betrayal: “Now the Sultan Shahriyar had a wife whom he loved more than all the women in the world...” And his terrible vengeance against women unfolded. But then, "One day, the Grand Vizier spoke with his daughter, the beautiful Scheherazade. ‘Father, you provide the Sultan with a fresh wife every day. I wish to be his wife and stop this horror.’” The father was shocked and refused, but eventually gave in to her insistence.

And so, it began.

I didn't finish it that day, but I will tell you how it ended.

After almost three years, Scheherazade stood before her husband on a warm evening, when the palace sconces guttered in a soft breeze. She cradled a small baby in one arm and held another toddler by the hand. “My stories are over. I have given you two heirs. What will you do with me?" The Sultan smiled and said, “Come to bed, my dear wife, and bring the children.”

The tales were over; the vengeance ended.

I kept my head down that morning, poring over the words. I heard the class stand up and leave, as though they moved in a dream sequence. The instructor touched my arm. “The class is over, but you still translate. Take it home, but bring it back tomorrow. We don't have all that many copies.”

I stood up, the chair scratched the floor behind me, and I went out the classroom door.

The hall was long and empty before me as I slowly walked from the classroom. Another student, Rosemary, was waiting by the fountain with the dragon's head. “Sometimes, you surprise me. I always thought that you were a fake—someone that Berkeley picked to come to Cairo because they couldn't find anybody else. But I saw your face as you bent over the binder. She's in your head, isn't she?”

“Yes, she's in my head.”

Rosemary laughed. “She's in everybody's head. Come on, first some lunch and then a game of backgammon.”

“I wonder if she played backgammon.”

“I am sure she did, and she could easily have beaten you.”

That night, I finished a few more stories. The green hills of Illinois disappeared as the violin quavered the first notes of Rimsky Korsakov, and the boy that once listened had become a man, but the magic remained.

The magic remains for all of us.