One Thousand and One Nights

[Part 4 begins here. The whole story begins here.]

“They are here!” cried Shah Zaman excitedly, pointing to the scene below - the Queen, King Shahryar’s, wife and her beautiful retinue of handmaidens.

“Shush,” shushed King Shahryar.

As the brothers spied down from their hidden perch, the Queen’s slave girls relieved themselves of their habiliments, covering the King’s grounds in silk and lace and random garments: skirts and petticoats, crinolines and afternoon dresses, chemises and shifts, corsets and bonnets, stockings and shoes, gloves and winter coats. The brothers stared, mouths agape and rapt.

“‘Tis truly a wonder. Verily,” whispered Shah Zaman.

“Aye,” said King Shahryar, like a pirate, although unlike a pirate, he was a King.

The girls proceeded to the jetting fountain amiddlemost the grounds where they splashed playfully and giggled girlishly, calling out private pet-names and sighed nothings, until presently they fell to tickling one another in that jetting fountain, the water cascading down their breasts and bellies and falling in streams between their long, shapely legs, and they tittered at the tickling until the tickling became touching and tittering turned to tiny gasps and heavy sighs and then in climax, the sighs did move to moaning as these beautiful girls rubbed their loins (i.e., their vaginas), one to the other, slowly in sensual rhythms, and they kissed each other heartily and in full sexitude or nipped at their budding breasts, their tongues calling forth erect nipples to play against smiling lips.

“The thing about girls fucking is it’s totally hot,” whispered Shah Zaman.

“Silence,” whispered the King. “Where is my wife, the Queen? Could she be wedged between those modeled legs over there? (For I can only see the brunette top of that maiden’s head. Do you see her? The one with her face lodged between those milky thighs. Or does the Queen find herself lost in those bosoms yonder - that gorgeous set over there - an explorer in a strange yet bountiful land?”

But the Queen, King Shahryar’s wife, was in neither location, as Shah Zaman soon pointed out. She stood to the side of the jetting fountain, surveying her handmaidens and touching herself from time to time, privately, until she grew bored with her lonely foreplay and called out plaintively for all to hear: “Saeed!” Her slave girls grew silent now and separated (if only temporarily) to scout the trees around. “Where art thou Saeed?” called the Queen. Loudly. Her voice echoing from the walls of the pleasure garden. And then she gasped and raised her hands to her mouth as some big dude, seemingly out of nowhere, dropped from a tree and bounded to her mightily to mount her from behind. “I am Sa’ad Din Saood!” he cried. And then he speared her. With his cock. (For there was not a single rooster in sight.)

“I can not watch!” cried King Shahryar, prostrating himself below the window. “But please, Zaman, keep me apprised of her goings and comings.”

Shah Zaman obliged. “This Saeed fellow is bussing your wife, the Queen, and he has wrapt his legs around her,” he said. Then he watched for a time. Then he said: “Okay. Now they’ve fallen to satisfying their lusts. Saeed is enjoying her. Right below us.”

“Sah-ah-ah-ah,” moaned King Shahryar’s wife, the Queen, from below the lattice, her husband’s hiding spot. “Make it stop,” whimpered the King, refusing to look. But his wife continued. “Sah-ah-ah-ah-ee-ee-ee-DUH!” she cried, moaning each syllable rhythmically and ecstatically, thrust for thrust. Soon her moans became unintelligable, animal, the shape of each syllable dissolving into high-pitched squeels and low guttural whinnies which seemed to be drawn forth from the depths of her being. Finally, these sounds culminated in a bestial cry that raised the birds from the surrounding trees.

“Pray tell me ‘tis over!” whispered King Shahryar.

His brother held up his hand. “Hold on,” Shah Zaman whispered. “He is now mounting your wife’s bosoms. And is about to spill his seed upon them.”

King Shahryar looked up at his brother, his body still lying prostrate on the floor. His eyes were tearful. And he cried out, “Only in utter solitude can man be safe from the doings of this vile world! By Allah, life is naught but one great wrong!” And presently he added, as an afterthought, “Do not thwart me, O my brother, in what I propose.”

Shah Zaman answered, “I will not.”

King Shahryar continued, “Let us up as we are and depart forthright hence, for we have no concern with Kingship, and let us overwander Allah’s earth, worshipping the Almighty till we find some one to whom the like calamity hath happened; and if we find none then will death be more welcome to us than life.”

And so the two brothers, King Shahryar and Shah Zaman, issued forth from a private doorway, away from what had once been King Shahryar’s pleasure gardens, and away from the Queen’s cavortings, to wander the earth as was now their wont.

TO BE CONTINUED

[Part 3 begins here. The whole story begins here.]

Upon awaking the next morning, King Shahryar called his retainers and ordered them to prepare his favorite steed and gather his hounds. He then made ready to rise from his splendid carpet bed, but before doing so, he turned to his sleeping wife, serene and seemingly innocent beside him. “O wife, O love,” he said, kissing her alabaster cheek with cool, lifeless lips. “I prepare now for the hunt.”

The Queen, his wife, opened her eyes, as the flower does blossom, and gazed sleepily into her husband’s eyes above her. A sly look crossed her countenace, emerging spontaneously from sleep, but only briefly; it soon dissimulated into feigned concern and mawkishly creased brows. “But you have only just returned from the hunt yesterday,” she complained, playing the fox, a role she knew well. For when the master is away, the fox does gaze longingly at the henhouse, hoping to dine surreptiously on the chickens within. But perhaps ‘tis truer that the Queen did play the cock (or rooster). For the cock gazes longingly at the henhouse to different ends than the fox. Far from desiring dinner, the cock desires desire itself. He crows and puffs his chest, strutting his gaudy tail-feathers before the henhouse - all to seduce the chicks lounging therein and to fuck them stealthily. For he knows his master will be sore distressed and irate should he catch the cock making love to his chickens. Which excites the cock all the more in his erotic endeavors. For ‘tis often said, danger is a turn-on. (Or aphrodisiac.) To a cock. (And to a Queen.)

King Shahryar pulled away from his wife, the Queen, and those flowering blossoms, her eyes. “Nevertheless, I depart at noon,” he said coldly, and after donning a pair of cream jodhpurs and black leather riding boots, he stalked from his room to collect his brother, Shah Zaman.

“Hath thou set the trap?” asked Shah Zaman when they met.

“Near sprung,” said King Shahryar.

Then they repaired themselves to the lattice overlooking the pleasure grounds, passing through various winding passages and secret doorways. “She thinks I’m hunting,” said King Shahryar.

“And so we wait,” said his brother. “For thy Queen to show her hand.” And he sniggered quietly to himself, pleased with this veiled innuendo that aspired greatly to double-entendre but fell short, in his brother’s view, vis a vis the signified’s specificity. For what could Shah Zaman mean by the Queen’s “hand”? King Shahryar puzzled over this.

Presently, night fell, and the brothers slept, only to be awakened hours later, in the early dawn, by the rustling of skirts and the tittering of handmaidens, as the Queen led her troop of lovely nymphets into the pleasure grounds below.

TO BE CONTINUED

[Part 2 begins here. The whole story begins here.]

When King Shahryar, the King of the Kings of the Banu Sasan in the Islands of India and China, returned from the hunt, he found that his younger brother, the Shah Zaman, was in altogether happier spirits, as if the lesser noble’s vexations had vanished overnight. “Pray tell, dear brother - has your heart healed so soon?” asked King Shahyar.

The Shah Zaman nodded. Knowingly.

“It is a good thing,” said King Shahryar and then he launched into a series of observations concerning the vagueries and vicissitudes of what some have termed the fairer sex (i.e., women). “Listen,” said he, waving his scimitar about for emphasis and pacing back and forth for effect. “I have thought much of you while hunting with my lieges, taking my pleasure and my pasttime, as is my wont. That is, in those moments when my mind was not otherwise consumed with enjoying the steady cantor of my steed or in sending my minions forth to beat the bush in advance of my hunting party, I thought a great deal about your particular predicament vis a vis your, um, deceased wife. And I must say, the malice of women is mighty. Migh-tee! Damn! I mean, it totally sucks to find your wife fucking a cook in any privy chamber, let alone yours. But seriously, Zaman, thou hast escaped many an evil by putting thy wife to death, and you can rest assured, brother of mine, thy wrath and thy grief were right excusable for such a mishap (i.e., catching your wife banging a chef), which never yet befel a crowned King like thee. I mean, especially with a chef. That’s never happened to a King that I can remember.”

The Shah Zaman held his tongue. Knowingly.

King Shahryar continued, waving his scimitar this way and that as if to underline each point of his discourse: “By Allah, had the case been mine, I would not have been satisfied until I had slain (or is it slayed?) a thousand women. But praise be to Allah, the case was not mine for that way, my brother, does madness lie!”

Thereupon Shah Zaman said, “Um, well…” and proceeded to tell his elder brother, King Shahyar, all he had seen. Of the sexy lesbians frolicking about the jetting fountain (a none too subtle phallic reference, rife with innuendo, as if the symbol of man (i.e., the penis) must be forecefully inserted into an otherwise beautiful (and sexy) sapphic scene via an ejaculating aquatic ornament). Of the Queen’s symmetry. And comeliness. And perfect loveliness. And of the gazelle-like grace with which the Queen moved and pantethed (yes, pantethed) for the cooling stream, which in the Queen’s case, happened to be a dude named Saeed, a cooling stream indeed!, who unlike a stream, lived in a tree, amongst the branches and leaves, in the King Shahryar’s pleasure garden, waiting only to make it with the Queen, King Shahryar’s wife. Which act Shah Zaman did describe, noting briefly the subtle acrobatics performed, and likening said acrobatics to “a button loop that clasps a button.” Which is to say, Shah Zaman told his brother, King Shahryar, the way Saeed fucked the Queen, King Shahryar’s wife. Hard.

When King Shahryar heard this he waxed wroth with exceeding wrath, and rage was like to strangle him; but presently he recovered himself and said, “O my brother, I cannot credit this till I see it with mine own eyes.”

The Shah Zaman smiled. Knowingly. “I have just the plan,” he said.

TO BE CONTINUED.

[CONTINUED FROM BELOW]

As Shah Zaman sat miserably gazing upon the pleasure grounds of his elder brother, King Shahryar, a dream-like vision did greet him. Lo! An exterior door of the palace, which was carefully kept private, swung open and out of it came twenty slave girls surrounding his brother’s wife who was wondrous fair, a model of sexiness and comeliness and symmetry and perfect loveliness and who paced with the grace of a gazelle which panteth (yes, panteth) for the cooling stream, cooling streams being particularly sparse in this part of the world, the Banu Sasan, surrounded as it is by the Arabian desert, and deserts (Arabian or otherwise) typically being arid and lacking in cooling streams, thus leaving many perfectly lovely and symmetrical gazelles panting and thirsty for want of water. Shah Zaman drew back from his perch by the window, but he kept on espying them from a place where he could not be espied himself because his elder brother’s wife was totally fucking hot, and he was efreaked that she might catch him espying on her and tell his elder brother, King Shahryar, a man not known for his tolerance or leniency.

The women walked under the very lattice above which Shah Zaman lay hiding and advanced a little way into the garden till they came to a jetting fountain amiddlemost a great basin of water. There they stripped. Naked. As in they took all of their clothes off. Every last stitch. And then they all paired off, each with each, to retire and recline along the perimeter of that jetting fountain and to make love to each other, tenderly, in a show of sapphic desire. Shah Zaman blushed. The Queen, wife to Shah Zaman’s elder brother, King Shahryar, stood alone, smiling upon the festivities around her, and then she cried out, “Here to me, O my lord Saeed!” At which point, some dude named Saeed dropped out of a nearby tree. He walked up to the Queen, and after throwing his arms round her neck and embracing her warmly, he proceeded to wind his legs round hers, as a button loop clasps a button (i.e., in a sexual manner), and to throw her (as the saying goes) and to enjoy her (if you catch my meaning).

Now, when Shah Zaman saw this conduct of his sister-in-law, he said to himself, “By Allah, the fact that my wife was getting it on behind my back is as child’s play compared to my brother’s plight. For he is a greater King among the kings than I. And yet damnable infamy goeth on in his very palace, and his wife is fully making it with some guy named Saeed who lives in a tree, waiting all day amongst the leaves and the branches just to get it on. But this only showeth that all women cheateth and that there is no woman but who cuckoldeth her husband. ‘Tis my conviction that no man is safe in this world from the malice and infamy of the fairer sex (who in truth, are all but fair)!”

Then he returned grateful thanks to Almighty Allah for this epiphany. Then he decided to tell his brother, King Shahryar, what he had seen.

TO BE CONTINUED.

In tide of yore and in time long gone before, King Shahryar, a king of kings and lord of armies and guards and servants and dependents ruled over the Banu Sasan in the Islands of India and China. He did love his younger brother, the Shah Zaman, King of Samarcand in Barbarian land, though he hadn’t seen the lad for some several score years - or something like that. And so at the end of the twentieth twlevemonth (i.e., “at the end of twenty years” in modern parlance) of their separation, the elder King yearned for a sight of his younger brother. He invited the lad (who by this point was a man) to his dominion, and more specifically, to his luxurious palace (which happened to be in the Arabic style with lush persian carpets and marvelous domes and intricate geometrical tilework and deep pillows all over the place as far as the eye could see where the elder king’s harem could lounge about and whisper under the intricate tile work and marvelous domes before getting it on with King Shahryar as they were often asked to do, being members of his harem.)

When the Shah Zaman received his elder brother’s invitation, he was like, “I’ll totally visit.” Then he caused his tents and camels and mules to be brought forth and encamped, with their bales and loads, attendants and guards, within sight of his slightly less luxurious palace, in readiness to set out next morning to his brother’s capital. But when the night was half-spent, he awoke in a tizzy and bethought himself, “I know I’m missing something - something I should’ve brought with me.” And so he donned his bedrobe and slippers and stole back privily to his apartments in the half-spent dead of night, where he found the Queen, his wife, fully fucking a common cook, a culinary artist of mean birth and exhorbitant chutzpah, on one of Shah Zaman’s very own carpets, the chef and the Queen, his wife, both in the process of deeply making it (complete with moaning and low level acrobatics). The world waxed black before his sight. “Forsooth!” he bellowed, drawing his scimitar. Then he cut the two into four pieces with a single blow and returned presently to his camp.

“Let’s ride!” he yelled upon returning presently to his camp. And as he rode, with his attendants and camels, guards and mules before him, he cried a little (but only when nobody was looking) and damned silently the perfidy of wanton whores and the evils and bad parts of the world as a whole. His colour changed to yellow, his body waxed weak and he was threatened  with a dangerous malady, such an one as bringeth men to die.

They rode like this for many days and nights, the Shah Zaman with his Wazirs and Emirs and Lords and Grandees and Nobility, until they reached the outskirts of the good King Shahryar’s copiously abundant lands (i.e., “nation state” in modern parlance). When the elder king heard of his brother’s arrival, he joyed with exceeding joy and caused the city to be decorated in his brother’s honor. When, however, the brothers met, the elder could not but see the change of complexion in the younger and questioned him: “You look yellow. And your body waxes weak. Pray, what is the cause of this, your new-found pallor?” The younger brother, through tear-drenched eyes, moaned miserably with burning sighs issuing from his tortured heart: “My heart, dear brother, my heart.” To which the elder brother, called “dear” by his younger brother, said, “Ah the heart, younger brother of mine. The heart. Well, listen, I’m going forth to hunt and galavant about and to take my pleasure and pastime; maybe this would lighten you up, no? Join me!”

But Shah Zaman, grief-stricken and love-lorn and also heart-broken, refused. “O my brother,” he said. “My soul yearneth for naught of this sort and I entreat thy favor to suffer me to tarry quietly in this place (which so happens to be your palace) so I can be wholly taken up with my malady and my affairs of the heart.”

“So be it,” said King Shahryar and set forth. “Pray, be good, dear brother.”

Shah Zaman called, “O my brother. Dear brother. I shall!” And then he removed himself from his room and sat himself down at one of the lattice windows overlooking the pleasure grounds.

TO BE CONTINUED.