Scheherazade

Here it is: he killed the girls because he couldn’t trust his wife. Three thousand girls who went to his bed virgins and left in the morning both married and dead. Because of a kiss given to another man. Because of a kiss.

Those are the facts. The rest is the story.

Here it is: I’m telling you the story of the story of how you save your own life.

It’s harder than you think to tell a good story.

You have a few minutes, so make yourself beautiful. Take care, you who have carried water and swept dirt floors. Now is your time for dancing, dancing girl. Now is your time to paint your palms with henna and bind your hair with ruby for royalty, pearl for wisdom, and both of them protect. Be straight backed and downward gazing. You can learn to be a wife. You were your poor father’s poor daughter and here you are, veiled like a bride, enough gold for a King’s ransom. Just remember: even in the dark, the moon and stars know where they are. Know where you are. Do not lose sight of what must happen here. Go carefully. You know this palace like the back of your hand. They cannot touch you. They cannot know you. You are promised to a king, and you have been promised before, all of these one thousand nights.

Your body will recognise him by now. There is a place for his head in the crease of your thigh. Look how your body is already mimicking that of an honest wife. His beard is soft like a boy’s. His eyelids are heavy and smoky with kohl. A story, he’ll say. Scheherazade, you tell the most beautiful stories in all of the world.

Your stories are what they are. Open your eyes wide, so that they reflect his marrying eyes right back at him. He has to want you. He has to need you. You’ve lasted two years and seven months and nine nights and three hours longer than any of the others. Tonight, tell him the story of the woman who knew her duty, and the king with marrying eyes…of the poor man’s daughter who told stories so beautifully that she broke men’s hearts and saved the world.

And married a king.

Tell him that one. Save your own skin, and let them go, the three thousand girls that you loved so well, sight unseen…the ones who came before you. Release them, so that, one day, they can come creeping back to him in the reproachful eyes of his daughters.

Make it count. This one is your killing stroke. This is your story, as well as his.

Nobody else must die here, daughter. Nobody else must die.