On Arabian Nights ✓

story

panj

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On Arabian nights, Tahir spins stories out of thin air. He weaves them as though they are silken threads and he is a spider. He sews them together with the threads of magic and mischief and mystery. They are seamless, and they are wonderful. They enchant and entrance and enthrall Scheherazade. She soon finds herself leaning across the bed to hear Tahir's mystical voice better, then leaning against him as the hours turn. On Arabian nights, Tahir spins stories out of thin air and Scheherazade falls in love with him. The nights pass like leaves flying rogue in the fall. They turn and turn and turn. One night, ten nights, fifty nights, one hundred. Tahir's hands gesticulate as he speaks. As he sleeps, though, they curl in Scheherazade's fingers or around her waist. The stories grow better and better as the nights work their way to a close. Scheherazade's favorite is still the one about Ali Baba and those forty thieves.

۲
Scheherazade is different. She is different now that Tahir has told her nearly a thousand stories. She is different now that more than three years have passed, more than thirty-six moons have turned. Scheherazade's smile only comes out to play when Tahir is gone from her bedroom. Scheherazade's anger is rarely directed towards the boy with golden eyes. Scheherazade has made him her prince, her king, her love. Deep down, Scheherazade knows that Tahir is a storyteller first - it was his stories that saved him, after all. Sometimes, when the night sits heavy over them like an indigo shawl, Scheherazade presses a knife to Tahir's throat and asks him if he has any last requests. One day, Tahir takes the blade in his own hands and asks her to tell him a story.

۳
In a world of peace, Scheherazade sits upon the colorful fabrics of her bed and begins to tell Tahir a story. He plops down beside her, limbs gracelessly tossed across the comforters. Those golden eyes still undress her to her bare skin, Scheherazade knows. Now, though, she doesn't mind it so much. Amzi slinks onto the sheets and curls up beside Tahir, as though waiting to hear Scheherazade's story for himself. Tahir watches her and waits. His expression, open and calm, screams go on. Scheherazade hesitates anyway, because it's been baked into her being to ignore the commands of men and to make her own. Perhaps telling a story would not be a surrender, though, but an offering. An invitation for Tahir to take her fragile, thumping heart in his hands and to press his silken lips to it. Scheherazade has learned, during the thousand nights that Tahir has told her stories, that he sees her longing to love and be loved, and that the same longing is echoed, reflected in his own mind, heart, soul. Scheherazade has learned, during the thousand nights that Tahir has slept beside her, that he sees her not as a queen but as a woman. Scheherazade opens her mouth. She clears her throat, and, on the last of these one-thousand-and-one days starts, "On Arabian nights..."