prologue
The Shah’s wife was unfaithful to him, so he cut
off her head and summarily declared all women to be evil and
thereby deserving of punishment. Every night the Shah’s grand
vizier brought him a new virgin to marry and every morning the Shah
had the woman executed. After too many of these bloody sunrises,
the vizier’s eldest and favorite daughter asked to be brought to
the Shah as that night’s offering. The grand vizier protested, but
his daughter insisted, and this daughter was known throughout the
kingdom for her powers of persuasion. At the end of the day, the
Shah married the vizier’s daughter while the vizier wept in his
chambers, unable to watch.
At first, the daughter’s wedding night was
indistinguishable from the wedding nights of the other ill-fated
virgins who had married the Shah before her, but as morning
approached, the Shah’s newest wife began to tell him a story. The
story had not yet reached its conclusion when the pink light of
dawn crept around the edges of the curtains. The Shah agreed to let
the woman live for just one more day, because he couldn’t bear to
kill her before he learned the story’s end.
The next night the woman finished that story,
but before the sun rose over the dome of the palace mosque, she
began another, equally as compelling as the last. The following one
thousand and one nights each concluded with an unfinished story. By
the end of this time, the Shah had fallen in love with the woman,
and he spared her life, his heart mended and his faith in women
restored.
This is, of course, the story of Scheherazade.
It’s the story of the storyteller. We lay our heads on the block
and hope that you’ll spare us, that you’ll want another tale, that
you’ll love us in the end. We’re looking for the story that will
save our lives.
One thousand and one nights—nearly three years.
That’s about the span of this story. Will you listen? It’s almost
morning.