THE BOOK OF THE THOUSAND NIGHTS AND ONE NIGHT

RENDERED INTO ENGLISH FROM
 THE LITERAL AND COMPLETE FRENCH TRANSLATION OF DR J. C. MARDRUS
 BY POWYS MATHERS
 
Volume III

THE STRANGE TALE OF THE MIRROR OF VIRGINS

(...)

[Old Man of the Isles]: but I ask for something in exchange.’ ‘As Allah lives, my lord, all that is mine is yours,’ answered Zain, ‘and I include myself in saying all that is mine.’ ‘But what I ask is not an easy thing, my child,’ returned the old man with a smile. ‘I do not think that you will ever be able to find it…. I require you to bring me a girl of fifteen who is at once beautiful and a virgin.’ 

‘If that is all you wish, my lord,’ cried Zain, ‘the thing is easy. There is nothing commoner in our land than beautiful virgins of fifteen. ’At this the old man laughed so heartily that he fell over on his backside; when he had a little recovered from his mirth, he said: ‘Are they so easily found?’ ‘I can bring you ten such,’ answered Zain. ‘I have already had hundreds of such girls in my palace and much enjoyed depriving them of their quality.’ The old man laughed again and then said with a most pitying glance: ‘My child, what I demand is so rare that no one has been able to satisfy me yet. If you thought that the girls you had were virgins, you were the more mistaken. Women have a thousand ways of creating belief in a maidenhead which is not there; they have fooled the greatest tumblers of all time. As I see that you know nothing about such things, I will furnish you with a certain means of testing a girl’s state, without her knowledge, without touching her, without undressing her. This is important, as the virgin I want must never have been handled by a male or shown those parts of herself to the eye of man.’ 

‘By Allah, he is mad!’ said Zain to himself. ‘If it is as difficult to tell a maiden as he pretends, how can it be done without seeing or touching?’ He reflected for quite a while, and then cried: ‘I see it now! I will be able to tell them by their smell.’ ‘Virginity has no smell,’ answered the old man smiling. ‘By looking them straight in the eye, then,’ cried Zain again. ‘An eye has no virginity,’ said the old man.‘How then am I to tell, my lord?’ asked Zain, and the other answered: ‘That is just what I have promised to show you. ’He then disappeared from their eyes and returned in a moment carrying a mirror in his hands. ‘O Zain,’ said he, ‘I ought to tell you that it is impossible for a simple man to know whether a woman is pierced or a virgin; that is a knowledge belonging only to Allah or His Elect. As I cannot pass on my skill in this matter, I give you a mirror, which is a surer judge than any human. When you find a girl of fifteen, whose beauty is perfect and whom you either suppose or have been told to be a virgin, look in this mirror and you will see her naked image. Have no fear of gazing upon it, for only a direct glance from man destroys virginity. If the girl be not a virgin, her history will appear to you great and yawning like a gulf, and the mirror become stained as with fog. But if Allah has kept the child’s maidenhead, the thing will seem no larger than a peeled almond, and the mirror remain pure and untarnished.’

hymen like a peeled almond

(...)

Thus spake the old woman in her ignorance of the mirror, and set out confidently to haunt the roads and avenues of her experience. She lost no time in bringing a first choice of fifteen-year-old girls to Mubarak’s palace, and led them in one by one, covered in veils and modestly casting down their eyes, to the hall where Zain and Mubarak sat with the mirror. If you had seen all those lowered eyes, candid faces, and little shy figures, you could not have doubted the purity of any; but none of these things deceived the mirror. Zain looked in the glass each time that a girl passed before him, and her reflection appeared naked to his eyes. Every part of her body was visible; each detail of her little history was thrown into relief as if it had been presented to him in a casket of diaphanous crystal. As each girl passed, poor Zain was far from finding a tiny object like a peeled almond; it astounded him to think into what gulfs his unaided judgment might have thrown the unfortunate Old Man of the Isles. As he did not wish to bring shame on any by discovering that which Allah had hidden, he never told the old woman the cause of his dissatisfaction, but contented himself with wiping the fog off the mirror. Spurred by the hope of gain and not in the least discouraged by her first failure, the old woman brought a second choice, a third and a fourth and a fifth; but the result was always the same. Multitudes and multitudes of Egyptian intimacies you saw, O Zain, of Coptish intimacies, of Nubian, Abyssinian, and Sudanese; of Moroccan intimacies, of Arab and Badawi; intimacies of girls in every way beautiful and delightful; but never one that looked at all like a peeled almond!

After this disappointment the Prince and Mubarak journeyed into Syria and hired a magnificent palace in the fairest quarter of Damascus. Mubarak entered into negotiation with all the old women whose business was with marriage and the like; and these old women, on their part, entered into negotiation with every kind of little girl, tall and short, Mussulman, Jew, and Christian. Knowing nothing of the magic mirror, they confidently brought their candidates into the hall where Zain waited; but, for all their modest mien, unsullied looks, quick blushing cheeks, and fifteen years, the Syrians were no more successful than the Egyptians. The old women were obliged to retire one after the other, trailing their noses to the ground.

hymen like a peeled almond

’Then said Prince Zain: ‘My object is marriage, O venerable sheikh. I want to find a girl of fifteen at once entirely beautiful and quite a virgin. Her beauty must be without its equal among the youth of her time and her maidenhead past cavil, both within and without. I came to Baghdad to find such a one, after having searched in Egypt and Syria without success.’ ‘Such things are rare and very difficult to find,’ said the Imam. ‘If Allah had not set me in your path, your stay would have been endless and the old women would have spent their time in vain, But I know exactly where such a pearl may be found; I will tell you, if you will allow me.’Zain and Mubarak both smiled at this. ‘O holy Imam,’ said the former, ‘are you sure of the virginity of the girl you mention? And if so, how are you sure? If you have seen that thing in the girl, she is no longer a virgin in my sense; for true virginity resides as much in keeping the seal invisible as in keeping it unbroken.’ ‘Indeed, I have not seen it myself,’ answered the Imam, ‘but I will cut off my right hand if it be not as I say. Also, my lord, how can you or any man be certain before the marriage night ?’ ‘That is easy,’ said Zain, ‘I have but to look at her for one moment, dressed and veiled.’ Out of respect for his host the Imam did not wish to laugh, but he answered: ‘Our master must be more than ordinarily skilled in the science of reading faces, if he can determine the virginity of a strange girl by regarding her through her veil.’ ‘Yet it is as I say,’ retorted Zain. ‘If it be possible, let me see the girl; I will reward your services at their just value.’ ‘I hear and I obey!’ replied the Imam and at once set out upon his quest. 

Abu Bakr had told the truth when he said that he knew of a girl who would meet the Prince’s requirement. She was the daughter of the chief of the Imams of Baghdad; her father had brought her up far from the eyes of men, in simple seclusion as the Book commands. She had blossomed like a flower in his home, having never looked upon ugliness. She was white and elegant, she had come without flaw from the mould of beauty; her eyes were black, her little hands and feet were fragments of the moon. She had all the grace of a circle on one side and of a straight line on the other; but that which lay between her columns, having never been seen, cannot be described. Perhaps the mirror, by Allah’s aid, may be able to tell us of it in the future. Abu Bakr made his way to the house of his chief and, after the usual greetings, made him a long speech, sprinkled with texts, on the advisability of marrying little girls as soon as they were ripe. He explained the whole situation, and thus concluded: ‘This amir is noble, rich, and generous, ready to pay any dowry. He makes only one condition: that he shall first look upon the child for a moment when she is dressed and veiled and covered with the izar.’ The girl’s father reflected for an hour, and then said: ‘I see no objection.’ He called his wife, and said to her: ‘O mother of Latifah, rise up now and take our daughter and walk with her behind Abu Bakr, our good son; for he will lead you to a palace where Fate awaits the child. (…) The wife of the sheikh of the Imams veiled herself and sought her daughter, saying: ‘O Latifah, your father wishes you to see the streets for the first time to-day.’ When she had combed and dressed the child, she went out with her and followed ten paces behind Abu Bakr to the palace, where Zain and Mubarak waited in the reception hall.

O Latifah, you went in with wide dark eyes, astonished above their little veil. You had never seen a man, save your venerable father, and you did not lower your eyes, for you knew not false modesty or false shame, or any of those false things by which girls learn to take the hearts of men. You were shy, but you looked straight forth with your black eyes, so that Zain’s reason fled from him. He had never seen even the shadow of your beauty among the women of his palace or among the girls of Egypt and Syria. The reflection of you showed naked in the mirror and he could see, nestled like a little white dove between your thighs, a miracle sealed with the unbroken seal of Sulaiman (upon whom be prayer and peace!). He looked and rejoiced, O Latifah, for it had in every way the appearance of a peeled almond. Glory be to Allah, Who keeps the keys of every treasure for His Faithful!

hymen like a peeled almond

(...)