Reading Notes, Part B: Tales of a Parrot, A King Falls in Love and the End of Khojisteh

Yesterday I took notes over the beginning of Tales of a Parrot by Ziya'al-Din Nakhshabi , and today I'm going to take Notes over the End. It's titled A King Falls in Love and the End of Khojisteh, and it's the last portion of the story. So, as a reminder, Khojisteh is the wife of Miemum, who's away on business. Khojisteh wants to go see a neighbor who she finds attractive, but Miemum's parrot stops her every night by telling a story she finds interesting.

Reading Notes

• Khojisteh tells the parrot to leave her be and let her go see the neighbor, but the parrot manages to trick her into hearing another long story.
• In this story, a king raids a nearby kingdom to get the emperor's daughter for a wife; it works (shocker)
• The wife has a son who she gets separated from as part of her marriage, and was warned by her dad not to mention her son to her new husband.
• But she misses her son, and wants him to come live with her.
• One day she lies to her husband and says her father has a slave who is good at distinguishing jewels, and he decides to send a merchant to fetch this person; in private she tells the merchant the truth, that the person he is to fetch is really her son, whom she wants to come live with her.
• The merchant does so.
• When the king leaves on a day errand, the queen calls her son to her and shows him affection.
• The king's porter sees this and tells the king, who immediately thinks the queen has brought her lover to the castle.
• The king wants revenge and orders the death of the son; but executioner questions the son, and upon being told the truth, decides not to kill him.
• Instead, the executioner hides the son and lies to the king that he carried out the order.
• The king is still irritated over the whole thing, and the queen isn't sure what to do about it.
• One day, the queen talks to an old woman about the whole affair, and the old woman explains she can fix everything. 
• The old woman gives an amulet to the king and tells him it makes someone tell the truth in their sleep.
• Then the old woman immediately tells the queen to fake being asleep and to tell the king the truth when he puts the amulet on her.
• Everything goes smoothly, and the king and queen find out her son is still alive, and everything is fine again.
• Meanwhile, the parrot has managed to stall Khojisteh into the morning, so she still doesn't leave.
• That day, Miemum returns home, and the parrot basically immediately tells him everything, and Miemum kills Khojisteh.
• I have to add that this is a really stupid ending. Clearly the author just wanted to convey these short stories in one book for whatever reason, and as soon as the stories were done he was like "welp, gotta wrap this up in 200 words or less!"
• Although a quick Google search showed that some people have retold the story so that, while Miemum is initially angry, the parrot tells a story of forgiveness and Miemum ends up reconciling with Khojisteh, so I suppose it depends on what version you read.

The parrot stalling Khojistah from leaving (Source: Culturama)