Week 5: The Parrot Lied, I'm not a Cheater

First of all, I just want to say that I don’t think I get a fair rep in this story. Somehow the stupid parrot is the hero and I’m the villain. “Oh, evil Khojisteh was a whore who was going to cheat on her husband! The parrot stopped her!” No, the parrot was a nosy bastard who acted like my husband could do no wrong. I just wanted someone to talk to apart from a stupid bird.

            I don’t think anyone considered that I was left along for six months before I saw Khwaja from the window. Six months where I had to stay in the house and couldn’t talk to anyone. Don’t get me wrong, the servants were nice, but they had other duties to tend to beside entertaining the mistress of the house. Miemum just left me alone, and I got bored and longed for actual human company, with someone who was my equal. While the stories the parrot told were nice, it didn’t reveal its true intelligence until later, so the stories were like clouds: fluffy with no substance. 

            When I finally saw Khwaja out of the window, I didn’t want to see him out of a desire to cheat on my husband. I did love my husband; I just wanted some company. Khwaja and I managed to exchange some notes without the parrot seeing, and he confessed to me that he was similarly bored: he was in town for business as well, being a prince, and was tired of the dealings that went on throughout the day. He also made it clear he wasn’t interested in more than my companionship (in fact, he didn’t like women at all in any way but that). 

            I also don’t know how the sharuk died. I know the parrot lied and said I killed the sharuk out of anger, but the thing was dead when I walked in the room. The only waving around that happened was when I grabbed it from the cage and shook it, to make sure it was dead. It may not seem rational to you, but it is how I reacted at the time. 

            Then the parrot started telling those stories, to stop me from leaving. I’m still not sure why, exactly. There was no lost love between me and the parrot of course; I think he just planned to use this knowledge in the future. But the stories were a lot more interesting than what he had previously told, and despite myself, I listened every night. I listened until the sun came up. I was waiting for the night when the parrot finally ran out of stories, but before that happened my husband returned. I was glad to see him, for as I said, I did love him. But apparently he didn’t love me. As soon as the stupid parrot opened his mouth and lied his feathers off, my husband believed him. I’m lucky I escaped with my life.

            Yes, I did manage to escape. I’m sure my husband will say he killed me. After all, he wouldn’t want it to be known he was bested by a woman. Although I am lucky that vase was near me. Throwing it at him gave me enough time to run out the house and to Khwaja. Khwaja has agreed to take me back to his home land, and to protect me if need be. We leave the day after tomorrow, as was already scheduled. Soon I shall be free.

            I suppose the real question is, why am I writing this down? Once I’m done, I’ll stuff it into a stone vial, seal it with wax, and hide or bury it somewhere. It may seem pointless. But I want to put my story out somehow. It may never be found, but maybe it will. And people will come to know that I am more than just an unfaithful wife who was tricked by a parrot.

The lying parrot (Source: The New Arab)

Author's note: As I mentioned in a previous post, I found the ending of the story (Tales of a Parrot, by Ziya'al-Din Nakhshabi) to be incredibly unsatisfying. The parrot tells Khojisteh stories night after night to stop her from going to visit a neighboring prince, and once her husband Miemum returns, the parrot immediately tattles, and Miemum has Khojisteh killed. As was common at the time, Khojisteh was treated as a plot device, and the reader wasn't given a chance to actually get to know her. The ending is very abrupt: it was literally just "The parrot tells Miemum everything upon his arrival home, and Miemum immediately kills Khojisteh." This frustrated me so much that I decided to rewrite the story from Khojisteh's point of view. Many of the stories had the similar moral, however vague, of how cheating is bad. I thought Khojisteh deserved a turn to explain her side, and to become a three dimensional character.

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)

Reading Notes, Part A: Tales of a Parrot, Khojisteh and the Parrot

The Tales of a Parrot collection by Ziya'al-Din Nakhshabi is in some ways a different version  of 1001 Nights, but instead of a woman telling stories to stay her execution, a parrot is telling stories to stop his master's wife from cheating on him. This story, Khojisteh and the Parrot, is how the wife finds herself with an eye wandering to a different man, and how the parrot decides to try and subtly stop her from doing anything.

Reading Notes:

• Miemum, the husband and owner of the parrot, must leave to go on political business, apparently (I'm assuming so since he's a prince).
• His wife, Khojisteh is very sad about this and won't eat or sleep
• For the next six months, the parrot tells her pleasant stories to make her feel better.
• But, at the six month mark, Khojisteh looks out a window and sees another prince who's visiting the area.
• Both find the other attractive, and the prince sends Khojisteh a message asking her to privately meet him that night.
• That evening, Khojisteh puts on her finest clothes and jewelry and decides to tell the sharuk about what's happening, assuming the sharuk will basically give Khojisteh her blessing.
• On that note, I have no clue what a sharuk is. The only thing Google gave me was a mythological bird that apparently rescued Sinbad the sailor, which doesn't really fit with the story.
• But apparently the sharuk is a bird, because the sharuk chastises Khojisteh for her actions and Khojisteh ends up pulling the sharuk from her cage and killing it.
• Khojisteh then goes to the parrot, who, not wanting to die like the sharuk, placates Khojisteh and subtlety mentions the parrot of Ferukh Beg, which gets Khojisteh's attention; she asks for the parrot to tell the story.

Khojisteh talking to the Parrot (Source: Wikipedia)