Every once in a while, but always without any premeditation, I reach toward one of the book piles on my dining table and pull out one of the four volumes of The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night.[1] This time around, it happened to be Volume IV. Without any thought, I went for the last page. A moment later, I focused on the third paragraph from the bottom, which delighted me at once. And here it is in its entirety:

King Shahryar called together the most renowned annalists and proficient scribes from all the quarters of Islam, and ordered them to write out the tales of Shahrazad from beginning to end, without the omission of a single detail. So they sat down and wrote thirty volumes in gold letters, and called this sequence of marvels and astonishments: THE BOOK OF THE THOUSAND NIGHTS AND ONE NIGHT. Many faithful copies were made, and King Shahryar sent them to the four corners of his empire, to be an instruction to the people and their children’s children. But he shut the original manuscript in the gold cupboard of his reign and made his wazir of treasure responsible for its safekeeping.[2]

To my amazement, the title of my favorite book comes from the mighty king himself. And it is revealed at the very last page of the last volume in English translation of my choice. Over the moon, I immediately remembered the book’s title in Arabic (“Alf Laila wa Laila,” June 10, 2003). A quick search of the World Wide Web reveals many other spellings, but they all differ in minor typographic details only. Anyhow, the king’s title surprised me after so many readings of Shahrazad tales. How is it possible that I have not paid any attention to this fact from the book’s blessed end? The only plausible answer is that the end has been of least interest to me till this day. Alas, the end of my own book is also turning out to be of ever-greater interest to me as of late! Call it coincidence.

Footnotes

1. London and New York: Routledge, 1964.

2. Op. cit., Vol. IV, p. 536.