Nocturnal Journal #1
Fiction & Poetry Newsletter by Ecem Yucel
-Poetry-
The Futon, the Gecko, and the Star
Lying on an old futon
passed down from your grandmother,
on the white-tiled floor of the balcony
of an apartment on the eighth floor,
the cool breeze of the Mediterranean summer nights
licks your naked legs, shoulders and arms,
your sweat cools down
and you get a tiny chill
as you examine the pinkish house gecko
on the corner of the balcony ceiling;
anxious, trying not to think
of the possibility of it walking
on your face
after you go to sleep
with an open mouth, drooling.
Your mind drifts to the boy
who brought a red rose
to your birthday party
the day before yesterday.
Sadly, he never gave it to you
after seeing the other girls
who controlled and prevented him
from being with you.
You think about the lost rose,
and who might’ve picked it up
after he left it in the giant,
decorative flower pot
in front of your building,
and came up to your apartment
to eat some cake with others.
You remember how he wore
his best red sweater that day,
the red of the lost rose,
then the red of the blood
on your mother’s hands.
After witnessing a car crash
from the same balcony,
being a nurse, she ran out
to the main street one night
to help the wounded.
She came back home,
putting a brave face for you
but the white of her hands
contrasted with
the red of the blood,
and in her eyes,
you saw her insides were shaken.
And even though the ambulance took
the owner of that blood,
you never knew if he really made it.
The chilly wind gives you goosebumps,
you stir restlessly on the futon,
your eyes trace back to the gecko,
confirming it hasn’t moved from its spot.
You notice a star flickering
despite all the city lights
in your partial view of the night sky;
maybe it’s burning out,
giving its everything not to die.
Maybe life’s not that bad,
you think, mesmerized,
you check the gecko,
then look back at the star,
close your eyes,
and you smile.
-Fiction-
Scheherazade’s Revenge
They say, on the one thousand and the first night, after a thousand tales, I told you I had no tales left to tell.
Then, I introduced you to our children; a two-year-old son and few-month-old twins. You were jubilated to learn that I gave you three blessed children, and swore to me that you already loved me for a long time.
They say you didn’t kill me at the dawn of our wedding night like you had killed a thousand women before me, starting with your first betraying wife. Because you were bored and curious about the rest of the tale I told my sister in your presence, which I stopped telling in the middle of it when the dawn broke.
They say I finished telling that story in our second night, and started another, stopped in the middle again, and told you a thousand tales for a thousand nights in this manner. Each night, your love for me grew more with our love-makings and my extraordinary tales, and now, even though my stories had come to an end, you wouldn’t take my life since you truly loved and cherished me. That my tales had changed you, turned you into a better man who would finally trust and love his one thousand and the first wife.
They say we lived happily ever after.
They say all these things, though they don’t know what really happened between Shahriar and his Scheherazade. Happily ever after is the only suitable ending for one-thousand-night-long tales for the listeners of the stories after all. If you take away hope and the happy ending from a tale, what would be left of it?
——
The real story is, you never pardoned me when my words drained, nor when my sister Dunyazad ran to fetch our children to soften your heart. You didn’t listen to her beseeching; you didn’t care for her tears nor the innocent faces of my children, soon-to-be-left motherless.
Rather, you looked at me, smiled, and said, “If you have no tales left to tell, I have no need for you. Go, bid your farewells to your beloved ones, Scheherazade, because you will die at dawn.”
I bowed to you then, took my crying sister and children, and left your chambers with the excuse of seeing my father.
“Is it time?” my father asked, with a face as white as chalk when my sister woke him to see all of us gathered in his chambers in the middle of the night.
“Yes, father. I’m afraid it is,” I said in a trembling voice. He tiredly rubbed his wrinkled face.
“I have been waiting in fear of tonight for the last three years,” he said.
“The time has come,” I replied, as I put my children in my father’s bed and kissed them one by one.
My father softly grabbed my arms and looked into my eyes. “We shall be good,” he said. I gulped, then nodded.
——
My sister Dunyazad helped me to take a bath. She rubbed many beautiful scented oils on my body and braided my long, dark hair with pearls. I slipped into my best white silk gown that was meant to be my shroud. At last, Dunyazad pinched my cheeks to bring some color on them, then she nodded to my father, meaning I was ready.
My father stepped forward and passed me a small crystal bottle. For a moment, I looked at the clear, water-like liquid in it. It twinkled in the candlelight.
“You shall feel nothing with this. Drink, my daughter.”
I brought the bottle to my lips and took a sip of the bitter, clear medicine. It was hard to swallow as it burned my throat and made me cough hard. My father shook his head.
“All of it, my Scheherazade,” he said.
When I finally stopped coughing and caught my breath after drinking the whole bottle, Dunyazad handed me a glass of water. Then, she opened the lid of a small, round tin box she took from my father. She dipped her finger in it, took some colorless ointment out, and smeared it neatly on my lips. My father brought the candle close to my face to inspect. His dark eyes seemed darker with thought.
“You are ready for dawn,” he said.
——
Two hours before dawn, I was accepted into your chambers. I told you I bade farewell to all my beloved ones, but one.
“Even though being my husband for a thousand and one nights hasn’t changed your heart, I couldn’t stop my heart from changing my beloved Shah,” I said. “And now you have it all. Before you behead me, allow me to bid my farewell to you as well, for you are also my beloved, my husband, my Shahriar.”
You smiled at me as if you almost felt remorse for your decision to kill me.
“Very well,” you said. “I shall allow you to bid your farewell to your husband.”
“Then I beg you to grant me your kiss one last time, as it is my final wish as your loving wife.”
You seemed as your stone heart had rather moved. You stood up from the comfortable chair you were sitting on and said, “As you wish, my Scheherazade, for I am deeply sorry to see you go.” I bowed to you before you crossed the distance between us and took me in your arms.
Once in your arms, the seducing scent of herbal and spice oils raised from my skin and went up to your head. Now I had dazzled you with my scent, my lips seemed irresistible to you. Your arms tightened around me like steel; the great Shah, once again claiming his property right before its disposal.
You kissed me like a wild animal; as if you wanted to devour me, you sucked and bit my lips until they bled and were swollen. As if there was no tomorrow.
Well, there was no tomorrow for us.
A moment later, you were lying on the carpet. Wholly paralyzed by the poisonous ointment you willingly sucked from my bleeding lips.
——
Your vizier, my father, was waiting at your door. He silently stepped into your chambers and helped me to carry you to the bed in which we made love nearly a thousand times. Your eyes were wide open all the time, watching our every movement with a mixed expression of bewilderment and rage. You couldn’t move or talk. Or even breathe properly.
When my father went out of your chambers to put the rest of my plan in order, I sat on the side of your bed, took your hand in mine, and talked to you.
“My Shahriar,” I said, “this is where all roads end. You shall live through the last hour of our one thousand and the first night, but the poison you swallowed from my lips shall take your life at dawn. No one or nothing can save you anymore. For I drank the last bit of the antidote.”
Now the only expression in your eyes was fear. I reached out and touched your cheek as a sad, loving wife would do. “If you were to pardon me when I had no more tales to tell, or when you saw your children, I would never betray you like this. I would believe you had finally changed, become a loving, trusting, merciful husband and Shah. All those tales were meant to educate you; I believed if you could learn from them and turn into a better man, I could somehow justify you killing a thousand women before me and devote my life to you. I could even come to love you. Alas, you haven’t changed at all and forced me to betray you like this. It is your fault your first, and your last wives have turned into betrayers.”
Your eyes welled up and your tears ran down. I reached forward and wiped them with my fingers.
After dawn, your vizier would tell everyone you had become ill during the night, and you wished only your beloved wife by your side to look after you. Your subjects were happy that you stopped killing your wives, their daughters, and sisters for the last thousand days and nights. They sincerely believed you loved your Scheherazade, the Golden Tongue, the mother of your three sons. It would be easy for them to believe if you died in the wee hours of the morning, from a heart disease you had been suffering for the last couple of years. You didn’t know but my father’s men were successful to spread the word of your imaginary illness all this time.
——
When the daybreak was nearly upon us, I was still sitting by you. “The time is near my Shah; the sun is almost here,” I said.
You looked at me desperately and cried. I had never seen that much fear in your eyes. I wondered if your thousand wives had also looked at you with these eyes right before you beheaded them. Then, I wondered if you had ever cared enough to look them in the eye.
Yet, I cared enough. It was pity maybe, or maybe it was because some part of me came to love you after three years of marriage. I wasn’t a monster as you had been for all these years. I might even miss you.
Therefore, I held your hand and told you one last tale until you drew your last breath: the tale I perfected in my mind for a thousand days and nights; the tale I kept from you all this time.
The tale of Scheherazade’s revenge.
Thanks for reading! If you’d like to read more poetry from me, please check out my new poetry book ‘The Anguish of an Oyster’ here.
You can also check my website for more information.
Great story Ecem. Well done!
Marvelous!