In the year of the Prophet 1408 and in the month of Ramadan, the Caliph of Yunan, who rules a country far to the west of Baghdad which is famed for its riches and its highly intelligent inhabitants, set out to visit the Emperor of China.
He flew on a Jumbo 747 which is a magic carpet of such size that it can support 747 elephants and still travel at a speed of 60 leagues per hour and at a height of 20 tall cypress trees placed one on top of the other. Of course, the Caliph did not carry 747 elephants with him (although he would have liked to) but he did have with him his favorite wife and a retinue of 100 personal attendants, including his food taster and eyeglass polisher, three viziers and 40 delals (town criers) who, upon his return, travel the length and breadth of Yunan to proclaim the wonders of China and· recount the details of the Caliph’s visit to his devoted subjects.
On arriving in the Chinese capital the Caliph was surprised to find that the Emperor of China was a very simple man and that his own wife’s silk kimono was far more splendid than the Emperor’s rather drab uniform. However, there was a long, democratic tradition in Yunan and the Caliph greeted the Emperor most affably, shaking his hand for a long time and patting him on the back.
At the banquet which followed, the Caliph made a lengthy speech in ancient Yunanese that nobody could understand and ate he..artily of the great variety of exotic fare that was spread before him, only to feel hungry again an hour later.
So, on returning to his quarters, he ordered his personal cook to bake him a midnight snack of bean soup, moussaka and baklava to assuage his hunger. But the combination of thousand-year-old eggs, shark’s fin soup, chop suey, Peking duck and sweet and sour pork with the heavy Yunani dishes and sweets kept him up all night.
Next day, when one of the viziers came to him and said the town criers wanted to see him and ask him questions about his talks with the Emperor and about the banquet to which, of course, they had not been invited, he felt too ill to receive them so he told the vizier to order them to submit their questions in writing through the normal channels and not forget the excise stamp on each petition which would be double the usual rate because they were abroad.
“0 chosen of Allah, I cannot ask the delals to do this , ‘ ~ the vizier protested. “They have never had to submit their questions in writing before and I doubt if arty of them has any money for the excise stamp.”
“I don’t care,” the Caliph replied sulkily. “I don’t feel well and I don’t want to see them. Tell them that if they won’t put their questions in writing I won’t take them with me on today’s trip to the Great Wall. They can find their own magic carpet.”
The vizier was appalled. “Light of the universe, I beg you to reconsider. What will these delals say when we go back to Yunan if you treat them in this shabby way? How will they have the incentive and enthusiasm to proclaim your greatness throughout the length and breadth of the land, 0 glory of the galaxy?”
“I have spoken,” the Caliph said adamantly, and quickly retired to the bathroom as the culinary conflict in his stomach suddenly became too urgent to ignore.
When the vizier announced the Caliph’s decision to the town criers they were most upset.
“How can we submit questions by petition when we cannot write?” they protested.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” the vizier confessed.
“Doesn’t the Caliph know we cannot write?”
“The Caliph doesn’t know anything” the vizier began, then hastily corrected himself: “I mean, the Caliph does not concern himself with minor details of this kind. When he speaks, he speaks with the wisdom of Allah so you mustn’t question his judgment. And he’s not taking you with him to the Great Wall. You can find your own transport, he says.”
The delals groaned. They had spent all their money shopping in the bazaars of the Chinese capital and hadn’t a yuan to their name. But the kindly Chinese emperor came to their rescue and provided 40 rickshaws to enable them to do their sightseeing separately from the Caliph.
On their return to Yunan, the people eagerly gathered round the delals and wanted to know what great things their Caliph had seen and done in China.
The town criers spread their hands and said they didn’t know because the only time they had spent with the Caliph was on his rather crowded magic carpet where they had been pushed to the edges and had been too busy holding on to the flap tassels to keep from falling off.
During the journey home, the Caliph had prepared a long speech in which he described all the details of his visit with the Emperor of China and explained how he had skillfully extracted a promise from the Emperor that Yunan would be given top priority in crispy noodle exports from China for the next ten years.
But when the vizier handed the written speech to the dalals they said: “We said we can’t write and we can’t read either, so there!” They then quickly dispersed to their home towns where they made a pile selling all the Chinese stuff they had bought in the bazaars.
The Caliph was furious. He was even madder at the fact that his Grand Vizier had not been present to greet him when the magic carpet had touched down on the roof of his palace. “He hasn’t heard the last of this,” he said darkly and made several more threatening remarks. When the Grand Vizier got to hear about them he lost no time in hopping on the next carpet to the land of the Vikings, which had always been a home away from home for him, and where he decided to stay until the Caliph had cooled down.
The second manuscript is now being cleaned and restored and I hope to have it translated for you in the next issue so you can read the rest of Sheherezade’s fascinating story about the Caliph of Yunan.
