But when the king took her to his bed and began toying with her, and was about to ———— her, she wept, and he asked, “What is the matter with you?” “Your Majesty,” Scheherazade replied, “I have a younger sister, and I would like very much to take leave of her tonight before dawn comes.” So he sent at once for Dunyazade and she came…Then the king arose and did away with his bride’s maidenhead, and the three fell asleep. But when midnight arrived, Scheherazade awoke and signaled to her sister who sat up and said “…please tell me some delightful story to while away the waking hours before dawn.”
-The Story of King Shahryar and His Brother
Much has been written about Scheherazade as the teller of these 1001 tales, about her masterful control over the Nights’ narratives and her command of embedding stories within stories, by either telescoping or cutting them short as if playing a strong fish on a weak line. But less is said about how she and her sister play with other things.
Dunyazade is both eye witness to her sister’s wedding night and ear witness to her plea bargaining for her life. Why is she intruding in the marriage chamber and why interrupting the king’s first night plan? Did he never feel there were three in his marriage, that he was an eavesdropper on his harem, not a husband to his wife?
Dunyazade asked her sister to change the subject from what the king intended to do, if not say, and their ruse lasted 1001 nights, long enough for her to bear two sons and save 1000 other maidens from their death beds. Fast talking, stalling for time, playing the long- 2 and 3/4 year!- con. In this Orientalist threesome, if Scheherazade was the grifter with a gun pointed at her head in her own bed, and her husband King Shahryar was the mark holding the gun, does that make Dunyazade the shill or the voyeur, or both?
Scheherazade puts Dunyazade to sleep, Edouard Richter