Tales from the Arabian Nights

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The Merchant and His Bright Parrot

The Merchant and His Bright Parrot

A MERCHANT had married such a pretty wife that it kept him jealously away from business travels. At last, when he had to leave her for some time, he went to the bird market and bought a talking she-parrot which he set in his house. He expected the parrot would pass on to him things that had passed while he was away.
It so happened that his wife had fallen in love with a young Turk. During her husband's absence the Turk used to visit her, and she feasted him by day and lay with him by night. When the merchant had made his journey he came home; and questioned the parrot how his wife had behaved while he was away.
The parrot said, "You wife has a man friend who passed every night with her while your were away."
On hearing this the husband went to his wife in a violent rage and bashed her. The woman suspected that one of the slave girls had been tattling to the master. She called them together and questioned them, but all of them said they had kept the secret, but that the parrot had not. "We heard her with our own ears," they said.
Now the woman bade one of the girls to set a hand mill under the cage and grind on it. A second girl was told to sprinkle water through the cage roof, and a third to run about, right and left, dashing a mirror of bright steel through the livelong night.
Next morning when the husband returned home after visiting one of his friends, he asked the parrot what had happened while he was away.
"Pardon me, master," said the bird, " but I could neither hear nor see anything because of the darkness and the thunder and lightning throughout the night."
It was summer and the weather had been pleasant the whole night, the man knew, so he cried, "But it did not rain or storm last night, and this is not the time for rains and storms either!" The bird, however, said she had reported what she had seen with her own eyes. Now the man got the idea that his wife had been wrongly accused and became so furious that he pulled the parrot from her cage and dashed her on the ground so that she was killed on the spot.
Some days later one of his slave girls confessed to him the whole truth, but the man would he not believe it till he saw his wife's lover coming out of her chamber. Then he drew a knife and slew him, and he did the same with his wife.
The merchant realised that the parrot had told him the truth about his wife and her affair, and mourned for losing the clever bird, but the mourning did not help him a bit.

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Literature
Ebu: Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2007 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD. London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2007.

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