Sinbad inhabits two Baghdads. The first Baghdad is a place of “ease and comfort and repose,” where he lives in a great house among servants, slaves, musicians, concubines, and a rather vague “family,” and where he continually entertains many friends, all of whom are lords and noblemen. It is the familiar and well-loved place, the place to which he longs to return in the midst of his perilous voyages. The second Baghdad is never described but is no less present. It is the hellish place of all that is known, the place of boredom and despair, the place that banishes surprise. In the second Baghdad he is continually assaulted by a longing to travel, a longing so fierce, irrational, and destructive that more than once he refers to it as an evil desire: “the carnal man was once more seized with longing for travel and diversion and adventure” (Burton, third voyage). The voyages, in relation to the first Baghdad, are dangerous temptations, succumbed to in moments of weakness; in relation to the second Baghdad, they are release and deliverance. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that hellish Baghdad creates the voyages, which in turn create heavenly Baghdad. In this sense the two Baghdads may be seen as spiritual states between which Sinbad continually oscillates. The restlessness of Sinbad, as he alternately seeks rupture and repose, is so much the secret rhythm of the story that it is difficult for us to believe in a Sinbad who chooses one Baghdad over the other, difficult for us to believe in a contented Sinbad who settles down peacefully with paunch and pantofles among his friends and concubines, a Sinbad who severs himself from the unknown, a Sinbad who does not set forth on an eighth voyage.
Then when I had taken counsel with myself I said to the King, “Know, O my lord, that I have a plan whereby to catch the Rukh; which if it succeed, I ask only passage from your port.” Now when the King heard this, he said that if I spake true, he would have me a great ship builded, and filled with pieces of gold; but if I lied, then he would command that I be buried alive. Then did my flesh quake, but I solaced myself, saying within, “Better it is to be buried alive than to live out my days in a strange land, far from my native place.” Then I bethought me of the frog folk that live under the ocean and conceal themselves in hollow dwellings when they would catch fish. And I instructed that a great egg be fashioned of marble, fifty paces in circumference, and left hollow within, and set in the meadowlands without the town. So the King gathered about him his engineers, his miners of marble, his sculptors and his palace architect, and devised how they should bring the stone to the field and fashion the egg therefrom. And when the work was accomplished, the people of the city gathered round it in wonder. Then I instructed that twenty great boulders be brought to the field and laid about the egg, and thick ropes fashioned by the ropemakers. Then the ropes were fastened about the boulders and the ends left in the grass. And a cunning door was in the egg, so that when the door was shut the egg was smooth. Then forty of the King’s chosen soldiers entered the egg, and the door was shut behind them.
The white column of the marble sundial shimmers in the sun. It stands in the center of the garden, far beyond the leaves that shade Sinbad and allow only small spaces of light to fall on his hands and lap. The sun beats down on the white sundial and the warm shade presses against Sinbad’s eyelids. In the intense light the sundial in its hexagon of red sand seems to tremble. It shimmers, it trembles, slowly it becomes a white roc’s egg in the sand. The egg begins to turn slowly and unwind. It is a white turban, unwinding. Sinbad grasps an end of the turban and ties himself to the leg of a roc. He feels himself lifted high in the air and sees that he has tied himself to a serpent. He undoes the turban and falls into a dark cavern where a giant with eyeteeth like boar’s tusks seizes the captain and thrusts a long spit up his backside, bringing it forth with a gush of blood at the crown of his head. Sinbad plunges the red-hot iron into the giant’s eye and sees his wife lying dead at his feet. He lies down beside her and touches her cheek with his hand. Her eyes open. Tears flow from her eyes and become red and green jewels. Sinbad gathers the jewels faster and faster and runs through the cavern of corpses with jewels in his arms. He stops to drink at the side of a stream and when he lifts his head an old man asks him to carry him across on his back. Sinbad feels oppressed. The old man begins to shimmer and tremble.
In Lane, “khaleefah”; in Payne, “khalif”; in Burton, “caliph.” In Lane, “Haroon Er-Rasheed”; in Payne, “Haroun er Reshid”; in Burton, “Harun al-Rashid.” In Lane, “wezeer”; in Payne, “vizier”; in Burton, “wazir.” In Lane, “The Story of Es-Sindibád of the Sea and Es-Sindibád of the Land”; in Payne, “Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad the Porter”; in Burton, “Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad the Landsman.” In Lane, The Thousand and One Nights: Commonly Called, in England, The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. In Payne, The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night. In Burton, A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, Now Entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night.
And behold, the sun was suddenly hid from me and the air became dark. And looking up into the sky, I saw the Rukh, which was greater and more terrible than any I had seen, and I quaked for fear of the bird. Then the Rukh espied the white egg in the meadow and alighted on the dome, brooding over it with its wings covering the egg and its legs stretching out behind on the ground. In this posture it fell asleep, whereupon I rose from out my hiding place in the side of the hill and went down to the bird, which was greater than two ships full-sailed; and my gall bladder was like to burst, for the violence of my fear. So I walked in the shadow of the Rukh, each of whose feathers was longer than a man, till I came to the door in the egg, and there I released a pin. Presently the door drew open and the King’s forty soldiers came forth. And two going to one rope in the grass, and two to another, till all twenty ropes were in readiness, at a signal they rushed at the Rukh: and they placed four ropes about one leg where it lay on the grass, and four ropes about the other leg, and secured them with sliding knots; and they laid four great ropes across the tail where it rested on the grass, and they carried those ropes through the space under the tail, and secured them with sliding knots; and in like manner they carried four ropes about each wing, and secured them. Then when the work was accomplished we began to flee, but the great bird awoke. And when it made to lift its wings, lo! they were held down by great blocks of marble larger than elephants. So in its wrath the Rukh stretched down its head and seized one of the fleeing soldiers in its bill, whereat I heard his cries and saw his arms over the sides of the beak; and throwing him to the ground the Rukh thrust his bill through the man’s back, so that I heard the crack of bones. Yet did I and the others escape without harm, nor could the Rukh break free of his fetters, though he thrashed and cried out in mighty cries.
Sinbad, opening his heavy-lidded eyes, sees that he is in green water at the bottom of the sea. He is able to breathe in the water, a fact that does not surprise him. He moves his hand in the water and the water becomes a green garden. Sinbad sees that he is in a garden, sitting in the shade of an orange tree. The brilliant column of the sundial glows in its hexagon of red sand. He hears the plash of fountains, the cries of blackbirds and ringdoves. It occurs to him that perhaps the garden itself is his dream, perhaps he is fast asleep on a desolate shore dreaming of the warm shade of the orange tree and the bright column of the sundial, but for the moment, at least, he chooses not to think so. Sunlight and shadow tremble on his hands: is it a breath of air stirring the leaves? He looks forward to the evening meal, flute music, the laughter of friends. He will eat chicken breasts flavored with cumin and rosewater. Sinbad is in his garden. Peace, shade, and the cry of the blackbird. Perhaps in the evening he will walk past the needle makers’ wharf to the market of the cloth makers and look at bright-colored cloth from India, China, Persia.