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This clever tale-telling went on for a thousand and one nights, apparently uninterrupted by the fact that Scheherazade is said to have borne the king three sons during this period. Eventually, of course, the king's misogyny waned and he agreed to accept Scheherazade as full-time wife and queen. I couldn't recall what the king's brother had been up to for all that time, but it appears that Scheherazade had a younger sister named Dunyazade, just as beautiful as she, who was married off to the brother in one of those symmetrical happy endings so popular in the Middle East. If The Tale of the Two Queens was an epilogue of some sort, it must recount the further adventures of Scheherazade and Dunyazade.
I was still musing on what these might be when I arrived home. I told Mokhtar I was not to be disturbed, cleared my desk of Shayk al-Bahr, and addressed myself to my new prize. Upon close examination, both manuscript and portfolio proved to be in excellent condition. It was as if Burton had drafted a final, clean copy, shut it carefully away, and never touched it again. Once again, I examined the signature. If the document was a forgery it was a masterful one.
I turned back to the first page and gave myself up to the elegance of Burton's antique prose. The tale was more than an epilogue; it was an alternative ending to the Scheherazade series that only the most cynical reader could have foreseen.
I sat in silence for some minutes musing on what I had read. I imagined with mounting amusement the confusion this document would sow among the Burton scholars. There would first be a raging battle over the authenticity of the manuscript. Then, if my guess proved right, and The Tale of the Two Queens was found to be in Burton's hand but of his own invention rather than a translation, there would be a torrent of scholarly speculation on the scabrous turn that Burton's mind must have taken in his old age. At the center of the whirlwind would, of course, be the man who had discovered the document.
I replaced the heavy sheets in their case, wrapped the lot in its silk cloth, and put it safely away in the locked drawer of my desk. I looked at the clock. There was just time enough to translate a dozen more stanzas from Shayk al-Bahr before tea.
Several days went by and I hardly gave the Burton tale a thought, as I was busy with visitors from England. An infernal round of receptions, teas and dinner parties kept me even from my own work. But by the time my guests had packed their bags and set off for Cairo, a decision had begun to take shape in my mind.
My reputation as an Arabist was secure. I had always been known for patient scholarship and dependable research. Never had I been associated with the undignified controversies that sometimes sweep the universities. Moreover, there was the matter of the thousand dinars. I would have gladly paid one quarter that amount for what was clearly a document of great historical curiosity, but to muster the sum Basim demanded would have required a reordering of my tidy finances.
There was nothing more to consider. I would leave the field to the Frenchman. My slight taste for controversy would he amply satisfied by a quiet evening with this soon-to-be-celebrated Frenchman, in which I would suggest to him how easily the document that had established his reputation might have slipped through his fingers. I would, nevertheless, take one precaution...
I returned to Basim's shop one day before the week was out and found him once again squatting in the darkness, his hookah at his side. I set down the silk-wrapped package and took my place on the cushion he offered me. We sipped tea and spoke at length of the shipment of spurious caliphate jewelry that had suddenly flooded the bazaars. Basim shook his head at the idiocy of anyone unable to distinguish bone from rhino horn and I confess that until only a few days earlier several such people had been my guests.
"Of course," said the old man, as if the thought had never occurred to him before, "the foreigners would buy them."
Presently the conversation lapsed. Basim brushed the white silk with his fingertips. "And this, your Excellency? Did the tale amuse you?"
"It did, Basim, and I am honored that you should allow me to study it."
"It is my pleasure. And is your Excellency of a mind to acquire the article?"
"I am. But the Frenchman seems more of a mind than I. I regret that I cannot match his offer." The light in Basim's eyes seemed to fade, but I was looking into them so watchfully that my gaze might have disturbed him.
"Very well," he said. "Burton's work will come to rest in Paris rather than in London."
"I'm not sure it would disappoint him," I said. "Sir Richard was fond of Paris."
I stayed on for a few moments longer and let Basim overcharge me for an onyx signet ring that had once been worn by the chief chamberlain to Sultan Wazun of Aleppo. He saw me to the door and we bid farewell.
Eleven years have passed since I returned the Tale of the Two Queens to Basim's shop. For some months afterwards, whenever I opened an Arabist journal I expected to read some young Paris scholar's claim to have found Burton's missing manuscript, but no such paper was ever published. I returned from time to time to Basim's shop, where we sipped tea and talked of many things but never of the Tale of the Two Queens. I had thought that with profits from the sale of the manuscript he would surely replace the rotted plank at the entrance to his shop but each time I stepped in from the sunlight, it was to the creak of a patch of tin.
Two years ago, I retired from university and now amuse myself growing spices in a conservatory next to my cottage in Warwickshire. A year ago I learned from a younger colleague that Basim had died. His stock was bought by a well-known dealer from Cairo, and nothing of compelling interest was found.
I now feel free to tell the Tale of the Two Queens. I, like the Frenchman - if he ever existed - have let the original slip through my fingers. But I broke my word to Basim. The night before I returned the manuscript I copied it word for word.
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