As I continued to read the stories from Tales of a Parrot by Ziya’al-Din Nakhshabi, I was happily surprised to learn that the Khojisteh, the wife, starts to have regrets about cheating on her husband. In the tale The Merchant’s Daughter, whom the King Rejected, Khojisteh starts off saying that she is feeling shameful and plans not to go to her lover but to wait at home patiently for her husband, to which the parrot tells a new tale. In his new tale, he explains that the princess should not leave her heart wanting for her lover or she might die from grief like the King in his story. This is the first story that foreshadows the parrot’s goals of keeping the wife at home but not attempting to keep her faithful for his master’s sake. In the final story, A King Falls in Love. Khojisteh is Put to Death by the Hands of Miemun, Miemun, Khojisteh husband, returns home. Upon his return, the parrot relays to him what his wife was trying to do while he was gone and after hearing this Miemun has Khojisteh killed. I was not a fan of the ending; the parrot was pretending to help the wife, when he was really only making sure she did not see her lover and also that he would be able to tell on her when her husband got back. I think the parrot should suffer so repercussion for keeping the princess interested in being with her lover. In every story, you could tell that the wife is troubled about what to do and in one story she actually decides she is not going to be with the lover anymore but the parrot encourages her to go to him. I also did not like the fact that when Miemun got back he believed everything his parrot had to say about his wife without talking to her about the situation. I am planning on changing up the storyline to where the wife does not die in the end and the married couples has a conversation about what happened while they were apart.
A picture of the palace in Agra, India. Source: Pexels by Chee Huey Wong
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