THE SHORT STORIES OF ZAKARIA TAMER

ways fulfilled your commands.”

The king did not take any notice of him, but continued speaking: “You will be locked up, never to leave prison until the day you die.”

At that, policemen circled their leader, bound him in iron chains, and led him to prison.

The king remained quiet, engrossed in thought. Then he ordered his armies to wage war on the sun. So they aimed their canons toward the sun and fired bombs, which flashed like lightning in the sky but did not cause any harm to the sun.

The king’s anger flared as he screamed at his aids: “If you do not find a way to defeat the sun, right now, then I will cut off all of your heads.”

Just then an old vizier approached the king, saying: “My liege, I shall give you victory over the sun.”

The king, his patience spent, demanded: “How? Speak now.” The vizier pulled from his pocket a strange apparatus made of wires and two pieces of dark glass. He said: “This is my invention that will defeat the sun. I have named it: spectacles.”

The king placed the spectacles over his eyes. The sun seemed to be a small speck of light, so he shouted: “The sun is fleeing, for fear of my power, my augustness, my authority.”

The king chuckled, proud of his victory over the sun.

The Cloud

The policeman stood beneath the cloud and said in a firm voice: “Hear, O cloud, what I say.” “Speak,” the cloud replied meekly, “I am listening.”

The policeman said: “The rich, they are the ones who pay my salary at the end of each month. So, I want you to rain only on the lands of the rich.”

The cloud laughed and said: “Your request is impossible.”

160 BANIPAL 53 – SUMMER 2015