Scheherazade - I - Ali Baba

Ali, a Persian wood monger, gathered branches from the deserted cliffside and sang out into the desert night. His meager inheritance long exhausted, Ali spent his evenings laboring to support a wife and young daughter through the sale of kindling scraps at market.

Despite his poverty and modest trade, Ali was a man both wise and clever, and he sang out as much for the elevation of his own spirits as to bring his donkeys uplift from their master’s good cheer.

But now, in an instant, in the blue-green flash of a moonlit scimitar blade, everything changed. Ali found himself taking refuge, wild-eyed, on the straining upper limb of an olive tree. Desperate to remain undetected, he drowned his panicked breathing into the crook of his arm.

*

I am five.

And because I am five, I am facing the same peril in the same olive tree as Ali Baba. I adjust myself from my prone position on the corner of my bed so that I can maneuver upright and drown my own panicked breath into the crook of my arm.

My mothe…