TE19 Iberian Adventure

Patrícia Portela

Can we talk in this game? I asked.

No. But you can anyway, you said.

Ok, let’s play a game within the game. From now on I am Scheherazade, your new wife. I’m on death row. You, the dreaded sultan, are the one who has condemned me. I sleep in the day, and you sleep at night. Every day we meet at dusk and at dawn, and during those brief moments, I tell you a story. If I tell you a good story, you can’t kill me, and I can’t die.

Ok, you said. Impress me.

I thought for a while, letting the dusk creep in.

You closed your eyes.

You met me a thousand dawns ago, I said. You were a despotic tyrant who wanted to privatise the dreams of the people, and I was determined not to let you sleep if you wouldn’t let me dream. My plan was to slowly drive you mad with my stories and influence your dreams, thus changing you entirely, irreversibly. But 1000 dawns later, I realised that you enjoyed the sleepless nights. Your permanent state of wakefulness had given you a world without disruptions, without desires that could never be realised, without ever having to wake up. I had become the focus of your attention, a convenient distraction from the horrors you were openly and shamelessly committing. And so I, Scheherazade, fled from the imperial castle without telling you the final story. You were devastated. Defeated, and knowing that you would never see me again, you fell into a deep coma. And from then on, for reasons unknown both to science and to the imagination, you began 58