A porter was standing in the market in Baghdad. There had been no work since morning. Then a lady calls him over.
She had come out to do her shopping. She takes him along with her, buying and having it put in his basket. Fruit and meat and perfume and flowers went in, one after another.
The heavier the basket got, the heavier his curiosity got. He could not see why a house that shops like this has nobody of its own to come along. He walked on without asking.
Three People Inside the Door
She stops at a large house in a quiet lane. The door opens and there are two more women inside. There was no man, and the three of them kept that house.
The porter sets the basket down and takes his fee. And then he cannot get his feet to move from the doorway. He wanted to know what kind of house this was.
He asks to be allowed to stay just for the day. They laugh, and agree to take him in. But they state one condition first.
Keep One Thing and That Is All
Ask nothing about what you see and hear. Whatever happens in this house, do not ask what it is. The porter says he will.
It did not look like a hard condition. He is getting food and a bed in exchange for keeping his mouth shut. As prices go it was cheap.
At nightfall there is a knock at the door. Three dervishes, wandering men who own nothing. They come in on the same condition.
A little later the door opens again. Three men in merchants’ clothes ask for a night’s lodging. One of them was the caliph Harun al-Rashid, and beside him stood his minister Jafar.
What Happened That Night
Late in the night, the business of that house begins. One of the sisters brings out two black dogs. Weeping, she beat them.
Then she stops, takes the dogs in her arms, and weeps again. The dogs made no sound where they were. Then she takes them away without a word.
Another sister picks up an instrument and sings. When the song ends, old marks on her body are there to be seen. Nobody could tell what they were.
The people in that room look at one another. The porter, the dervishes, the three in merchants’ clothes, all seeing the same thing. And one of them cannot hold it in and asks.
The Price of Asking
At the broken condition, the people of that house get to their feet. The guests are seized and the room goes quiet. The promise not to ask had a price attached.
Then one of the sisters opens another way. Let each of you say who you are and how you came here. If the telling is worth it, she says, your lives come back to you.
The place this series keeps returning to opens up again. A merchant did this in front of an ifrit and a fisherman in front of a jinni. This time several people in one room bring out their stories in turn.
The dervishes go first. The three of them did not know one another, and they had one thing in common. Each of them had lost an eye.
Today, The Promise Not to Ask
Promises not to ask are all around us. Another family’s business, other people’s relations, how somebody is getting by. Not asking about what you do not need to know is good manners.
But the same promise does other work as well. It can make people not see a thing happening in front of them. On this night, in a room where dogs were being beaten, nobody stood up.
The two are hard to tell apart from outside. Not asking out of manners and not asking out of fear look like the same silence. Where the line falls only becomes visible afterwards.
This chapter does not settle it for us. What it says is to decide how far the not-asking goes before you promise it. A promise with no limit in it hurts the one who kept it and the one who broke it alike.
The third part begins here. Out of the sea and into the city, and the teller changes again. In the next chapter three men who each lost an eye speak in turn.