One Thousand Days of Fishing

One Thousand Days of Fishing is a collection of Central Acheron folktales compiled in the Tabaxi language during the Khashieran Golden Age. It is often known in Common as the Khashieran Nights, from the first Common-language edition (c. 1706–1721 AR), which rendered the title as The Khashieran Nights' Entertainment.

The work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West Halcyon, Central Acheron, South Acheron, and East Acheron. Some tales trace their roots back to ancient and Infernal, Tabaxi, Leliurian, and Anarazi literature. Most tales, however, were originally folk stories from the Middle Empire and Southern Empire eras, while others, especially the frame story, are probably drawn from the Pahlavi Tabaxi work Hezār Afsān (Tabaxi: lit. A Thousand Tales), which in turn may be translations of older Anarazi texts.

Common to all the editions of the Days is the framing device of the story of the god of fortune and fate, The Dyad, being narrated the tales by the Fisherman, Abaalisaba Sinkha (Tabaxi: lit. Many Stories) who hopes to convince the god not to kill him. One or more tales are told over each night of storytelling, and during each day the God and the Fisherman speak about many philosophical topics before resuming the tale each night. The stories proceed from this original tale; some are framed within other tales, while some are self-contained. Some editions contain only a few hundred nights of storytelling, while others include 1001 or more. The bulk of the text is in prose, although verse is occasionally used for songs and riddles and to express heightened emotion. Most of the poems are single couplets or quatrains, although some are longer.

Synopsis

The main framing story concerns a poor fisherman living in a village near an oasis, who casts his net exactly four times a day. One day he goes to the shore and casts his net. First he catches a dead donkey, then a pitcher full of dirt, then shards of pottery and glass. On his fourth and final try, he calls upon The Dyad for good fortune and casts his net. When he pulls it up he finds a copper jar. The fisherman is happy, since he could sell the jar for money. He is curious of what is inside the jar, however, and removes the cap with his knife. A plume of smoke comes out of the jar and condenses into an avatar of The Dyad. The fisherman is frightened, but The Dyad is overjoyed and grants the fisherman a choice of the manner of his death.

The Fisherman is confused and distraught, he argues that since he freed The Dyad he should be rewarded. The Dyad responds that "...death is the reward for mortality and a choice of death is a just reward for my freedom". The fisherman, not wanting to die, begins to tell The Dyad a parable, called The Vezier and the Sage, wherein the two characters in the story come to a decision point and each tells a story in order to convince the other of their side. In each of these stories the characters begin a story as well until the narrative structure becomes many layers deep and with no story reaching its conclusion. The fisherman speaks long into the night until the next morning but does not finish the story. The Dyad, curious about how the story ends, is thus forced to postpone his execution in order to hear the conclusion. They eat together, rest, fish, and smoke from a hookah. The two go on to discuss the nature of mortality and fate, moral connundrums, rulership, and the responsibilities of those who have power over others. The next night, the fisherman begins his tale again, and as soon as the fisherman finishes a tale, he begins another one, and The Dyad, eager to hear the conclusion of that tale as well, postpones his execution once again. This goes on for one thousand nights, having philosophical discussions during the day and continuing the ever-deepening nested parable every night.

The tales vary widely: they include historical tales, love stories, tragedies, comedies, poems, burlesques, and various forms of erotica. Numerous stories depict jinn, ghouls, dragons, sorcerers, magicians, and legendary places, which are often intermingled with real people and geography, not always rationally. Common protagonists include Asmodeus, the historical Tabaxi caliph and adventurer, Nine Wisps, his Grand Vizier, Jafar, and the famous poet Rasmus. Sometimes a character in the Fisherman's tale will begin telling other characters a story of their own, and that story may have another one told within it, other times the Fisherman will conclude a story and then precede upward through the stories with conclusions before branching back out into new stories, resulting in a richly layered narrative texture.

On the 1001st day The Dyad decides finally to spare the Fisherman, but they do not simply refrain from killing him. The Dyad proclaims him free of death, outside of it, and utterly apart from the cycle of mortality. "in a voice otherly from the two before the solemn Dyad spake a Word of Power, and so stripped me from my doom" Thusly the Fisherman becomes immortal, but he asks The Dyad one final question. "How O' Unfathomable Fate has this been done? What word did you speak so clearly that the laws of Death did hear?

The Dyad replies not with words but with an equation written into the sand, then disappears, leaving the fisherman bewildered on the banks of the oasis.