Story: The Voyages of Baham

The Voyage of Baham

Illustration by Dulac
2016

--October 1st, 1637--

     I am Baham. I sailed the seas from the Persian Gulf through the Arabian Sea, to the East Indies and around the Pacific. I saw the things that many sailors have dreamt. I saw mythical Rocs with large wings and sharp claws that would make a sailor reach for the nearest bottle of wine. I followed in my father's footsteps growing up, learning the trade of merchants.
     While wandering through the maze of merchants in the market, an officer of the Caliph approaches me. He asks me to set sail with a message and a gift for the King of Serendib. In return, a fortune to keep my family happy and prosperous for many generations. We are to set sail a week from now.

--October 7th, 1637--

     Suddenly, as we are closing in on the wharf of our destination, pirates come up on our port-side. Their boat is quick and catches us. They board our ship and seize our fortune. They kill those who resist and imprison those who mercifully surrender immediately. I am one of those. The pirates take us far from our destination and leave us stranded on an island. The sand is different here than the sand at my home country. It is not soft on our feet and does not dance across the seafloor as you walk to shore. 

--October 10th, 1637--

     With three days of no food and no water, we have sat on the beach dying. We are sweating through our clothes in the beating sun and a heat that whispers sinful thoughts to our ears. We hear something coming from the forest behind us. Men approach dressed in simple and bare clothes with guns and spears. We try to talk to them and they refuse to engage. We submit and they tie us by our hands. Connecting one person to another they chain us together and lead us to their village. Once we enter the village, we are locked away in a highly innovative construction of wood. A large man casts a shadow over the door frame as he approaches. He orders our release and pays the guards in gold. His face is aged, his chest large and his hands strong. There stands before me a rich merchant.

     "What is your name?" He glares down at me.

     "My name is Baham. I come from Baghdad"

     "Can you use a rifle?" He smirks.

     "Does the sun set to the West?"

      Over time, he continually nourishes us, teaches us about the wild elephants that he hunts, and makes us work his land to build our strength. One night, he takes me into the forest where we shoot the elephants, bury their bodies by a river, and dig up the remains of previous kills. Their tusks are worth more than my life. He brings the tusks to the merchants on the docks and is paid in handfuls of gold, silver and glittering jewels.

-- December 16th, 1637--

     Two months have passed and there has not been a day that I have not killed an elephant. Night is approaching and I have not seen a single elephant. Suddenly, with a hard slam to the tree, I fall from one branch to another. There stands an elephant on the other side. Again, another hard slam to the tree trunk as I brace myself. The elephant stares at me with full focus.

     What is going on?

     I pull my rifle from behind my back and load the gun. A stampede of elephants hollering with their tusks raised are coming my direction. With another hard slam by the elephant below me, my gun escapes my hands and falls to the ground. He lets out a loud holler and slowly pushes his front legs on the tree trunk sending a series of cracks up the trunk. The stampede is encroaching the tree and roaring from the top of their snouts. I am crawling my way to the center of the tree when the largest elephant emerges from the herd. The herd drops their trunks. The largest elephant is missing an eye and has claw marks across his forehead. With a smooth and slow motion, he wraps his trunk around the center of the tree.

     What am I to do?

     With a mighty tug, the elephant uproots the tree and brings me crashing down entangled in the tree limbs. He picks me up by the waist and sits me on his back. I grab onto his side and do not move. We move deep into the forest. Night is coming and the elephants have not made a sound since the tree was brought down. The elephant picks me off his back like a flea on a dog and sits me down in a pile of bones. The bones are large. They vary from skulls, to huge femurs... to tusks. It's their burial ground.

Illustration by H. J. Ford
2016

   

     The elephants surround me.

     What is happening?

     The elephants begin to stomp. The ground shakes and the bones vibrate beneath me. I turn in circles looking around and struggle to stand on the pile of bones dancing around my feet. The biggest elephant stands there calm before me while the others parade around and stomp the ground. He looks me in the eyes and raises his trunk. The herd stop their stomp and stand where they are. The largest elephant slowly reaches out his trunk just in front of my face. He blows a gust of breath through his trunk that knocks me on my back. He approaches me further until his feet are just before my feet. The bones beneath his feet are crushed to dust. He lifts his trunk once again, but the elephants do not move nor make a sound. I am at a loss for my mind with no words to be fathomed. He raises his leg and brings it above me.

     The night bursts with colors and a deathly pain.

THE END.

Author's Notes:

     The name 'Baham' I found on Wikipedia under Arabic Star names. I originally was looking got something elephant related or relating to wanderer or traveler, but I liked this one as well. According to the Wikipedia page, S'ad al Biham (Baham) means 'Luck of the Young Beasts'. Although he does not get away in this story, typically Sindbad makes an escape from whichever adventure he is on. So I found it to still be appropriate.
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     I completely changed the ending of this story into something more menacing. The story originally has the main character returning home again and escaping death as he always does, but I wanted to make this literally his "last voyage" of his seven voyages that are all different parts of the book. Making this his last voyage was difficult to do in terms of demonstrating the passing of time, making the story told in present tense, and truly avoiding making this seem as if it were a diary.

     The original story says that the elephants brought the main character, named Sindbad, to the deep parts of the forest and leave him there in an elephant burial ground where he escapes and lives happily ever after back at home with his family and lots of money. But I researched more into the spiritual and mythological meaning of elephants. They are seen as the wise chief who impartially settles disputes among the forest creatures. Wisdom is represented by the elephant in the form of the deity Ganesha, one of the most popular gods in the Hindu religion's pantheon. Similarly, the African elephant is seen as the wise chief who impartially settles disputes among the forest creatures in African fables, and the Ashanti tradition holds that they are human chiefs from the past.
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So, in relation to my story, they end Sindbad’s life because he is disrupting the prosperity of elephants in the region. They are heavily hunted for their tusks, so I was able to make this Sindbad’s “last voyage” and essentially restore balance to the forest.

Bibliography:

The legend of Sindbad the Sailor is just one of the many delights contained in the book known as The Arabian Nights or the 1001 Nights. This reading unit, drawn from Lang's Arabian Nights' Entertainments, includes all seven voyages of Sindbad the Sailor as told in first-person by Sindbad himself.
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