The prince and the Zanzibar Arab

Extracted from Rasekhoon

In ancient times there was a prince who loved hunting. One night he dreamed a beautiful girl and he fell in her love deeply. When he woke and got up, he got ready to journey in order to find the girl. He went and went until he reached a hillside. Above the mountain there was a big and wonderful palace.
The prince sat beside a tree to rest. By chance, the palace that the prince saw belonged to a Zanzibar Arab. Forty horsemen lived in that palace.
His job was closing the way of convoys and taking all their properties. The Zanzibar Arab was scouting over the roofing that he saw the prince on the hillside. He chose three persons out of his horsemen and ordered them to search to find who that young man was and if they doubted him they should cut off his head and take his property.
When those three horsemen went to the prince, the prince tackled them and killed all of them.
Zanzibar Arab saw all things from over the roof of the palace. So he and all his horsemen went to fight against the prince. The prince killed the horsemen one by one and at the end encountered the same Zanzibar Arab and began to wrestle with him. The prince hit the Zanzibar Arab onto the ground and sat on his chest.
He noticed that the Zanzibar Arab was crying. He took pity to him and asked him why he was crying. Zanzibar Arab said: "Pick up the helmet from my head."
As the prince picked up the helmet from the Zanzibar Arab's head he noticed the he was a girl. Zanzibar Arab took the prince to her palace and they lived together for one year happily. But one day the prince remembered that girl he had seen in his dream. So he gathered all of his luggage and said to the Zanzibar Arab: "Wait for me. I'll return back to see you after doing my work."
He went and went until when he reached next to a city. He camped there.
On the other hand Prizaz, the daughter of the ruler of the city, had come outside of the city to hunt. She saw the tent of him and invited him to go to her. As the prince saw Parinaz, he understood that she was the same girl he had seen in his dream. Both of them fell deeply in the love of each other. The nurse of the girl mediated every night that these two lover young man and woman see each other. When they noticed that it was impossible that the ruler give Parinaz to the prince, they decided to flee.
When Parnaz's father heard that his daughter had fled with a stranger young man, he sent several horsemen to pursue them. But the prince defeated all of them.
The prince and Parinaz reached the palace of the Zanzibar Arab, and all three set off to reach the city and home of the prince as soon as possible. When they reached the city the father of the prince hold a big celebration. But unfortunately, as he saw the Zanzibar Arab, he fell in her love and said that fact to his nurse. The nurse said to him: "As long as there exists the prince, you cannot get the Zanzibar Arab." The he began to persuade the father to kill the prince until when he agreed to kill his son.
Then the nurse summoned the special chef and secretly ordered him to mix the food of the prince with poison. But the Zanzibar Arab who had become informed of that plot, made the price aware of that plot. The prince got furious and fled from his father's home with the Zanzibar Arab and Parinaz.
On the way, he noticed that he had forgotten to take his money and jewelry with himself. So he returned back to take them. When he reached his father's home, as the order of the nurse they caught and blinded him and abandoned him in the desert in his situation. Through so much endeavor, the prince reached himself into the shade of a tree next to a spring and rested there. One day, between sleep and awakening, he heard the voice of two pigeons sitting on the tree above him and talking with each other.
One of the pigeons said: "O sister!"
The second pigeon said: "What do you want to say, o my dear sister?"
The first pigeon said: "If this prince who has lied under this three gets up and separates one of the leaves of this three and rubs it on his eyes, he will become seeing immediately." The pigeons said that speech and flight and got away.
The prince did the same work the pigeons had said and he became seeing.
Then he went and went until when he reached a water mill. The miller did not know the prince. The miller accepted him as his stepson.
One day the prince heard that there had occurred a war between the Zanzibar Arab and his father in which the Zanzibar Arab was killing a crowd of the army of his father every day. The prince got happy and introduced him to the Zanzibar Arab.
On the other hand the nurse jailed the father of the prince and with a very big army came to fight with the Zanzibar Arab. The prince used a guise on his face and went to the battlefield and wanted someone from enemy to fight with him. The nurse came ahead and was killed by the prince. The army of the nurse surrendered. The prince came to the city and took his father out of the jail.
The father apologized and said to his son that he was sorry. Then he left the government to his son. The prince held forty nights and forty days celebration and jubilation and married both the Zanzibar Arab and Parinaz.