The Story of the Porter and the Three Ladies

Notable Characters

  • The porter
  • The shopper
  • The mistress of the house
  • The doorkeeper/the flogged one
  • The three dervishes
  • The caliph
  • The caliph’s men

Plot Summary

The porter is asked by the shopper to carry her things and accompany her to her home. She is very beautiful, and so are her sisters, the mistress of the house and the doorkeeper. He stays at the house with them for their entertainment, and they spend the night drinking, eating, dancing, and singing.

Three dervishes arrive at the house, each of them blind in one eye. They join the party as well, and the the caliph and his men come along, disguised as merchants. They too join the party, and the ladies of the house explain that everyone can stay as long as they do not ask about what they see happen during the night.

The mistress of the house brings out two dogs and whips them. When she is finished, she cries with them and takes them back to their room. The men in the house also see that the second lady, the doorkeeper, has welts on her body from being flogged. They cannot help themselves, and they demand to know what happened in each case.

The women of the house plan to kill the men for disobeying their one rule: do not ask about what you see. To spare their lives, each of the dervishes tells their tale of how they came to be a half-blind dervish.

The caliph and his men request the presence of the three ladies at his place the next day. When they realize who he actually is, he commands them to tell him their stories, which they refused to share the night before. After the first and second lady share their stories, he marries everyone off and apparently they all live happily ever after.

The first lady and her two sisters, the dogs are married to the three dervishes. The second lady, the flogged one, is remarried to the caliph’s son, who happened to be the person that flogged her in the first place. The caliph himself married the shopper, for some odd reason, and apparently everyone was okay with this whole arrangement.

Tales within this Story