Once upon a time, there was a king named Josomot. He wasn’t exactly young anymore. One day, the king called his minister and said,
“Listen, Minister. My queen has grown old. But even in old age, my heart feels young. So, I have this strong desire—I want to marry again. I’ll give you the wealth of five kingdoms if you find me a bride. I don’t want too many, just four new queens—one for my head, one by my feet, one on my right, and one on my left.”
Hearing this, the minister’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. An old king saying such things!
Trying to escape the situation, the minister said,
“Your Majesty, give me exactly six months. I promise I’ll find you the perfect queens.”
Saying this, he fled toward the southern lands, muttering to himself,
“Who would ever return to such a mad king’s kingdom?”
In the southern region, he met a man who seemed quite mad—but from his appearance, it was clear he came from a noble family. There was an air of royalty about him. The two quickly became close friends.
The minister asked him, “Brother, where did you come from?”
The man replied, “I was once a minister in a king’s court. That king, in his cane-wielding age, suddenly developed a desire to marry. He sent me to find him seven queens. And now, in the search, I myself have gone mad.”
Old age has caught up with him,
Yet he still struts with a cane in hand.
That old man—my grandpa—
Already has seven wives at home,
And now he wants seven more
To marry again!
Two ministers now had the task of finding eleven queens for two different kings. It wasn’t a simple equation by any means. Together, they wandered through forests and wild lands, searching endlessly.
One day, they came across a young girl. Curious, she asked the two mad ministers, “Brothers, where is your home? And who lives there?”
The ministers replied with a grin, “You and your ten friends should come to our house tomorrow for a feast. Then you’ll know where we live, and who’s there.”
The next day, floating along with the wind, all eleven girls arrived at the ministers’ home. Upon their arrival, the ministers served them cool, sweet sherbet.
As the girls sipped on their sherbet, cheerful chatter filled the air. At one point, one of them curiously asked, “So, do you have wives? And what are the marriage customs in your land?”
One of the ministers, thinking quickly, replied, “In our country, the rule is simple—if a man prepares sherbet with his own hands and a girl drinks it, they are considered married, and the bride must go to her husband’s home.”
Hearing this, all eleven girls gasped in shock and cried out in dismay. What the ministers didn’t know was that these eleven girls were actually fairies from the Land of the Fairies. If they married a human, they would never be able to return to their magical realm.
Overwhelmed with grief, the eleven fairies began to wail and sob, wringing their hands in despair. Meanwhile, the two cunning, mad ministers—servants of their foolish kings—looked at the weeping fairies and exchanged sly smiles.
One of them grabbed the end of the girls’ sarees and tied them into a knot, leading them away, while the other followed behind, keeping watch.
They walked for hours, until finally they reached the city of Tayeb. There ruled a mighty king named Shah Emran, whose palace was home to an extraordinarily beautiful daughter—Sonavan.
On the very same day the two ministers arrived in Tayeb city, Sonavan, the king’s beautiful daughter, went down to the lake with her maidservant to bathe. The ministers spotted Sonavan and her maid and immediately took notice.
One minister nudged the other and said,
“We’ve found eleven girls for the two kings, yet not a single one for ourselves. Just look, friend—two lovely girls laughing, singing, and bathing in the lake.”
It was the heart of winter—so cold it chilled to the bone. Still, the two ministers sneakily crept over, stole the clothes of Sonavan and her maid, and ran off.
Sonavan pleaded with them for a long time, begging for her clothes back. But the ministers were so vile, they paid no attention. Instead, they mockingly told the girls to come out, walking through the knee-deep water.
At that moment, the eleven girls—still bound together by the knot in their sarees—realized just how wicked these ministers were. They understood that they had been tricked, and the story of marriage was all a cruel lie.
Summoning their magic, the eleven fairy girls rose into the air and flew away. With a flicker of enchantment, they carried Sonavan with them, lifting her to safety. The ministers were left stunned, unable to do a thing.
They simply stood there, mouths wide open, scratching their heads.
One of them grumbled, “Women and their clever tricks!”
The other cleared his throat and said, “Indeed!”
Then their frustration turned to anger—
“At that old king! What’s he doing chasing young girls at his age?”
“Senile madness. That’s what it is—sheer senile madness.”
Cursing their fate and their foolish king, the two ministers sat together under a tree, sighing deeply. They wondered what to do next. Would they ever be able to complete the mission they had set out on? Or would they wander endlessly through forests, far from home, far from the royal court, lost and forgotten?
Just then, the sound of laughter startled them. They looked up and saw, by the very same lake, a group of girls splashing water at each other, laughing joyfully.
Looking closely, their eyes widened—it was them! The same eleven girls they had lost!
But the moment the ministers tried to approach and grab the fairy girls, each one vanished beneath the surface of the water, slipping away into the depths below as if drawn into the heart of the underworld.
Determined not to lose them again, the ministers dove into the lake in pursuit.
But the moment they entered the water, with a sudden whooshing sound—saaaiin!—they found themselves falling into an entirely different world. A world unlike anything they had ever seen.
Upon entering this strange underworld, the ministers were awestruck. Everything around them—houses, trees, even the bushes—glimmered with a golden glow. It was as if the entire land had been crafted from gold. Their eyes widened in disbelief, dazzled by the brilliance of this new kingdom.
As they wandered through the city, they noticed something even more peculiar: everywhere they looked, there were only women. Women ran the shops, worked in the fields, and did every kind of labor imaginable, while the few men present merely bought goods and quietly returned home. Women were even working as barbers!
This was the kingdom of King Khoybor.
One of the mad ministers couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the topsy-turvy world he’d entered. But soon, hunger got the better of him. He entered a shop to buy something to eat—but instead of being served, he got his ears twisted—hard.
Terrified, he went to another vendor, only to have the same thing happen. Everywhere he asked for food, someone came up and gave him a sharp twist to the ears.
Eventually, his misery caught the attention of two women. Without warning, they picked him up—one at the arms, one at the legs—and carried him away toward their palace.
Oh, what a palace it was!
With golden roofs overhead
And shimmering beds below,
They carried him like a royal guest
To chambers that gleamed with a golden glow.
Inside that gleaming palace, the two women began pulling and tugging at the poor mad minister from both sides. No matter how much he cried and pleaded to be let go, they only held on tighter.
In desperation, the minister began screaming loudly, and soon a crowd gathered. But oh, what strange justice this land held! After hearing both sides of the story, the village elder arrived and calmly gave his verdict:
“Split him in two—
Each shall take a half,
And ferry the pieces in a boat across the stream.”
Hearing this horrifying judgment, the minister clutched his head and collapsed to the ground in despair.
Just then, a kind old woman took pity on him and brought him into her home. She made him sit and gently said,
“Sit, my child—let me tell you about King Khoybor.”
In King Khoybor’s royal court, there were five princesses. Not one of them had ever married. Each of the five possessed a rare and magical coin known as Panchphul—“Five Flowers.”
Within each of those coins lay the very youth and beauty of the princesses. As long as they held onto their Panchphul, they would never grow old.
The mad minister was given a clever idea by the old woman: “You go and steal those magical coins, the princesses will follow you.” She also advised him to take along the three maidservants who stayed with the five princesses. The cunning old woman’s plan was to abduct them all.
Without hesitation, the mad minister sneaked in and quietly stole the coins.
When the princesses learned of the theft, they became frantic, running around in wild panic. The air shook with their cries, “Where are the coins? Where are the coins?”
Suddenly, someone noticed the mad minister sitting on a tree branch across the river, playing a flute, his legs dangling, smiling slyly at the princesses.
Then he called out to them from the other side.
“Here I am, girl, across the river—
Come see, the mad one’s laughing at you!”
Meanwhile, the other minister also captured three princesses by trickery. Together, the two mad ministers imprisoned eight royal daughters. They planned to take the princesses back to their kingdom and make themselves kings.
As they journeyed through the dense forest, the eight princesses grew restless and angry. Some lost their hairpins in frustration, others shed their jewelry in despair.
But lurking in that very forest was a terrifying giant—a monstrous demon named Shamdoon Deo.
In the heart of the jungle dwells the fearsome Shamdoon Deo,
With four eyes and eight ears,
Listen well, and heed his roar!
The princesses were so beautiful that Shamdoon Deo, the demon, chased after them relentlessly.
Seeing this, the princesses urged the mad ministers, “What are you standing there for? Fight the demon! Otherwise, he will take us all away.”
Hearing this, the ministers left the princesses safely in one place and went to confront the demon.
Taking advantage of this moment, the five fairy princesses from the fairy realm, along with their three maidservants, soared up into the sky, escaping far away through the air.
The ministers had no strength to fight the demon; they were clever but weak. So when they saw the terrifying demon, they were so frightened they collapsed to the ground as if dead.
The demon, lacking much wit himself, saw the two humans lying helpless and thought, “Well, look at that! They just dropped dead at the sight of me. What kind of courage do they have?” And with that, the demon left.
The two ministers slowly got up, but soon their thoughts returned to the princesses they had left behind. Overcome with sorrow, they began to weep loudly.
In that very forest lived a great sage who had been meditating there for eighteen years. He had not seen a single human during all that time. Suddenly hearing the cries of the ministers, he ended his meditation and stood up.
The ministers told him everything—how they were trapped by the demon and what had happened so far.
The sage realized that these two were likely food for the demon and that taking them away might not be wise. So he bound the ministers and took them to his hermitage for safety.
But soon, the demon, drawn by the scent of humans, returned—and the sage found himself in some trouble.
The demon stood before the sage,
The sage cried out, “Oh Allah,
Help me in this helpless state—
How can I, a human, face
This fierce creature’s wrath?”
A fierce battle erupted between the sage and the demon. Each challenged the other, shouting, “Look at me!” and “Face me!”
For seven days and seven nights they fought relentlessly.
But on the eighth day—
The demon grabbed the sage by the waist,
And with a mighty twist,
He tore away his manhood.
The sage fled, powerless and defeated,
His wounds grievous—
Looking up, the angel Gabriel stretched out his hand to save him.
While Gabriel was rescuing the sage, the demon seized the two mad ministers under his arms and carried them away to his home.
Nearby lay the kingdom of Emperor Akbar, called Haripur. Here, the story took a new turn.
In the city of Haripur, ruled by Akbar the great,
Under the moon’s gentle glow,
A young maiden lived in his palace.
One day, Shamdoon Deo had plucked Meher Chand from her garden like a delicate flower and brought her to his palace. Since then, Meher had been held captive in the demon’s court.
Eleven years and ten months had passed, and only two months remained before the demon planned to kill her—such was the grim fate decided.
The demon also brought the two mad ministers there and kept them captive.
One day, Shamdoon Deo said to Meher,
“If you cry during the day, girl,
Why don’t you show those humans?
Bring them here—
Show them and make me happy.”
The demon and the ministers still had no idea that the sage from the forest had quietly followed them to the demon’s palace. Watching everything from a distance, the sage called upon the name of Allah and rushed in, wielding a massive dagger. One by one, he cut off all the demon’s heads.
But what was truly in the sage’s mind remains a mystery to this day. After killing the demon, his attention turned to the two mad ministers. He planned to finish them off too, clearing his path completely.
However, it wasn’t an easy fight between the two mad ministers and the sage. The battle was far from one-sided; the sage could not easily overpower them. Meanwhile, Meher sat watching the scene with amusement. The demon’s fear had vanished. What could a few humans possibly do to him now?
In her heart, Meher thought,
Sitting here quietly, I pray—
Oh Allah, my Lord, my Protector, this was fate on my forehead.
Whatever fate is written on my brow,
I will endure it—
And leave behind this mad band,
And run away.