Theme

In this tale from Jami's Haft Awrang, a black slave, rebuffed in his desire for the wife of the Marzban of Merv, turns his thwarted passion into vengeance. He buys two rare parrots and painstakingly trains them: one repeatedly declares that the chamberlain has become the woman's lover, while the second only adds that the matter is obvious yet not his to report. The staged corroboration is meant to make the fabricated charge seem like independent testimony.

Moral Lesson

The allegory dramatizes how calumny can be manufactured and dressed in the appearance of impartial witness, and how such contrivance is ultimately unmasked. Because the parrots merely repeat a lesson rather than report the truth, the slander collapses once its rehearsed, mechanical origin is seen. The tale warns against both the malice that engineers false accusation and the credulity that mistakes coached repetition for evidence.