Sultan Pilandok was having a royal migraine. Who wouldn’t? He was discovering just how much the people still loved the old sultan he thought he’d outwitted. Now he was paying the price in pounding headaches from thinking hard of ways to hold on to the throne.
This particular migraine struck just as he was planning a way to secure obedience from the old sultan’s supporters now flocking to his court in great numbers. Eager to share his power, they were even beginning to crowd out the old sultan’s rivals who were starting to pay court for survival.
Pilandok wasn’t born yesterday. He knew he had to test the loyalty of each and every miserable one bowing to him. How well a trickster knew that he could not afford to relax. After all, he’d never been a sultan before.
For one thing, he had to make sure his official tale spinners never ran out of outrageous stories to keep the kingdom too stunned to defy him. Already he felt the thinkers, writers and artists beginning to question his right to the throne. Damn intellectuals! It was a full-time job keeping them off-balance with his tale spinners calling them liars and inventing their own fanciful stories of the new paradise he was creating.
Pilandok was aging fast, shedding every trace of a trickster’s innocent fun. But what was he a trickster for if he ran out of ideas to keep two steps ahead of his enemies? And so one day he woke with a bright idea. Why not introduce a new game to keep everyone in the kingdom occupied, forgetting to question his right to the throne?
It had to be more challenging than those silly old games of chance, like jueteng, everyone played. Instead, the game called poker, which he learned on his travels to other kingdoms, was just the thing!
Luck played a part in how poker’s 52 cards were shuffled and dealt. That was the easy part. The harder part was second-guessing your opponents’ cards from how their mouths twitched, how they looked up or down as their neck muscles tightened.
Poker might as well have been invented for me, Pilandok thought smugly. I think faster than anyone I know and my fellow players always called me “a poker face.” No one beats me in keeping my face blank while I read everyone else’s feelings.
Ha! That’s what I’ll do—teach them all how to play poker! And just to make it really exciting, I will announce that all losers will be hanged, exiled, or have their tongues ripped out. It doesn’t have to be true. I just have to make them believe it is!
And so it began. Sultan Pilandok had a great time playing poker with his worried and frightened subjects. He enjoyed it so much that he even extended the game to his policies. For instance, the moment his spies reported the writers whispering that he had ascended to the throne by deception, he immediately summoned everyone to the palace square.
There he made an announcement in the fewest words he could think of: “Hear ye! Anyone telling lies about me deserves to die!” As a hush fell on the populace, no one could tell if he was bluffing or not. Pilandok smiled to himself: Now you’re learning the spirit of poker.
Then he instructed his excitable Chief of the Royal Guards to announce that he’d just heard whispers of an enemy plan to shoot arrows into his back. This sent new shivers through the kingdom, not because people believed, much less cared for him, but because they knew the new danger it meant. They could only imagine how he would punish anyone who caused him displeasure.
But as fear and disgust slowly spread throughout the kingdom, something puzzled his spies. They were discovering how stubborn the people were behind their silence. The old sultan had been too lenient, they complained, especially about that thing called freedom of speech.
Believe it or not, they claim freedom of expression is a “human right”! Not when it threatens my throne, Pilandok thought darkly, not forgetting to keep a straight face.
And so it happened that as he inspired more and more fear, whispers of resistance grew bolder. Resentment was reaching a point when many were nearly ready to put their lives on the line to banish cruel Sultan Pilandok from the kingdom.
Feeling their thoughts as only a trickster can, Pilandok reflected that if these trouble-making thinkers were not impressed by threats to kill anyone lying about him, it was time to set his tale spinners to work. Each and every trouble-making one of them had to be thoroughly frightened. And so the tale spinners set to work—threatening all troublemakers with kidnap, rape and burial, dead or alive.
When Pilandok called the tale spinners to report on results, how everyone laughed! They were all competing in impersonating the funniest of the people’s wide eyes and open mouths at this master stroke of the sultan’s game. They were all having such fun in the palace that no one noticed dark clouds gathering on the horizon.
No, it wasn’t the weather. It was an armada of warships from the large rival sultanate of the North slowly sailing into their waters. This rival sultanate had long lusted for the rich fishing grounds, verdant lands and precious things that lay under the soil and waters of the quarreling sultanate of the South. Wary that the people would resist and cause unnecessary damage to their army and the lands and waters they lusted for, they had bided their time when the old sultan was in power. Watching the new sultan play games with his people, they saw the time to strike.
No one in revelry in the palace noticed the warships, but brave young people outside the palace did. Sneaking out to sea in their fathers’ fishing boats, they pretended to fish while discovering what was going on. How strange it was! They saw the northern sultanate’s ships trailed by ships from two other neighboring sultanates, while behind them, on opposite sides of the gathering formation, sailed huge ships bristling with weapons from the Kingdom of the West.
“Looks like they’re going to war in our waters,” whispered the leader of the young people’s spying expedition. “We have to warn our people!” They rushed to the palace to whisper the bad news to the Chief Steward busily preparing food for the sultan. The Chief Steward was so frightened he nearly dropped his sharp carving knife on his foot as he rushed to whisper the news straight into the sultan’s ear.
Pilandok’s eyes grew round with surprise as another royal migraine struck. Now what would he do?
Sylvia L. Mayuga is an essayist, sometime columnist, poet, documentary filmmaker and environmentalist. She has three National Book Awards to her name.