As a melange of stories, I was expecting all the volumes of Mardrus and Mathers’s The Thousand Nights and One Night to be of equal quality, but I think the fourth volume may be the best. Some of the stories seemed better written than others, there were a greater range of interesting details (over stock phrases) and a greater brio and fun to many of them.
One of the most famous stories from the collection, and a later addition, is also the best written. ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’ is not only a great story but seemed to have fuller characters and storytelling than many of the others. Ali Baba is an interesting fellow in himself, happy to sustain himself without any greater ambition, he stumbles on the thieves and their cave. I’d always assumed the cave was called Sesame, and so responded to that name but the phrase ‘open sesame’ can magically open anything - and Ali Baba doesn’t abuse that power.
His brother and sister-in-law are ambitious and she’s particularly curious why Ali and his wife want to borrow some scales, what do they have to need measuring? To assuage this curiosity, she puts suet in the scales and manages to snag a gold coin. She’s incensed, how come Ali and his wife have so much gold that they need to measure it instead of counting? Alas for Kasim, Ali’s brother, this leads to tragedy. This is where the fabulous Marjarnah comes in. She’s clever enough to realise that Kasim’s body needs disposing of in a legitimate but quiet manner and also the ways to make it happen and cover her tracks. She’s also the family’s most level-headed and sharp member, protecting them from the retribution of the thieves in every step. She’s wonderful.
This volume also includes a number of fairy tales. There’s a Cinderella variation where the prince seeks the woman with slim enough ankles to fit an anklet. Of course he can’t go into the harems, so his mother has to do the search for him. There are two Beauty and the Beast stories, the first with a woman who marries a goat, and the second with a man ho marries a tortoise. It was especially fun to see a man in the ‘Beauty’ role. Strangest of all was ‘The Tale of Hard Head and Little Foot’. They are brother and sister, with Hard Head being an absolute psycho. He sets fire to his own house, he murders children by beating them so hard he ‘empastes’ them onto the floor, he then shits on the grieving father’s head. Later they are captured by a roc, and he tickles its arse - and yet his actions are proved ‘right’ at the end because he kills a terrible darkness-monster.
This volume has stories of Goha, a figure like Nasreddin Hoja, who displays a form of wise silliness. A lot of his silliness revolves around his penis though, he even calms a baby down with it and claims to have tried to shag a cat. It’s unsettling. There’s a stories from history section. It starts with tales of warring Arab tribes, goes on to the figure of Umar and then stories of Haroun Al-Rashid’s sons. My favourite of these was the idea of ‘Tufailism’, a form of gatecrashing fancy meals.
There were a number of stories where a lover has to answer riddles from his beloved under the pain of being decapitated. The woman lives in a tower festooned with the heads of failed suitors. It’s also a book of bad wives. One of them is a freaky vampire who sucks blood from corpses, another is such a bad nag when she is thrown down a well, and begs to be saved from her. The best nagging wife is called Fattimah Hot-Slop. Her husband escapes her, blags his way into marrying a princess, finds a genie (which the evil wazir temporarily steals) and appears to alive happily ever after. Then Fatimah Hot-Slop bursts back into the scene like the heavy in a Bond film. I was rooting for Fatimah Hot-Slop.
Haroun Al-Rashid and gang also had some good stories in this. ‘Unending Treasure’ starts with Jafar being trouble yet again because he’s claimed a man his even more generous than Al-Rashid. Luckily for Jafar, it turns out the man is, because he’s got a never ending swimming pool of money. Another story has the gang meeting people on a bridge and asking them back for their stories. In another, Haroun Al-Rashid feels down and nature doesn’t cheer him up, nor does his 360 sex slaves. Jafar recommends visiting the library as “A library of books is the fairest garden of the world and to walk there is ecstasy.” Haroun finds a book that makes him laugh and cry, but when Jafar asks him what the story is, find himself again under threat of death for his presumption.
Poor ‘ol Jafar. I don’t know much about the historical figure, but the literary character has been so unlucky. He’s a skilled wazir, ruling the country well for his khalifah, whom he is best friend. However he is well aware that every times he talks to Haroun Al-Rashid, he’s playing with fire. For a king called Al-Rashid, ‘the just’, he is a moody and unpredictable soul and Jafar is constantly threatened with various forms of execution and disgrace. Poor Jafar, Disney named their villain after him and now the name means evil guy with a twisted beard. (Incidentally, the tales have a prince Jasmine, but no princess). In this volume Jafar finally ends his run, being decapitated, his whole family imprisoned, killed or scattered, and his own remains thrown in latrines. It’s a genuinely sad moment when a reasonable man is destroyed by the unreason of arbitrary rule. It’s also the end of Haroun Al-Rashid’s glory days and the end of Baghdad as ‘the city of peace’. It’s a fitting (penultimate) tale to the whole sequence.
Finally, we reach the end of the frame sequence. It turns out that Scherazade has been cooking up more than stories, and presents three male heirs to her king. He marries her and persuades his brother to marry Dumyazad, even if the brother can’t remember her name. It was notable that Dumyazad was described as having grown into the perfect woman, a being that includes the quality of silence. Especially interesting nearly all the words in this 2,500 page book are said by a woman. It’s a happy ending, with the king humanised through all the stories his heard, even as it seems a little flimsy. Stories are powerful, but are they that powerful?
Reading all of The Thousand Nights and One Night was a superb experience. To read it all in a run is overwhelming, not only the length but the denseness of them, the cultural remove, the excess of sounds and sights and smells but I never found it a boring experience. I never felt like I was gritting my teeth and plowing through this collection, it was always a joy and a pleasure. I am glad I’ve got to the end so I can pursue other flavours of text, but this was a banquet worth enjoying.
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