Long,Long Ago

Bloomsbury

Rs 699

Pages: 304

My introduction to the One Thousand and One Nights was as a child. Somewhere between listening to Shahrazads web of stories and falling asleep,that seed of magic that stories contain was sowed in my mind. But the One Thousand and One Nights is much more than the sanitised stories told to children at bedtime,much more than Ali Baba and Aladdin. A collection of tales from the Middle East,Persia and India that begins because a king discovers his wifes infidelity,Alf Layla Wa Layla its lyrical Arabic title has tales of power,magic,and desire gathered over many centuries. It has stories of djinns trapped inside bottles and djinns that catalyse desire in humans; kings who decapitate women,and kings who get trapped in boxes; queens seeking erotic adventures and slave girls finding ways to control their destinies. A selection of these tales have now found place in a new book by the celebrated Lebanese writer,Hanan Al-Shaykh. The selection is also the basis of Tim Supples theatre production by the same name.

In a lecture called The New Shahrazad,Hanan Al-Shaykh talks of not liking the book when she first read it. I was obsessed by its framework: by the character of Shahrazad herself,and by the King,Shahrayar by the teller of the tales rather than the tales themselves. I kept criticising Shahrazad for not stabbing the king with a dagger. While the image of Shahrazad as an oriental cliché of a passive woman submitting to the kings tyranny rather than standing up to him is a subject of debate,it is fortunate for us that Al-Shaykh read the stories again and found in Shahrazad an artist,a storyteller who would excite,provoke,thrill,educate,and persuade indirectly,like transparent spiders threads continuing without taking breath…

So,in her re-imagining of these tales,she brings to us their sensuality the sights,sounds and smells; the gardens of abandonment and the palaces of intrigue; the surreal magic in the everyday. Men and women speak of sex in a matter-of-fact way Shahrazads sister lies under the bed waiting for King Shahryar and Shahrazad to finish making love so the story can continue. Jealousy and envy trap people in enchantments and cause impulsive acts of destruction. Dervishes,porters and kings share stories on the same stage and reveal the contest of power. Al Shaykhs version lifts these stories from a long legacy of exoticism and shows that the magic realism of the thousand and one nights is a quest to understand love,sex,marriage,power and justice. But most of all,they are wonderful stories of adventure and daring,stories designed not just to alter the kings course of action but also to alter the way we look at the world. Shahrazad saves the women in her kingdom with her stories but,perhaps,she also saves the king. For dont the stories lead him to find a way to becoming more than a jealous,cuckolded husband and a tyrannical executioner?

Do the stories end? Does the rooster crow on the morning after the thousand-and-first night and unveil a new dawn? Al-Shaykhs is not a complete volume. But it is full enough to show us that Shahrazads lesson is that stories must be told. From teller to listener,and then from the listener,who must turn teller,to yet another listener. Stories are a way of making sense of the world.

Hanan Al-Shaykhs One Thousand and One Nights shows us that what happened a long,long,time ago can still make sense to us.