*yawn* And a story from the Arabian Nights
Oct. 5th, 2009 12:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feng_shui_houseI am endeavoring to convince my body that it wants to go to Home Depot. I remind it how much it enjoys looking at the plants in the garden section & rooting through the hardware giraffes, but it keeps whining that it's tired and threatening internal rebellion every time I reach for the phone to call the taxi. Possibly uprooting trees yesterday used up my reserves.
So I've finished reading 'Sindbad and Other Stories from the Arabian Nights' translated by Hussain Haddawy. I had wanted to purchase his earlier book, 'The Arabian Nights' which translated the original nucleus stories told within the Shahrazad framework, but at the time I ordered from Amazon it was out of stock, with no hint as to when it would be avaiable (I looked today & it's already there. Sheesh. Am trying to resist. I buy too many books.)
I was disappointed in most of the book, because I found the first three stories appeared very much like the versions I've already known (I only noticed a single minor deviation in Sindbad & nothing in any of the others.) Sindbad's 7 voyages are so incredibly tediously repetitive as to boggle the mind.
Formula:
1) Sindbad is wealthy and plays all day long. He gets bored and buys bales of goods to trade, goes to the dock, sees a great ship which is ready to leave immediately, trades and does well,
2a) gets off the ship to stretch his legs on an island/shore which is a paradise of fruits, etc. only a threat appears and the ship leaves without him
or 2b) the threat appears while the ship is at sea and the captain goes through an almost identical scene of despair and giving up all hope and then the ship gets destroyed and Sindbad finds a plank and floats to land (sometimes others temporarily survive, but they all die eventually, usually of starvation, but occasionally they all get killed by monsters).
3) Sindbad berates himself for not staying at home and enjoying being a frivolous layabout. He prays a lot and praises Allah, despairs, and eventually gets desperate and builds a raft/arranges for a giant bird to carry him off.
4) He prays a lot. Despairs. Is found by someone who takes him in and either gives him magnificent gifts or shows him how to make a fortune out of nothing. If he's brought to a ruler, he becomes practically co-ruler and is offered the ruler's daughter, and not wishing to be rude, accepts. He marries at least twice (the stories blur together after a while so I'm not sure if there was another.). The first one dies, which leads to the only interesting and not-repeated event in the tales. Sindbad winds up in the cave where they bury married couples- the living widow/widower is sent down along with a bit of food and the corpse-- Sindbad rations his food and murders every living man or woman sent down, robbing the corpses of valuables which he takes with him when he eventually finds his way out of the cave. At no time does Sindbad express any remorse for this, or seem to feel he's done anything wrong. I've read many versions of Sindbad, and this is always how this part is depicted. I quite like it.
5) Eventually, being rich again, and homesick, he goes to the docks and miraculously comes across a ship going his way which happens to have the cargo he'd lost, all intact, and with his name on it (in the lengthy time he was presumed dead not ONE of the captains ever sold his stuff, but just kept lugging it about using up valuable space). Unless the ship had sunk, in which case he takes another ship for home.
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is a story I usually enjoy but in this one the clever slave girl is reduced to being merely brave and loyal, but working more by animal instinct than intelligence. Pity. I liked the other versions of her.
Ala al-Din and the Magic Lamp is again pretty much the same old, same old version.
And then we come to one that belonged with the older, more pure stories. I'd never read this one. The Story of Qamar al-Zaman and His Two Sons, Amjad and As'ad. This story redeems the whole book for me.
It is so gay. Qamar is the son and only child of an elderly king (what's remarkable is that the king is elderly before Qamar is conceived, and at the end of the story is still fit enough to lead an army a long journey to confront his *grandsons*.) There are endless poetic descriptions of Qamar's beauty -and not described as a manly beauty at ALL. He at first refuses to marry because he's heard poetry saying women are a bad thing, but two demons get to quarreling over who is more beautiful, Qamar or a princess who's also refused to marry. So they bring the princess and lay the two of them together to compare them, letting each one wake up and see the other asleep. They fall in love with each other's perfection which exactly matches their own-- in other words Qamar really looks like a girl. Separation and angst follows with lots of journeying, and cross-dressing. A particularly interesting bit comes after they marry and they get separated again. Qamar's bride pretends to be him in order basically not to get raped by Qamar's own troops and NO ONE notices, to the point where she winds up having to marry a Princess, and is threatened with death if 'he' doesn't take her virginity, 'he' confesses and the other princess says 'yo, sister!', kills a chicken, smears herself with the blood and says 'look, ma, I'm not a virgin'.I am fairly sure some lesbian-love went on there. So the king is happy and makes the 'guy princess' King in his place.
Qamar goes through various ordeals, miraculously gets rich, is advised how to hide the riches among a load of olives and put them on a ship, but his advisor for no reason at all takes sick and dies, and while with him, the ship sails without Qamar taking his wealth and the one identifying thing he had of his bride.
Naturally the guy princess king happens to be at the dock when the trading ship comes in and has a yen for olives and buys the lot. When s(he) goes for a snack and discovers a thin layer of olives over lots of gold, and finds her possession, too, she finds out whose cargo it was and tells the captain the olive-owner stole from her and if the captain doesn't bring him to her she'll have him and all his men killed. So they go back and kidnap Qamar for the guy princess King, who immediately takes off his chains and makes a fuss about him and gives him authority and lots of gifts etc. etc.
Dimly Qamar begins to wonder why until the guyprincess bride tells him she's gay and has the hots for him and begins reciting all sorts of explicit poetry about boys and finally he agrees that s(he) can do it to him ONCE and then stop nagging him. She embarrasses him and finally when he notices that she isn't equipped (he NEVER noticed that she looked exactly like his bride) he at first assumes s(he)'s a hermaphrodite! She confesses and they make love and then tell the king the whole story. The king makes Qamar the ruler because he's the husband of the king--- erm... and since the 'guy princess king' says she's perfectly willing to have her husband marry the king's daughter whom she'd be glad to serve as handmaiden, Qamar marries her, too, and forgets all about his poor ancient dad who loved him and petted him and until he was 15 years old slept with the kid...mmm...
Qamar's two brides each have a son who is absolutely gayly beautiful and loves each other (but I think a bit less gay than Qamar). Each of the queens is besottedly infatuated with the other one's son, and both write love letters and demands on the boys, a day apart. The boys are infuriated by the faithlessness of the women and each whack off the head of the poor messengers who deliver the letters, BUT they KEEP the letters in their shirts. The queens are now afraid the boys will turn them in, so they each tell Qamar that the boys have killed their servants and raped them. Qamar believes them because they both said it, it must be true, and orders a servant to take his sons out to a desolate area and kill them. The boys are faithful to the father, and meekly go off to be killed, but they argue back and forth VERY long about 'kill me first, because I don't want to see him suffer' and finally embrace so they can get their necks cut off at once, but then they argue about which one should be on top. *cough* The servant's expensive horse gets bored and runs off, and he follows it, and gets pinned down by a lion, but our heroes got thirsty and broke their ropes, picked up the sword meant to kill them, and saved him. So the servant takes blood from the lion, and their clothes, to bring back to the king as evidence that they've been killed.
The king finds the letters NOW and is all 'AAAAH, my sons, my sons' and pretty much locks himself up to be angsty, except twice a week when he comes out to rule the kingdom.
In the meantime the sons go off and have LOTS of interestng adventures and suffering (like one of them gets starved and tortured EVERY day for a solid year and is STILL more beautiful than anyone), etc. and are admired for their beauty, and wind up marrying princesses/rich girls, and in a truly hilarious scene of coincidences, wind up with FOUR armies, each lead by a member of their family, arriving at the same day outside their city. The faithless mothers seem to have been forgiven/pretended it never happened, and they all live happily until they die.
So I've finished reading 'Sindbad and Other Stories from the Arabian Nights' translated by Hussain Haddawy. I had wanted to purchase his earlier book, 'The Arabian Nights' which translated the original nucleus stories told within the Shahrazad framework, but at the time I ordered from Amazon it was out of stock, with no hint as to when it would be avaiable (I looked today & it's already there. Sheesh. Am trying to resist. I buy too many books.)
I was disappointed in most of the book, because I found the first three stories appeared very much like the versions I've already known (I only noticed a single minor deviation in Sindbad & nothing in any of the others.) Sindbad's 7 voyages are so incredibly tediously repetitive as to boggle the mind.
Formula:
1) Sindbad is wealthy and plays all day long. He gets bored and buys bales of goods to trade, goes to the dock, sees a great ship which is ready to leave immediately, trades and does well,
2a) gets off the ship to stretch his legs on an island/shore which is a paradise of fruits, etc. only a threat appears and the ship leaves without him
or 2b) the threat appears while the ship is at sea and the captain goes through an almost identical scene of despair and giving up all hope and then the ship gets destroyed and Sindbad finds a plank and floats to land (sometimes others temporarily survive, but they all die eventually, usually of starvation, but occasionally they all get killed by monsters).
3) Sindbad berates himself for not staying at home and enjoying being a frivolous layabout. He prays a lot and praises Allah, despairs, and eventually gets desperate and builds a raft/arranges for a giant bird to carry him off.
4) He prays a lot. Despairs. Is found by someone who takes him in and either gives him magnificent gifts or shows him how to make a fortune out of nothing. If he's brought to a ruler, he becomes practically co-ruler and is offered the ruler's daughter, and not wishing to be rude, accepts. He marries at least twice (the stories blur together after a while so I'm not sure if there was another.). The first one dies, which leads to the only interesting and not-repeated event in the tales. Sindbad winds up in the cave where they bury married couples- the living widow/widower is sent down along with a bit of food and the corpse-- Sindbad rations his food and murders every living man or woman sent down, robbing the corpses of valuables which he takes with him when he eventually finds his way out of the cave. At no time does Sindbad express any remorse for this, or seem to feel he's done anything wrong. I've read many versions of Sindbad, and this is always how this part is depicted. I quite like it.
5) Eventually, being rich again, and homesick, he goes to the docks and miraculously comes across a ship going his way which happens to have the cargo he'd lost, all intact, and with his name on it (in the lengthy time he was presumed dead not ONE of the captains ever sold his stuff, but just kept lugging it about using up valuable space). Unless the ship had sunk, in which case he takes another ship for home.
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is a story I usually enjoy but in this one the clever slave girl is reduced to being merely brave and loyal, but working more by animal instinct than intelligence. Pity. I liked the other versions of her.
Ala al-Din and the Magic Lamp is again pretty much the same old, same old version.
And then we come to one that belonged with the older, more pure stories. I'd never read this one. The Story of Qamar al-Zaman and His Two Sons, Amjad and As'ad. This story redeems the whole book for me.
It is so gay. Qamar is the son and only child of an elderly king (what's remarkable is that the king is elderly before Qamar is conceived, and at the end of the story is still fit enough to lead an army a long journey to confront his *grandsons*.) There are endless poetic descriptions of Qamar's beauty -and not described as a manly beauty at ALL. He at first refuses to marry because he's heard poetry saying women are a bad thing, but two demons get to quarreling over who is more beautiful, Qamar or a princess who's also refused to marry. So they bring the princess and lay the two of them together to compare them, letting each one wake up and see the other asleep. They fall in love with each other's perfection which exactly matches their own-- in other words Qamar really looks like a girl. Separation and angst follows with lots of journeying, and cross-dressing. A particularly interesting bit comes after they marry and they get separated again. Qamar's bride pretends to be him in order basically not to get raped by Qamar's own troops and NO ONE notices, to the point where she winds up having to marry a Princess, and is threatened with death if 'he' doesn't take her virginity, 'he' confesses and the other princess says 'yo, sister!', kills a chicken, smears herself with the blood and says 'look, ma, I'm not a virgin'.I am fairly sure some lesbian-love went on there. So the king is happy and makes the 'guy princess' King in his place.
Qamar goes through various ordeals, miraculously gets rich, is advised how to hide the riches among a load of olives and put them on a ship, but his advisor for no reason at all takes sick and dies, and while with him, the ship sails without Qamar taking his wealth and the one identifying thing he had of his bride.
Naturally the guy princess king happens to be at the dock when the trading ship comes in and has a yen for olives and buys the lot. When s(he) goes for a snack and discovers a thin layer of olives over lots of gold, and finds her possession, too, she finds out whose cargo it was and tells the captain the olive-owner stole from her and if the captain doesn't bring him to her she'll have him and all his men killed. So they go back and kidnap Qamar for the guy princess King, who immediately takes off his chains and makes a fuss about him and gives him authority and lots of gifts etc. etc.
Dimly Qamar begins to wonder why until the guyprincess bride tells him she's gay and has the hots for him and begins reciting all sorts of explicit poetry about boys and finally he agrees that s(he) can do it to him ONCE and then stop nagging him. She embarrasses him and finally when he notices that she isn't equipped (he NEVER noticed that she looked exactly like his bride) he at first assumes s(he)'s a hermaphrodite! She confesses and they make love and then tell the king the whole story. The king makes Qamar the ruler because he's the husband of the king--- erm... and since the 'guy princess king' says she's perfectly willing to have her husband marry the king's daughter whom she'd be glad to serve as handmaiden, Qamar marries her, too, and forgets all about his poor ancient dad who loved him and petted him and until he was 15 years old slept with the kid...mmm...
Qamar's two brides each have a son who is absolutely gayly beautiful and loves each other (but I think a bit less gay than Qamar). Each of the queens is besottedly infatuated with the other one's son, and both write love letters and demands on the boys, a day apart. The boys are infuriated by the faithlessness of the women and each whack off the head of the poor messengers who deliver the letters, BUT they KEEP the letters in their shirts. The queens are now afraid the boys will turn them in, so they each tell Qamar that the boys have killed their servants and raped them. Qamar believes them because they both said it, it must be true, and orders a servant to take his sons out to a desolate area and kill them. The boys are faithful to the father, and meekly go off to be killed, but they argue back and forth VERY long about 'kill me first, because I don't want to see him suffer' and finally embrace so they can get their necks cut off at once, but then they argue about which one should be on top. *cough* The servant's expensive horse gets bored and runs off, and he follows it, and gets pinned down by a lion, but our heroes got thirsty and broke their ropes, picked up the sword meant to kill them, and saved him. So the servant takes blood from the lion, and their clothes, to bring back to the king as evidence that they've been killed.
The king finds the letters NOW and is all 'AAAAH, my sons, my sons' and pretty much locks himself up to be angsty, except twice a week when he comes out to rule the kingdom.
In the meantime the sons go off and have LOTS of interestng adventures and suffering (like one of them gets starved and tortured EVERY day for a solid year and is STILL more beautiful than anyone), etc. and are admired for their beauty, and wind up marrying princesses/rich girls, and in a truly hilarious scene of coincidences, wind up with FOUR armies, each lead by a member of their family, arriving at the same day outside their city. The faithless mothers seem to have been forgiven/pretended it never happened, and they all live happily until they die.
