Unit 9

English 203: Literature of the NonWestern World

Explication:
Reading: The 1,001 Nights, 923-48;
                    Naguib Mahfouz, "Zaabalawi, 2881-93.

Although our text identifies The 1,001 Nights as a work of the 14th c., it also says that "the starting point of the work in Arabic was probably a collection of tales in Middle Persian . . . translated or adapted from Sanskrit" sometime between 226 & 652 (p. 923).   Thus, the work illustrates the cultural influence of India, Persia, & Arabia.  Also notice that it is pre-Islamic (Muhammad lived in the 7th c.) & consequently it is not didactically committed to illustrating Islamic morality.

You read the framing device or incident in the introduction: the king, Shahrayar, seeks revenge for his wife's infidelity by sleeping with a "young woman each night & having her murdered the next morning -- before she has a chance to betray him" (924).  Shahrazad volunteers to "tame" the wrath, wounded pride, & immaturity of the king by telling him a complicated story each night.  Of course Shahrazad is careful not to tell the entire story, stopping at a point where the plot resolution seems unlikely or even impossible.  Thus the king cannot kill her in the morning, because he wants to know how the story ends.  Doesn't this suggest telling bedtime stories to small children?

Even though our 2 kings are married & even though sex features so prominently in the stories, it is important to recognize that our kings are symbolic of prepubescent children & narcissists who know nothing but their own immediate emotions & desires.  In the beginning they seem to have everything:
926    Shahrayar himself lived & ruled in India & Indochina, while to his brother he gave the land of Samarkand.

Shahzaman begins a journey to visit his brother, which is at a rather fabulous distance: from Uzbekistan, north of China, to India.  Before going very far, he returns to say good-bye to his wife, discovering her:
926    lying in the arms of one of the kitchen boys.  When he saw them, the world turned dark before his eyes

Shocked at her quick disloyalty -- or like a child, shocked to find that mom has other interests in life besides me --  Shahzaman kills both his wife & the cook, vowing that:
926    Women are not to be trusted.

The point is not to be vulnerable.  Very much in the convention of folk tales or fairy tales, the murders do not deter Shahzaman from his original intent to visit his brother.  What can you infer from that?  You may not recognize this on a casual first reading, but the inference is that the relationship between the brothers is more important than any relationship that either brother has with women.  This is because they both illustrate an early adolescent fear of girls.  Shahzaman knows "Women are not to be trusted" & casually slays his wife when he finds that she is not his devoted slave.  Finally, you do not have to be Sigmund Freud to notice something "symbolic" when Shahzaman:
926   drew his sword & struck both his wife & the cook.
The sword is an obvious phallic symbol.  Like the preadolescent he is, Shahzaman uses it violently to destroy the possibility of  intimacy that he fears.  However, like Gilgamesh, Shahzaman cannot be a real king until he learns to feel some intimacy & empathy with the people that he is suppose to care for.

Moping around his brother's palace, feeling sorry for himself, Shahzaman discovers another instance of his motto: "Women are not to be trusted."  Shahzaman becomes a voyeur, watching a strange sexual ritual.  Shahrayar's wife comes into the garden accompanied by:
927    20 slave-girls, 10 white & ten black.
         They sat down, took off their clothes . . .
         Then the 10 black slaves mounted the 10 girls, while the lady called, "Mas'ud, Mas'ud!" &
         a black slave jumped from the tree to the ground, rushed to her . . . & made love to her.
         Mas'ud topped the lady, while the 10 slaves topped the 10 girls, & they carried on till noon.

What do we make of this scene!  Certainly not that it is sexually suggestive.  Obviously the scene deals with sex, but it is so ritualized & dreamlike that we recognize it as typical of how a child tries to explain adult sexual behavior that he has never experienced.  Notice how the woman conjures a lover out of the air -- or down from a tree.  When the queen is finished with him:
928    Mas'ud himself jumped over the garden wall & disappeared.

Mas'ud is meaningless, except for his ritual function.  Once he has performed, he disappears.  There is no suggestion of intimacy or even of knowing another person.  Notice that instead of having any sexual response from watching this strange ritual, Shahzaman feels relieved that he is not the only man (or boy) who fails to understand or control girls (women):
928    This is our common lot [as men].  Even though my brother is king & master of the whole
         world, he cannot protect what is his, his wife & his concubines, & suffers misfortune in his very home.

Now Shahzaman sets up a joke on his brother -- more adolescent behavior.  After Shahzaman tells his brother how he caught his wife making love to a cook as soon as she thought her husband was gone, Shahrayar is:
929    greatly amazed at the deceit of women, & prayed to God to protect him from their wickedness.
Naturally Shahzaman informs his brother of the strange things going on under his nose.
Shahrayar . . . was furious & his blood boiled.  He said, "Brother, I can't believe what you say unless I see it with my own eyes."

Why does his blood boil?  Like Shahzaman, Shahrayar has no sexual reaction.  He isn't jealous.  He doesn't morally condemn the queen.  Instead, after witnessing the strange:
930    spectacle of his wife & the slave-girls, he went out of his mind.

Pubescence offers a kind of reincarnation.  The child ego is threatened & ultimately destroyed (going "out of his mind") by libidinous feelings & the adolescent ego that replaces the child-ego.  Like Peter Pan, our 2 royal brothers refuse to grow up.  For them, girls remain "nasty" & terrifying, threatening the poor boys when they "run away from home":
931    "Make love to me & satisfy my need, or else I shall wake the demon, & he will kill you."
         They replied, ". . . at this moment we feel nothing but dismay & fear of this demon."

Again there is no sexual feeling, only childhood fear of an unknown & threatening power.  Adults are unfathomable & monstrous, because of their sexual lives.  Listen to the monstrous woman:
931    A hundred men have known me under the very horns of this filthy, monstrous cuckold,
         who has imprisoned me in this chest . . . & kept me in the middle of this raging, roaring
         sea.  He has guarded me & tried to keep me pure & chaste, not realizing that . . . when
         a woman desires something, no one can stop her."

Especially in a Muslim culture, we expect such talk & such an attitude to be morally condemned.  Why isn't it?  Because the theme of  The 1,001 Nights is adolescence.  The boys are not mature enough to analyze their experience morally.  They continue to be shocked & stunned by girls or women who exhibit sexual power.  They flee, praying:
931    There is no power & no strength, save in God the Almighty, the Magnificent.  Great is women's cunning.

We could easily imagine the brothers becoming cynical bachelors.  Because they are Muslims, we cannot imagine them taking refuge from the world in a monastery.  Marriage is very close to a religious duty for Muslims.  We understand the brothers' shock & sense of loss at having their innocence destroyed, because this is a universal stage of human growth & development.  But adults get over it.  We find love & comfort behind what initially seemed to be shocking, degrading, & threatening -- sex.  Our brothers -- actually we will only be interested in the nearly all powerful Shahrayar -- will come to this reach this adult stage, but only through the patient wisdom of a girlfriend, Shahrazad.  We begin the tales with Shahrayar's male brutality.  He orders his wife put to death & then:
932    grabbed his sword, brandished it, & entering the palace chambers, killed every one of his slave-girls
         & replaced them with others.  He then swore to marry for one night only & kill the woman the next
         morning, in order to save himself from the wickedness & cunning of women, saying, "There is not
         a single chaste woman anywhere on the entire face of the earth."

Chastity!  This guy sleeps with a new virgin each night & then kills her in the morning because she slept with him!  Talk about denial & projection!  Do you recall our first lesson?  Gilgamesh was a similar burden who menaced his people.  He also had a brother playmate who helped him to have empathy for others; an experience that destroyed his innocence & made him sad to understand death.  But it also made him a man instead of a boy; it gave him a life instead of daydreams & moral fantasy.  So we will accompany our Shah as he goes to school, taught by Shahrazad.

The Ox & the Donkey:

This story offers boys advice about how to get ahead in the world.  The teacher is not some nasty old man with a pandy bat (or switch), but a character like Eeyore (the sad donkey from Winnie The Pooh) & a stolid ox.  Not only do we have cartoon animals, they talk:
933    This merchant was taught the language of the beasts . . . [&] he knew the language of every kind of animal.

The ox complains that he works much harder than the donkey, & that  the donkey is pampered & does nothing.  The wily donkey sneers:
933    you ox harbor no deceit, malice, or meanness.  Being sincere, you exert & exhaust yourself to comfort others.

The donkey advises the ox to feign exhaustion & sickness to gain better treatment.  When the ox does so, the donkey is punished for corrupting him!:
934    The merchant, who knew what was going on, said to the plowman, "go to the wily
         donkey, put him to the plow, & work him hard until he finishes the ox's task."

Shahrazad's father tells this story to dissuade her from trying to help the king grow up.  He suggests that she may be repaid like the donkey for her wisdom.  But the story continues & the theme returns to Shahrayar's fear that he can't control women, which of course is really the fear that he cannot control his own sexual feelings.  The merchant's wife wants to know his secret, even if it costs her husband his life:
935    "Yes, I insist [on knowing] even if you have to die."

The rooster tells the dog how a man should treat his wife:
936    "He should take an oak branch . . . & fall on her with the stick, beating her mercilessly
         until he breaks her arms & legs & she cries out, 'I no longer want you to tell me or
         explain anything.'  He should go on beating her until he cures her for life, & she will
         never oppose him in anything.

The husband does this &:
936    The wife emerged penitent, the husband learned good management, & everybody was happy.

Of course, you say, this is just a fairy tale that shouldn't be taken seriously.  On the other hand, fairy tales & jokes persist or endure for centuries only when they contain some deep point in addition to humor.  To understand the point here, we need to know 2 things.  First that the theme of The 1,001 Nights is adolescence or growing up, for which the experience of sex is: (1) scary, (2) desirable, & (3) a confirmation of achieving adulthood.  Secondly, we need to remember Freud's point that sex & violence (or rage) are 2 sides of the same coin.  They are both manifestations of libido or desire.  They offer opposite emotions, but are similar in the depth of emotion that they offer.  In fairy tales, folk tales, dreams, & jokes, violence is often either interchangeable with sex or an expression of it.

Knowing these 2 points, read this passage again.  Privacy is important.  The rooster advises the husband to:
936    push her into a room, lock the door, & fall on her with the stick
He is then suppose to "beat" her until she no longer wants to know anything, because she is totally engrossed in the emotion (violence/sex).  When he follows this advice, the husband:
pushed his wife into a room, got in with her, & locked the door
He beats her:
until he got tired of hitting her

The only way that everybody could be happy is to understand that the violence in the story is code or a symbol for referring to sex.

In the rest of the stories we have in our text, things are not as they seem; people are changed into animals; & everyone seems insatiably curious about riddles & puzzles or about understanding why things happen.  Most of the stories seek to reassure us by explaining that what happens in this world is motivated by justice and morality.  They also promote forgiveness. For example, the demon that we meet in the tale of the 1st night is like the Shahrayar.  Both demand blood in the name of justice, regardless of intent or personal guilt. People seem to be interchangeable with no regard for their feelings.  The young women that Shahrayar ritually slaughters are no more responsible for what the king's first wife did than the merchant is responsible for killing the demon's son by innocently scattering date pits. A better or more mature sense of justice must be understood; one that does not simply seek to balance objective events (an eye for an eye), but which also empathizes with the guilt, regret, & sorrow of the transgressor.  Unlike ancient Greece (see Aeschylus' Orestia trilogy), there is no celebration of the invention of rule by law in place of the caprice of raw power, such as the dictates of Agamemnon or Achilles.  Instead the midEast celebrates the law given from God in The Koran & in Shari'a.  Because The 1,001 Nights was written & rewritten over the course of a thousand years, it does not uniformly celebrate the gift of prophecy.  Shahrazad is not a prophet, but she is a teacher.  She teaches Shahrayar to notice other people, even animals.  She teaches him to care for other people & to ultimately grow up & truly care for his people instead of treating them as his property.  The king must learn justice with forbearance & mercy.  He must learn to care for his people instead of only for his own wounded pride.  Shahrazad tells him of people who are turned into deer and dogs for a time, instead of being executed, for their criminal mistakes.  She also tells him how the merchant is redeemed through the charity of the three old men.

You may wish to drop in on a course similar to ours taught in Virginia.  The students in this course also read The 1,001 Nights.  See what their professor has to say about this work & read a summary of the tales.
 

The 1,001 Nights  at Northern Virginia Community College

Naguib Mahfouz

Mahfouz is an Egyptian who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1988.   He has written many novels that illustrate life in contemporary Egypt.  This story is about the loss of religious fervor or devotion in contemporary, secular Egypt.  More specifically it is about Sufism.  Sufism is Islamic mysticism that was developed in non-Arabic speaking countries, like Turkey, India, & Indonesia.  Because people in these countries could not read The Koran in Arabic, many of the devote became involved in Muslim bhakti. The narrator of our story remembers how fresh & important religion was when he was a child.  He remembers a fragment of a song:
2885    Oh what's become of the world, Zaabalawi?
           They've turned it upside down & taken away its taste.

Hindu bhaktas often talk about taste (rasa).  They say that talking about religion is like talking about honey.  You will never know what honey (or God) is until you taste it, i.e., have a mystical experience.  Growing up & modernization seem to turn the world upside down.  Secular values are pervasive & religion seems to be forgotten.  Consequently, the world has no taste.  It offers only money & urban bustle.  The narrator's father says that Zaabalawi is:
2886    a true saint of God, a remover of worries & troubles
who saved his life.

Our narrator confesses that he:
became afflicted with that illness for which no one possesses a remedy.
When I had tried everything in vain & was overcome by despair.
He is world-weary, experiencing a mid-life crisis.  He begins to search, not for God, but for the saint or Sufi, Zaabalawi, who, he believes, can tell him how to find God.  The problem is that Sufis seem to have no place in our busy commercial world.

In the Islamic world, if you were looking for religion (or God or his saint), a good place to start might be to ask religious scholars.  In the Islamic world these are less likely to be university professors than to be religious lawyers versed in the Shari’a, which is Islamic law.  Some Islamic countries have a kind of dual legal system.  Felony crimes are handled by the same kind of police & judicial system that we are familiar with.  Family court may be handled by religious "clergy" who are educated in the Shari’a.  This is why the narrator remembers:
Why, I asked myself, should I not seek out Sheikh Zaabalawi?  I recollected my father
saying that he had made his acquaintance . . . at the house of . . . one of those sheikhs
who practiced law in the religious courts.

When he visits the Sheikh, he finds him to be a man of the world:
. . . My feet were conscious of the lushness of the costly carpet.  The man wore a lounge
suit [instead of a cheap religious robe] & was smoking a cigar; his manner of sitting was
that of someone well satisfied both with himself & with his worldly possessions.

When the Sheikh understands that the narrator is not a paying client:
2887    he applied himself to some papers on his desk with a resolute movement that
           indicated he would not open his mouth again.

Searching out the last known residence of Zaabalawi, which is predictably a shabby & poor part of the city, the narrator finds:
a mere prologue to a man [who] was using the covered entrance [to the apartment building]
as a place for the sale of old books on theology & mysticism.

His used books are worth almost nothing in cash, but they suggest that the man may be dealing in such works because he is religious.  Alas, when the narrator asks  about Zaabalawi, the side-walk vendor says that he hasn't seen the Sufi saint  for a long time:
He shrugged his shoulders sorrowfully & soon left me, to attend to an approaching customer.

No matter how negligible the sum, the commercial mind is devoted to the idol of money.  The narrator continues his search, asking merchants in the area & finally another Sheikh (2887) who tells him that:
2888    he has no fixed abode.
The Sheikh advises him to:
Look carefully in the cafes, the places where the dervishes perform their rites, the mosques &
prayer-rooms . . . for he may well be concealed among the beggars & be indistinguishable
from them.  Actually, I myself haven't seen him for years, having been somewhat preoccupied
with the cares of the world.
Who does the Sheikh listen for?  The call of the muezzin for prayer?  The call of God?
 The telephone rang, & he took up the receiver.

The narrator next tries a calligrapher.  Muslims are forbidden to make paintings or otherwise attempt to graphically produce an image of the divine.  Perhaps this is why Muslim cultures have produced some of the best architecture in the world.  Instead of pictures, they produce abstract arabesques & artistic calligraphy of suras or words from The Koran.  Again there is not much money to be made by this art, so the narrator has reason to believe that the calligrapher is religious & consequently may have some knowledge of Zaabalawi's whereabouts.  Like many of the other characters, the calligrapher feels that he was religious in his youth & lost the path of devotion as he grew older:
2889    He was so constantly with me . . . that I felt him to be a part of everything I drew.
           But where is he today?

The next possibility is with a musician.  Like the calligrapher, many musicians consider their art to be a religious discipline.  (You should listen to the great music of Bismillah Khan.)  The musician seems to offer the best link to reach Zaabalawi, but he gives an interesting & very contemporary warning:
2890    Today, though, the world has changed, & after having enjoyed a position attained
           only by potentates, he [Zaabalawi & Sufis like him] is now pursued by the police on a
           charge of false pretenses.  It is therefore no longer an easy matter to reach him.

The "false pretenses" can be read 2 ways.  The Egyptian police falsely accuse authentic Sufi mystics of being terrorists, because the police are men of this world who cannot distinguish between the authentic mystic & a terrorist.  This confusion is possible, even likely, because there are terrorists & political ambitious men who call themselves Sufis & falsely say they are devoted to God, such as those who bombed the New York World Trade Center.
 

Trade Center Bombing

The blind Egyptian Sheikh,, Omar Abdel-Rahman

Mahfouz acknowledges that Islam has its frauds just as Christianity or any other religious culture has frauds.  Instead of being motivated by money or luxury, the typical Muslim temptation these days seems to be to gain power or cult followers through violence against whatever the leader characterizes as evil.  Sufism & bhakti can never condone, much less be involved with, violence.  Just as the first Sheikh was devoted to the idol of money, other Sheikhs may be terrorists with political ambitions.  Obviously Zaabalawi will not be found in their company.

The story ends with irony & with allusions to Asian influence.  Sufism was largely developed by adapting Hindu bhakti to the new outlook of Islam.  One of the greatest Sufis or bhaktas was Kabir, a 15th c. Muslim weaver who lived in Varanasi.  Here are a few fragments of his poetry, which Mahfouz & his narrator would appreciate:
Cleverness [or knowledge] does not please the Master
but sincerity of heart [i.e. bhakti or devotion].

Lions are not found in flocks
& saints do not walk in troops!

When I was [i.e., when I was proud & involved in secular affairs that bolstered the ego]
Hari [the divine] was not [i.e., I was not conscious of the divine being my deepest
    or primal identity],
now Hari is & I am no more

One of Kabir's poetry collections is titled "The Liquor."  Here are a few fragments that suggest why Mahfouz talks about drunkenness at the end of his story:

You know a man is drunk with the Liquor of Ram [from the Ramayana]
when he never sobers up:
Like a mad elephant he wanders around
unconscious of his own body.

The mad elephant in love with the Invisible [the divine]
is free from [theological] concepts & desires:
Ever drunk with the Liquor of Ram
he is a liberated soul [moksha], one passed beyond [the concerns of this world].

Although he was brought up in the Islamic faith, Kabir lived in the holiest Hindu city, which is still the place that Hindus would like to die in or at least have their ashes brought to (Varanasi) to be immersed in Mother Ganga (the Ganges river).   Consequently, Kabir sounds more Hindu than Muslim.  Actually he renounces both religions because he thinks they are both too literal minded, too involved in the things of this world (money & power), & both insufficiently dedicated to the living God.

The Hindu died crying: 'Ram!'
the Mussulman crying: 'Khuda!' [a Persian word for God]
Kabir, that one will live [eternally],
who keeps away from both!

Now the Kaaba [in Mecca] has become Kasi [Shiva's holy city of Varanasi]
Ram has become Rahim [Arabic meaning the Merciful, a common Muslim name for God]

Kabir, it is good to die there [many Hindus hope to die in Varanasi]
where one is all alone [obviously not in Varanasi; & without caste alliances]
Where people eat animal flesh [so they are not orthodox Hindus]
& nobody invokes the Name [neither Ram nor Rahim, because God is not an object,
  not something separate or different from me].

Why does the Mulla climb the minaret [to call Muslims to prayer]?
Allah is not outside!
Him for whom you cry the call [to prayer, 5 times a day]
you should recognize in your heart.

If the Sheikh [Sufi] be devoid of patience,
what use then is that Kaaba pilgrimage?

Why do you worship stones,
which have never answered you?

Kabir, those dull-witted ritualists
are but stone from head to foot

What point in repeating the Name of Ram
if there is something else on your mind?
                (from Kabir, Charlotte Vaudeville.  Oxford U. Press, 1974.)

One last poem from Kabir, because it so closely parallels Mahfouz's story:

The Holy One [a Sufi] disguised as an old person in a cheap hotel
goes out to ask for carfare [a beggar; of course he wants a
   conveyance to take him to God].
But I never seem to catch sight of him.
If I did, what would I ask him for?
He has already experienced [or found] what is missing in my life.
Kabir says: I belong to this old person.

            (from The Kabir Book, Robert Bly.  Beacon, 1971.)
 

Now let's finish Mahfouz's story.  The narrator asks if Zaabalawi knows anything about music.  The musician says Zaabalawi's life is music:
2890    He is the epitome of things musical.

The musician sends the narrator to Negma Bar where he finds himself:
2891    In the presence of a hardened drinker . . . his face . . . flushed with wine.

The narrator begins to explain what he wants, when the unnamed man demands:
2891    "First, please sit down, &, second, please get drunk!"
           I made a sign indicating that I did not drink.
           "That's your lookout . . . & that's my condition!"
           "He put his fingers in his ears.  "I shan't listen to you until you're drunk!"

The narrator has little choice but to accede to the demands of the man who may be the long sought Zaabalawi..
2891-2   With the 3rd glass, I lost my memory, & with the 4th the future vanished.
             . . . Everything . . . [became] as a mere meaningless series of colored planes.
             I was in a state of deep contentedness, of ecstatic serenity.
             There was an extraordinary sense of harmony between me [the ego] & my inner
             self, & between the 2 of us & the world, everything being in its rightful place,
             without discord or distortion.   . . . the universe moved in a rapture of ecstasy.

The narrator passes out.  When he awakens, the bartender tells him that Zaabalawi tried to rouse him, but could not.
2892    "Where is he?"
            "He was here & then he left."
            "What a pity!  He was sitting on this chair beside you the whole time.."

The narrator says:
2893    I am willing to give him any money he wants.
Of course he should know that:
"He is not open to such temptations, yet he will cure you if you meet him."
"Without charge?"
"Merely on sensing that you love him."

Man cannot control or buy God.  In some sense, you must be drunk or detached from the cares of this world in order to be in the presence of the divine.  Hindu bhakti always characterizes the soul as a woman who longs for Krishna, suggesting that we are powerless to compel the divine to come to us.  This is expressed in this Hindu bhakti poem:
My heart,
Dress yourself
In the spirit of all women
& reverse
Your nature
& habits
            (from Songs of the Bards of Bengal, trans. Deben Bhattacharya.  Grove, 1969.)

The narrator is disappointed not to be able to find Zaabalawi when he wants to, on his terms.  But he is happy to have found him under any conditions, because it has renewed & deepened his faith.  He knows that, contrary to appearances, the divine can still be found in this world, even in the poorest parts of commercial Cairo:
I must wait, I told myself; I must train myself to be patient.  Let me content myself with having
made certain of the existence of Zaabalawi, & even of his affection for me.
How many weary people in this life know him not or regard him as a mere myth!

The narrator's final words are a profession of faith:
I had become fully convinced that I had to find Zaabalawi.
Yes, I have to find Zaabalawi.
 

Go to the top & click on the next section: Questions.