Scheherazade

Sarah Muir
MSMU Class of 2018

(4/2018) I began writing this article by looking in dismay upon my bookshelf. A lifetime of reading and rereading and collecting books left me a great many to choose from and little inclination to bestow upon one as being my "favorite". However, on the very top of my shelf, stacked so I had to stand on tip toe to reach it was a book whose story has, no doubt, claimed a soft spot in my heart. Its pages were probably gilded at one point, but the gold has been rubbed away, leaving a navy-indigo stain in its wake. On the cover, hovering in the air like a mirage over a band of thieves opening a magic cave, are the glittering words The Arabian Nights.

When I was a little girl, it was a book my mother would read to me, but we never could seem to finish it. I usually fell asleep before a chapter was complete anyway (and I was also on a Magic Tree House kick at the time). I grew up with a vague understanding that the book had something to do with Disney’s "Aladdin" and a recollection that the names were difficult for me to say. It wasn’t until years later in college, I picked it up again, read it to the end and fell in love with it. This isn’t much of a surprise seeing how I have been drawn to fairytales my whole life and since the book is, in fact, a collection of stories involving genies and witches, magicians and thieves, cursed fish and marble palaces. I suppose one could say that choosing this book is a little bit of a cheat. It is more of a collection of short stories. A book filled with fairytales occupied by fast thinking merchants and heroes with true, strong hearts. However, what I love most about the book is the frame in which all the stories take place. Every word written effects the life of the main hero, Scheherazade.

Her story begins with a pair of brothers who encapsulate all the virtue a fairytale can bestow. The eldest inherits the throne and vast kingdom—as elder princes are wont to do. Soon after becoming Sultan, he grants a portion of his kingdom to his younger brother who he loves dearly. Years pass, and they are both wonderfully happy, that is until they discover that their respective wives were planning on betraying them to their enemies. After this the Sultan and King of Tartary are, of course, distraught both the treason and the subsequent execution of their wives. However, the Sultan, Shahriar, takes it to another level. He decides that women who marry for power are obviously inherently destined to betray their husbands, so he vows that every day he will take a new bride and every morning have her killed.

This is where Scheherazade, seeing the destruction of the Sultan’s actions, intervenes and prevents it from spreading further. She’s blessed with a wonderful memory and arming herself with a plethora of cliffhangers, she sets herself on the path to save, not only her life, but the lives of countless others. After convincing her father and instructing her younger sister on what to do the morning she is to be executed, she marries the Sultan. On the morning after her wedding, before he hands her off to be killed, Scheherazade’s sister conveniently shows up and begs that she hear one more of her older sister’s wonderful stories. With the Sultan’s permission Scheherazade begins. She tells a story and ends it on such a cliffhanger, that the Sultan keeps her alive one more day. For a thousand and one nights she crafts her stories and the Sultan let’s her live out of fear he will never know the ending. Eventually, the Sultan realizes that he has fallen in love with her and begs her forgiveness for his unjust actions, which she grants, and they live happily ever after.

Albert Einstein is attributed to have said, "If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales." However, the genre of children’s literature is often dismissed as something good for the time being, but overall not worth much thought after you move on to the "real, true" literature.

In past articles I have written, at length on the power or literature. This collection of tales accentuates the reason why storytelling is important; why literature, whether for children or adults, is valuable. Simply put, it saves lives. Through the stories that Scheherazade tells, she slowly brings back her husband from a place in which he had wallowed for so long in his hatred and bitterness. For one-thousand-and-one nights she lived in fear of the following dawn, of running out of words to save the them both. I consider her to be one of the bravest heroes in literature. She represents a force of good that is not cowed by the range of human evil, because she has knowledge in her own power to alter it. Whether it be a woman stalling for time against the executioner’s axe or a book that lifted us up when things grow dark, stories and tales, both long and short, save us from what happens in the world.

Read other articles by Sarah Muir