In Arabian Nights Read Free Page A

efrits , dervishes, divs and
jinns.
    My father always had a tale at hand to divert our attention, or
to use as a way of transmitting an idea or a thought. He used to
say that the great collections of stories from the East were like
encyclopedias, storehouses of wisdom and knowledge ready to
be studied, to be appreciated and cherished. To him, stories
represented much more than mere entertainment. He saw them
as complex psychological documents, forming a body of knowledge
that had been collected and refined since the dawn
of humanity and, more often than not, passed down by word of
mouth.
    When he died a decade ago, I inherited my father's library.
There were five reinforced boxes of books labelled STORIES : VALUABLE, HANDLE WITH CARE . Among them were Aesop's Fables , Hans Christian Andersen, and the Brothers Grimm.
There were many others, too, on the Arab collections, and
volumes of tales from every corner of the world – from Albania
and China, Cambodia, India, Argentina and Vietnam, from sub-Saharan
Africa, Australia, Malaysia, from Papua New Guinea
and Japan.
    Once the Caliph's House was renovated I had more time to
spare. So I sat down to read the five boxes of stories from my
father's library. I would often come to pencilled annotations in
his small, neat hand. Many of the notes hinted at wisdom locked
within a tale, or likened one story to another from an entirely
different region of the world.
    The only set of volumes missing was my father's copy of A
Thousand and One Nights , the rare edition translated by the
Victorian scholar and explorer Richard Francis Burton. As a
child I remember seeing the set in his study. It stood on a shelf at
ankle height. My father prized the edition very highly, and
would point out the quality of the workmanship, or tell of how
he came upon the seventeen volumes as a young man. He said
that he had saved for months to afford the books and would go
each afternoon to spend time admiring them in the shop. I
realized later it was the prized first 'Benares' edition of Burton's Alf Layla wa Layla , A Thousand and One Nights .
    The volumes were bound in waxy black cloth, with bright
gold lettering on the spines. I was young and inexperienced, but
they were just about the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
They were so exquisite that I would stroke my fingers over them
and stoop down to smell their scent.
    They smelled like cloves.
    One rainy winter afternoon a visitor arrived at my parents'
home. He was overweight, flat-footed, and chain-smoked from
the moment he stepped inside until the moment he stepped out.
I was too small to be told anything, but I remember my parents
muttering before he came. I don't know who he was, but he was
important enough to drink tea from our best china and to have
slices of lemon served on the side.
    From behind the banisters, I watched him greet my father
and move through the hall into the study. The door closed
behind them and, when it was eventually opened, the visitor was
struggling under the weight of the Arabian Nights . At dinner, I
asked what had happened to the black and gold books.
    My father's face seemed to darken. He looked at me hard,
and said: 'In our culture a guest is respected and honoured
very greatly, Tahir Jan. If he is under your roof, then he is
under your protection. Your possessions are his for the asking.
If he was to admire something, it is your duty to present
him with it. Remember this, Tahir Jan, remember it for
your entire life.'
     
    At Dar Khalifa, the guardians said they were too busy raking the
leaves to waste time telling tales. I grilled them one at a time, but
all they could tell me was that stories were not what they had
once been.
    'There used to be time to while away the hours, talking and
listening,' said Hamza, 'but these days there's too much work.
None of us has a moment to spare.'
    'There's no time even to scratch our heads,' Osman chipped
in. 'Our traditions are disappearing, all because employers are
working their