They are our Scheherazades.
They tell stories. So the “king” may not kill them and their people.
They had to become our Scheherazades, our storytellers.
With a twisted twist, they are telling the stories as they are living them.
They do not live in palaces, they live in tents, they are starving, they are being hunted, they are being killed…
They are telling their own stories to keep the attention of the world, to keep it engaged so they can save and free their people.
They have no other choice like Scheherazade.
To be continued, keep me alive.
To be continued, keep us alive.
Let us go back to our land, our home. Let us break this cycle of harm for ourselves, for our land and eventually for us all. Let us discontinue and transform the colonialist supremacist stories. There is no acting like nothing is happening. There is no short cut out of it. Our stories are alive. They came into being through us. We tell them as we live them and our stories will live on long after us. Now, they are interwoven to your stories, to the stories of our planet.
I have not read One Thousand And One Nights.
I heard some of it. I was story told them. So I know a few stories, you may too, like the ones with Sinbad, Ali Baba, or Aladdin1… One Thousand and One Nights is a part of my story universe. My imagination flew with the magic carpet, sailed to the seven seas, trapped inside the lamp, opened and closed with sesame quite a bit.
Let me briefly share some whispers from this rich collection of written human stories. One Thousand And One Nights consists of Middle Eastern/Near Eastern folktales that were compiled in Arabic during the Golden Age of Islam, 8th century - 13th century. There are many versions of them. Throughout One Thousand One Nights, one tale is told by a female human storyteller, Scheherazade and listened to by Shahryar, a male human ruler.
Shahryar is betrayed by his wife. To defend his honour and not to be dishonoured and betrayed again, he marries a maiden every day and executes them the next morning. This is how he protects himself by not giving any chance to the other. His vizier, his political advisor finds him the women to marry and the kingdom eventually runs out of them. Scheherazade is the daughter of the vizier and she offers herself as a bride to the king. Through storytelling she manages to keep the attention of the ruler, postpones her execution for one thousand one nights and saves at least 1001 lives. She also bears him three sons. The king listens to her stories and participates in her storytelling till Scheherazade runs out of tales. Thinking that this brings an end to her life, she asks to say goodbye to her children. The king is a changed man now. The sword is in love with the stories, the king is in love with the woman thus he spares her life and makes her his queen for life.
Scheherazade lives in a palace. She is a woman of privilege who has access to these stories that have been told and kept by her society and made up her patriarchal world. She is the storyteller of a king and a kingdom with a rich repertoire. One thousand one stories she tells from memory. It is beyond impressive for any storyteller. She knows what stories to tell, she knows what not to tell, how to tell, when to stop, when to continue. She is smart, she is capable, she is cunning, she is rich, she is married to the king but we do not envy her because she can die at any moment if she fails to keep his attention. The stakes are high and they keep us engaged, making us root for her, even like her. We are following full of curiosity just like the king.
Scheherazade is a storyteller who tells stories to survive by entertaining and pleasing the one in power. She also bears this man three sons and continues his legacy. Don’t ask me how she managed to remember all those stories with a pregnancy brain and what kind of role these pregnancies and babies played in the story. I do not know and yet, a female storyteller like me wonders. Scheherazade represents a certain kind of female archetype that survives and on occasion thrives within the patriarchal world. If she had dared to tell a story that failed to entertain the king, or rather confront him, perhaps causing him to face himself and his doings, I reckon she would not have survived the night. Although I do not know the content and the extent of her stories enough (what they taught the king, what not) they must have entertained his masculine consciousness and keep it comfortable within his ruling status since she stayed alive.
Now, when I think about this story there are some other things I see. That actually makes me curious to read and explore its imagination more.
I see the imaginal crumbles of creativity and destruction projected onto feminine and masculine, and embodied in a human woman and a human man. Creativity is trying to stay alive through stories and convince Destruction not to destroy all but rather to stay with it in this dance. Some creativity, some destruction so they can be partners; not all-creativity or all-destruction. These two primal forces of the universe are inseparable. There cannot be one without the other, they are acknowledging that and exploring how to exist together.
One thousand one nights is about two years and nine months. This is how long Scheherazade told stories and the king listened to her stories. All this storytelling so that one human in power could learn how to love and trust, and stop being cruel, stop killing others. This collection of stories reach to our times and perhaps still dream that we stop ruling through killing and destruction. We start learning how to form relationships and lead through listening and creativity. We are in need of an ecosystem, in need of a community of people and stories.
In the story of Scheherazade, there is an ancient wisdom that understands the importance of stories and storytellers. There is also a hidden trap that demonstrates how stories and storytellers may settle and serve the authority and the story in power. That can become one of their main tasks.
When the stories are trapped, so are the storytellers.
When the storytellers are trapped, so are the stories.
When the stories disconnect from their web of life, their planet and their universe to serve just a single species, one gender of that species or one place or one culture and those who are in power, we find ourselves in a toxic story field rather than a healthy story ecosystem.
We are all a part of this planetary story field.
We are storymaking and storytelling beings.
There is a Scheherazade living inside us all that tells stories to keep us alive, to keep our people alive, to keep our land alive, to keep our world alive, to keep our creativity alive, to keep our stories alive. And that storyteller is not necessarily a mature one.
As we make the conscious choice to mature, we must examine our collective stories as a species, their gifts and their shadows as much as our personal stories, as much as our regional, national, religious ones. We must try not to fall into and/or find ways to get out of the traps; perhaps Scheherazade and past storytellers could not escape from and fell.
How do we do that? There is no simple answer or single recipe or direct path.
Maybe we stay in the darkness for a while and let the question tell us stories. Perhaps for one thousand one nights. Perhaps we examine what rulers, what kings, what forces our storyteller serves. Perhaps our inner Shahryar (ruler, tyrant) can learn to listen more, reflect more to grow and heal through stories. Perhaps our inner ruler can join us as a mature leader who cares for their species, for their web of life, for their planet’s wellbeing, relationships, interconnectedness, creativity and wisdom.
It is all in the deep imagination and creativity. It is all in the storytelling.
We know that stories can transform us and we can transform the stories. And deep down we also know we must find ways to discontinue wrong and disrespectful stories and story habits that have been wrecking our world, no matter how pleasing and entertaining humans find them, no matter how much they sell, no matter how widely they top the charts.
We get to choose what we story tell, what not and that changes things.
We are all telling stories.
We all have the responsibility to metabolise our share of this story carcass.
It is not the time to settle for stories that just keep us alive.
It is time for us to tell stories that keep our planet alive.
Meantime…
and kindtime…
Cease Fire. Veto destruction. Girlcott. Share the stories and make them heard. Hold the humans, kings, kingdoms, nation-doms, religion-doms accountable. Free Scheherazades. Compost old stories. Allow brave new wild stories to come to life.
© Gizem Gizegen, 2024 Istanbul, ☉ Pisces ☽ Virgo, Full Moon in Virgo
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That were added to the collection later on by a French translator according to Wikipedia.
“Some of the stories commonly associated with the Arabian Nights—particularly ‘Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp’ and ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’—were not part of the collection in the original Arabic versions, but were instead added to the collection by French translator Antoine Galland after he heard them from Syrian writer Hanna Diyab during the latter's visit to Paris. Other stories, such as ‘The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor’, had an independent existence before being added to the collection.” Wikipedia
Thank you, that was beautiful.
Amazing thank you