Arabian Nights week 17

NeilNjae

# Story

- Ahmed marries Pari Banu and has a sumptuous wedding, over several days
- Ahmed wants to visit his father, but Pari Banu is jealous
- The sultan pines for his missing son. He asks a witch to find Ahmed. The witch fails
- Eventuall, Pari Banu relents and lets Ahmed visit his father, but swears him to secrecy.
- The visit goes well, and Pari Banu suggests that Ahmed visit his father every month.
- A vizir questions the source of Ahmed's wealth. The sultan asks the witch to investigate.
- She tricks Ahmed into taking her into Pari Banu's realm. The witch is treated as an honoured guest and eventually returned to the mortal world. She reports to the sultan
- He becomes jealous of his son. The witch proposes setting him a sequence of ever-more-difficult tasks.
- Pari Banu provides the tent, then tells Ahmed how to bypass the lions guarding the fountain.
- He then asks for Shaybar. When he arrives, he kills the sultan and the witch.

# Notes

- Yes, emphasis in Diyab's stories of riches over the moral good of characters
- Are the witches motives good in how she tracks down Ahmed's new home?
- What do you make of the different notions of marriage and partnership displayed when the sultan asks Ahmed for the tent?
- Was it only me who thought Pari Bnu would answer the first request by shrinking the sultan to the fit inside a tiny tent, but not enlarge them afterwards?
- This is a clear morality tale. Did you think this would turn out any other way? Were the details of the ending a surprise?

Apocryphal

This second part of Pari Banu was the most languid story yet, wasn’t it?

I found the Sultan’s, the witch’s, and Pari Baby’s motives all rather suspect, in that I kept thinking there were ulterior motives behind their actions. But I was never quite parsed what those motives might be. Especially with Pari Banu, who mostly resolved into a well-meaning but enigmatic character, which I suppose is as it should be.

The witch came across as manipulative (but why I don’t know) and the father as a bit of a dupe (which seems not quite in the same character as in the early part of the story.)

I rather liked the creepy ‘revenge fairy’ at the end - I mean as a plot element, not as someone with whom I identified.

RichardAbbott

@Apocryphal said:
I rather liked the creepy ‘revenge fairy’ at the end - I mean as a plot element, not as someone with whom I identified.

RichardAbbott

I think the father was in the grand tradition of rulers-who-are-pretty-dumb, continued of course in the Disney Aladdin film.

I think last week we mentioned the odd disjuncture between the two halves of the story - there are several places where using the three magic items would have been really handy, but they're now in the dragon's hoard and so inaccessible...

That aside, I liked the way this carried on. There's a definite theme (echoed I think in lots of European folk-tales, though I'm not going to enter into the game of who influenced whom) that too much curiosity and insufficient trust is a Bad Thing. We've seen this several times in the tales to date.

Thinking back to the frame story (and whether or not this particular tale was part of an original set, the compiler of the tales must have given it some thought) - what is the king supposed to make of Pari Banu as a strong female character, potentially a stand-in for Shahrazad? Should he be thinking "wow if I mess with her then she's probably got some heavy-duty allies and it'll be curtains for me"? Or should he be thinking "women have hidden resources and riches which I could get invited to share but won't be able to just seize"?

Again a CS Lewis connection here.
About Shaybar ( @Apocryphal 's creepy revenge fairy) we read

Shaybar, head high, went boldly to the throne without waiting for an introduction. "You called for me", he said to the sultan, "Here I am. What do you want from me"

After which things go downhill for the sultan pretty rapidly.

Then in The Last Battle we read of Tash coming to the leader of the Calormene forces

A terrible figure was coming toward them. It was far smaller than the shape they had seen from the Tower, though still much bigger than a man, and it was the same. It had a vulture's head and four arms. Its break was open and its eyes blazed. A creaking voice came from its beak. "Thou hast called me into Narnia, Rishda Tarkaan. Here I am. What hast thou to say?"

After which again things go downhill pretty fast for the unfortunate Rishda - though in this case any further mischief that Tash might want to make is forestalled by The Good Guys.

NeilNjae

@Apocryphal said:
This second part of Pari Banu was the most languid story yet, wasn’t it?

I agree. If this tale had the pace of the earlier ones, it would have been about five pages rather than 25.

@RichardAbbott said:
The witch came across as manipulative (but why I don’t know) and the father as a bit of a dupe (which seems not quite in the same character as in the early part of the story.)

I agree with that, especially her very specific request for Shaybar. What did she think would happen when he appeared?