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“The Arabian Nights” also known as “1001 Nights” is a collective work of fiction. The core of the work is thought to have derived from either ancient India or Persia. Scholars have much to debate here. Just know, there are facts supporting why the story may have begun in either of these places. The earliest written version was found in 12th c. Egypt. The first translation into French was by Antoine Galland in the early 1700s. Many of these stories contain motifs and elements from the oral tradition.
The translation was a great hit, so much so that over time other collectors added to it. Stories were compiled from different time periods and from diverse cultures. They included literary stories, folktales and poetry. The work was very popular (especially in Europe) and so influential that we still know the stories of Sinbad, Aladin and Alibaba.
While many of these tales have male protagonists that is not true for all the stories and especially not true for the core tale. “The Arabian Nights,” you see, is a frame story. That means it’s a story within a story. There are so many stories embedded within each other that it often feels like you are in a maze or labyrinth.
The primary story in the collection is the tale of Shahrazad. In this story, there is a ruler who was humiliated and betrayed by his wife. She cheated on him with his servants. He becomes so enraged that he decides to go on a vendetta to kill all the young women in the land. He’s a zealot believing women are awful. Women are so terrible, it’s ok to kill them. So, each day he marries a young woman, sleeps with her and then has her killed in the morning. Next! This goes on for some time. But one day the daughter of the vizier (a political advisor) volunteers to be his bride. She has an idea about how she can protect all the young women from him. Here’s what she does. Each night before they go to sleep, she tells the ruler and her sister who sleeps under their bed (imagine that) a story. She speaks until morning and then stops the story at a cliff hanger. She says if you keep me alive, I’ll continue to tell you the story and maybe even one better. It goes on like this night after night for 1001 nights. That’s a lot of stories to tell.
Whenever daylight comes there is a break in the story. In one translation, the text simply counts off the nights. In another it reads, “But morning gained on Shahrazad and cut her speaking short. ‘The strangest story!’ said her sister. ‘If I live another night,’ she said, ‘I shall tell you stranger.’ The king decided he would spare her till the story’s end and kill her the next day. When night fell, her sister said, ‘If you are not asleep, tell us a tale to break the waking night.’ And Shahrazad agreed.’”
Our story is only one of the many that are told by Shahrazad. But how does her story end? Yasmine Seale writes, “While Victorian readers might expect a happy ending to Shahrazad’s brave effort to save her kingdom, the Arabic manuscripts do not offer such an easy resolution. In this respect, the Nights speaks less to the conventions of the European fairy tale than to the dystopian mode of contemporary fictional works such as The Handmaid’s Tale, whose ambiguous ending offers no certainty of freedom.”
If you come to love these tales as I have, consider borrowing or purchasing Seale’s version, The Annotated Arabian Night: Tales from 1001 Nights. This annotated version explains everything about the story and includes illustrations to bring it to life.
“Delila the Wily” is one of the many stories included within the Arabian Nights Collection. In this story, the old woman Delila lives with her daughter Zaynab. They had a comfortable life until her father and husband died leaving them destitute. The money that had been paid to them was now given to two criminal grifters who policed the town. Their names were Ahmad the Plague and Calamity Hasan. Frustrated and with no legitimate way to make money as a woman, Delila decides to play some tricks to make her name in Baghdad hoping she can get back the wages lost to her. Delila is a gifted con artist. She moves from one con to another. She disguises herself, changes her identity and takes advantage of many in the community. First, she takes the jewels and clothing from a rich woman, then the clothing and money from a young merchant. After that, she had all the inventory in a dyer shop destroyed and took someone’s donkey. All those who were wronged went to the governor for help, who sent people out to find her. But Delila wasn’t through, she wanted to play yet another trick. She decided to take the young son of wealthy merchant cared for by a servant girl while his family planned a wedding. She takes the child to a jeweler and leaves it there in exchange for some jewels. She then convinces a barber that the owner of the donkey is crazed and must have his molars removed and his temples branded to obtain sanity. While doing so, she cleans out his store. When all her victims meet up they say, “That woman is a trickster who has tricked us all.” They state the obvious.
The governor sends out his men who capture the old woman and arrest her that night. They take her to the governor’s house and wait for morning. Soon they are all asleep. She slips away and convinces the wife of the governor that she is a slave trader and that the men who brought her to the house are slaves. She takes money in exchange for them and disappears. Soon Delila is captured again. This time they tie her to a tree by her hair and fall asleep again. A Bedouin is passing by coming to Baghdad to eat honey fritters. He sees Delila tied to the tree and she tells him her punishment is to eat honey fritters. The Bedouin agrees to trade places and she is free yet again.
Now all who have been wronged come to the caliph’s court. He hears all the victim statements and decides that Ahmad the Plague and Calamity Hasan, the two men who were given the responsibility of policing the town must bring her in. This time it was Delila’s daughter who plays a trick on Ahmad and his men. She rents a shop and tells the men that as a wealthy shop owner, she needs their protection. She invites them in for some food, drugs them, strips them and takes off with their clothes. This time the caliph puts Calamity Hasan in charge of finding her, for Calamity knows Delila’s identity. He says she is only playing these tricks to show her skill and to ask for the wages once given to her husband. The caliph agrees to spare her life in exchange for what was taken.
Calamity finds Delila and brings her to the caliph’s court along with all she stole. The caliph asks why she did this and she replies, “Not for lust or property. I heard of all the tricks Ahmad the Plague and Calamity Hasan played in Baghdad, and I decided I would do the same.” The caliph gives back all the stolen property and makes all her victims right. The caliph then asks what she wants and she speaks of her dead husband and how they have suffered since his death.
Delila tells the caliph that her father was the keeper of the carrier pigeons and her husband was the watchman of Baghdad. She wants her husband’s salary, and her daughter wants her grandfather’s job. Delila also wanted the khan the caliph had built. The caliph agreed. The khan was an inn for traveling merchants. This one was a three-story building with 40 slaves, 40 dogs and a cook. This became Delila’s responsibility. Her daughter moved next door.
Each day Delila would wait outside the gate to see if the caliph had a message to send by carrier pigeon. At night she would let loose the dogs so they could watch over the khan while they slept.
Delila is a trickster. A trickster is an archetype. That is, a universal role or pattern of behavior that is found in stories, art and culture. It’s understood throughout the world and throughout time. The psychologist, Carl Jung, believed that archetypes are within us and that we can “become” that archetype when “triggered” or brought forth by the unconscious.
Tricksters are characters who bring chaos for chaos sake. Sometimes they are found in mythology, like Hermes and Loki. Other times they are found in folktales like Coyote or Raven in Native American lore or Anansi from Africa. They create the problem that faces them and then solve it in a way that best serves them. Lewis Hyde describes them as boundary-crossers in his book Trickster Makes the World. He writes, “Every group has its edge, its sense of in and out, and trickster is always there, at the gates of the city and the gates of life, making sure there is commerce. He also attends the internal boundaries by which groups articulate their social life. We constantly distinguish-right and wrong, sacred and profane, clean and dirty, male and female, young and old, living and dead-and in every case trickster will cross the line and confuse the distinction. Trickster is the creative idiot, therefore, the wise fool, the gray-haired baby, the cross-dresser, the speaker of profanities. Where someone’s sense of honorable behavior has left him unable to act, trickster will appear to suggest an amoral action, something right/wrong that will get life going again. Trickster is the mythic embodiment of ambiguity and ambivalence, doubleness and duplicity, contradiction and paradox.”
Delila and her daughter lived in a time and place in which women had little options. They survived only through association with men. Without men in their lives their options were limited. They could not work. They could only beg or engage in some kind of criminal activity. In this story both Delila’s husband and her father were dead. They were struggling but they were clever. Delila thought she might be rewarded if she showed she was skilled at deception. After all, she was only following the example of those who enforced order in the city, Ahmad the Plague and Calamity Hasan. Both men were criminals, dealing in extortion, corruption and graft. Delila had to survive through her wits. She knew she could outthink these two criminals. And so, Delila decided to engage in trickery, a series of bigger and bigger acts that bring her to the attention of the government. She left a trail of sobbing, duped men behind her. Delila wants to show that she is just as capable as Ahmad and Hasan and should earn their stipend of 1000 dinars a month (the wage once paid to her husband). She has a good sense of what is going on. She can read people and knows how to trick them. Time and again, she turns her victims against one another as she escapes. She’s quick-witted, knowledgeable and can improvise. She is the master of the artful lie. Delila tricks people higher up the social order until they finally take notice. Her actions are so skillful, she ultimately gets what she wants after all.
In a patriarchal world, women often lack autonomy. They face glass ceilings and limitations. They may be under the thumb of repression or abusive fathers or husbands. But take note. Here’s what’s important. Delila as an old woman is the smartest one in the story. And she dupes them by portraying herself as they imagine her to be – old, slow, feeble, innocent, vulnerable. How could Delila be a threat to anyone, they think? First mistake! Even when they identify her as the culprit, they fall asleep twice and leave her unattended still believing she is no risk. Tied to a tree by her hair she convinces a Bedouin to change places for her, just so he can get his fill of honey fritters. No risk? Delila is the master of deceit. She’s better at reading her mark than any female French spy in WWII.
For the most part, no one was harmed by her tricks. Well, except for the donkey owner, who ended up branded like a horse with some teeth pulled out. But even for him, the caliph compensated him with additional funds. Her acts of cunning cause the reader to reflect on issues of justice, law, morality and the ability of women to be the author of their own lives. In Delila’s world actions are not black or white but a multitude of shades of gray. Were you surprised by this ending? What do you think about her acts? Should she be punished or not? If so, what would be fair punishment? Ponder that for a bit.
Delila got what she wanted without any punishment at all. In our “law and order” world, no one ever asks “does the punishment fit the crime.” In our world, she would be thrown in jail without a single thought about what caused her to be there. But the caliph takes it all into account. Law in his world is not absolute. It’s a world in which equitable remedies can and are given. It’s something we don’t see often today.
What’s good about the best stories is that it makes us think. We can ponder issues of “law and order.” We can think about the poor who steal bread to survive. We can consider the plight of women who only survived by the good graces of men. As for me, I keep thinking about my grandmother. Born in the late 1880s, she was married and had six children. She could read but had little education. She had no job but worked hard her whole life, taking care of a small farm alone, cooking, sewing, canning even hat making. But it wasn’t enough to support her after her husband died at age 50. She had no SS in old age and lived in great fear that she’d end up in the “poor house.” My grandmother wasn’t clever like Delila and could have lost her house for back taxes had her children not stepped up. My grandmother was no trickster. The independence she had was dependent on the goodwill of others.
But what do you think about the old woman as a trickster figure? Women are very rarely trickers in stories, although I’ve written about a few in in my blog. (Check out “The Fortune Teller” a Russian tale, and “The Goose Girl at the Well” a Grimm folktale.) Do we see older women as safe and grandmotherly or as clever, wily or crafty? Do we mark them as having limited abilities (that is being feeble, ugly, or forgetful) or do we see older women as still vital and full of potential. I certainly hope it’s the latter.
Can the wise crone be a trickster too? Delila is most certainly the wisest of crones. She uses her age to her advantage, to trick others who make assumptions about who she is. Her victims see her as elderly, but she is far from that. She out maneuvers those who are much younger. Her brain is quick and agile, not old and demented. She lives on the boundary of society and at the boundary of gender roles, living outside of what’s appropriate for women to do or to be. She inspires us to do and be more.
Tricksters often challenge authority and societal norms, bringing humor and chaos to narratives while also facilitating change and transformation. In one Native American story, a coyote goes to a town where all the people are eaten by a monster. He allows himself to be eaten too, then sets a fire in the belly of the beast resulting in the creature pooping and throwing up all the people in the town. While tricksters can tear the world apart, they can also help to bring us back together. That’s certainly true of Coyote who often becomes the unexpected hero in stories.
The trickster goes against the norm, sometimes even challenging the norm. He (because most tricksters are traditionally men) cause chaos to the world order. In its shadow side he brings careless destruction. The actions of the trickster figure are often amoral. He cares nothing about those he hurts. And that coyote? He only rescued the town because there were no people around to harass. Now that’s the shadow side of the trickster.
But there is a female trickster too and I believe she’s more interested in setting things “right.” We know lots of trickster figures in stories. We see it represented in “Delila the Wily,” in the “Goose Girl at the Well,” and also in “Tatterhood.” Tatterhood, is a great example of the trickster. Who else might be born riding a goat and holding a spoon? From the beginning we know she is going to do something unexpected. Tatterhood isn’t going to sit on her princess thrown and expect the men folk to rescue her sister. No! She heads straight into the chaos and time after time does something unexpected. But through it all she calculates her actions for a “happy ending.”
Female tricksters care nothing about what the culture says, and nothing about established gender roles. They care nothing about being nice and playing it safe. As far as their morality, I’d argue that tricksters live in a grey world. Delila’s morals are bigger than rules and laws. It’s a world where starving people can steal a loaf of bread from the wealthy without impunity.
Now, here’s the question for us all (especially those of us aspiring to be a wise crone). When we are faced with a world falling apart, when toxic masculinity and patriarchy run rampant, what would the female trickster do? Would she retreat to her rocking chair? Never! What would Delila do to protect her family and friends? I’m guessing whatever it takes. What would Tatterhood do to protect her sister? Fight a coven of witches. What would that old woman at the well do to protect the geese girls under her care? Change them into geese, of course!
So, how do we face bully tricksters? By turning the shadow side of this archetype on its head. By challenging the social order, and by stepping outside of established boundaries. If we can do the unexpected, we might achieve a just and right solution to whatever we face. Perhaps there is a happy ending after all.
I once wrote, “Each of us must ponder how to use this archetype in our own lives. Each of us, must make the Trickster conscious. In doing so, we can use chaos for our own end and for the greater good. The conscious Trickster, who showcases her own hypocrisy, just might move us safely through the land mines that lie ahead.” But I believe this time I should go a bit further. In a world that is coming apart by its seams and trickers seem to rule it, the rest of us should ask, “What might we learn from the female trickster figure to help us maneuver the days to come?” Might we create an underground railroad like Harriet Tubman? Serve as spies in France to defeat the Nazis? Hide Ann Frank in our attic? Speak out? March like the Grey Panthers of old? Get off your rocky chair, granny! You are desperately needed today. Sometimes crones just need to embrace their inner trickster to make the change that’s needed in the world.