Beware the Green-Ey'd Monster...

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Sayeth Master Shakespeare!

And when sorrows and evils like these he must brave

His happiest homestead were down in the grave.

Sayeth Richard Francis Burton, in his version of Scheherazade's tale of
The Three Apples.

Western Tales with Eastern Roots is sticking to Shakespeare for one more week to explore Othello.

My absolute favorite villain is Iago. Not that I love bad guys, (although I do adore Kenneth Branagh) but I love the way his character so deftly propels everyone else to doom. Iago isn't even entirely to blame for the tragedy. He simply plays on Othello's weakness. Othello is the one who acts. The devil may whisper in your ear, but you're the one who's supposed to know better.

So The Three Apples goes something like this:

The Caliph and his right hand man, Ja'afar, are strolling the streets and come across a lamenting fisherman. Of course, they stop to find out the problem. The fisherman has pulled something gruesome from the river: a beautiful woman, dismembered and crammed into a reed sack. Our mighty and just Caliph decides the murderer must be found and brought to justice. Lucky for Ja'afar, he happens to be along for the walk and the job is assigned to him.

When Ja'afar starts asking questions about the woman in the reed sack, the weeping husband is brought before the Caliph. The man realizes his mistake, because his sons are all crying and confess to the tale of a missing apple. So what's the deal with the apple?

The man, whose wife had fallen ill, went off in search of special apples from a faraway orchard because she desired them. She was a good wife so he loved her dearly and would have done anything for her. When he returned, he placed the apples near her bed. While she slept, one of their children took an apple. That child ran into a slave who tricked him out of it. The husband came across said slave with the apple and questioned him about it. The slave's response? "I got it from my new lover."

Well. Who is a man to believe? The wife he loves so dearly, who can't explain where the apple went? Or the slave who has the red-hot apple from his new lover? The dead woman in the reed sack knows the answer to that queston.

But then who was the guilty slave? Why it was Ja'afar's own! (Bet you thought Ja'afar was the bad guy from Aladdin.)

Anyway...here's some fun with Othello:

Scheherazade and a Quest

Image via WikipediaI couldn't keep to my M-W-F posting plan because I came up with another idea (and I can't shut up when that happens).

So Tuesdays this month will be a series. Notable Eastern Women. Each week I'm going to post a few facts about a woman (real or immortalized) who inspires my writing. Since I can't possibly include every fact, I'm asking followers to please add what they know in the comments. (The more obscure, the better!)

Today I'm working on Scheherazade.  She's in lots of places. Yet when I referred to her in my query, some people looked at me like I had three heads.

Scheherazade is the narrator of the 1001 Arabian Nights. We begin with the sultan of the story, who takes a different wife each night and kills her in the morning.  However, when Scheherazade is chosen, things change. She tells him a different story each night, cleverly falling asleep and failing to finish it, leaving him with a cliffhanger. Of course, the sultan can't kill her because he must know the ending.

Some quick facts for you:

• Aladdin is one of Scheherazade's most famous stories.
• Scheherazade is a ballet and symphonic suite, written in 1888 by Rimsky-Korsakov. (Love this!)
• Binbir Gece, also with a Shehrazat, is a 2006 Turkish soap opera.  A modern 1001 Arabian Nights á la Indecent Proposal, it's currently running rampant all over eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Here's the quest:  I want you to Guess The Author of the following quote. (It's not me, despite the parentheses.)

The night having arrived, the lady Scheherazade not only put the finishing stroke to the black cat and the rat (the rat was blue)but before she well knew what she was about, found herself deep in the intricacies of narration, having reference (if I am not altogether mistaken) to a pink horse (with green wings) that went, in a violent manner, by clockwork, and was wound up with an indigo key.

Your clue is: Tellmenow Isitsoörnot

This is Rimsky-Korsakov's haunting(and famous) piece, performed by the Moscow Symphony.

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• Lanterns bloom in Lines Ballet's 'Scheherazade' (sfgate.com)
• Music review: New Columbus Symphony director has splashy beginning (dispatch.com)

Possession

Not everything we know about djinn is thrown out in Burnt Amber. Lots of the Disney business is, ixnay with the three wishes and all, but I hold true to some of Scheherazade's basic principles. Who is she? She's the narrator of the 1001 Arabian Nights...the woman who the king is planning to kill when she finishes the story, so she stretches it out to last longer...kind of the original cliff hanger at the end of the chapter, if you will... (Tangent: If I could have a cat, I would name her Scheherazade. Just love to say the name!) Anyway, back to....

Important principle number one: Djinn live in a parallel universe and can possess animals in this one. They are also bound to the capabilities of whatever animal they choose. So say they choose a bird, that means they can fly, but they can't open doors or talk (unless it's a parrot).

Variation: They don't have to be black. Why? Because black is associated with evil and I already mentioned djinn can be either good or evil.

Variation number two: There are different levels of djinn (remember Marid and Ifrit) and each one has different abilities as to the creature it can possess. Some don't do it at all. Some don't need a host at all. The arabic word for crazy is majnoon (using the english alphabet here of course). Literally it means "with a djinn" or "having a djinn", i.e. there is a belief floating out there that some djinn can even possess people.

These actually aren't my own variations btw because Scheherazade isn't the only source for djinn lore out there. There are myths and legends all over the place in the Middle East which, as an American, I did not grow up knowing. But I'm having the best time explaining it to you now :)

If you've got the time, here's a short story about water djinn from the New Yorker.

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• Téa Obreht: "Blue Water Djinn." (newyorker.com)