The Lady of the House Scheherazade

Description

Scheherazade leaves the king eagerly anticipating another night, but she tells him tales even more horrific than the past he is trying to escape. One of these stories focuses on an obedient porter who follows his mistress as she buys dates, incense, and other goods from the enchanting East. He arrives with her at a house where she lives with two friends, and a lewd ritual ensues. The dialogue emphasizes various names for intimate parts of their bodies and his own. It is a sexually suggestive narrative, a staged dramatization of the unfolding stories and “permissible talk,” and the fantasies of the characters, all of whom are immersed in a world of pleasure and the basest aspects of the body. In “The Lady of the House, Scheherazade,” Hanan al-Shaykh presents tales adapted from “One Thousand and One Nights,” rewriting them with her own interpretations and adding new scenes from her imagination. It invites the reader to re-enter the world of Scheherazade, and the tales that depict life in its entirety, with all its contradictions: poverty and wealth, love and betrayal, justice and injustice, and terrifying adventures where fantasy becomes reality. And reality is stranger than fantasy…