Ali Baba pulls Jamal near and ruffles his hair. My brother grins up at him, and a sense of peace fills my soul. I stare down at the hands cradling mine. They feel warm and strong.
Ali Baba clears his throat and looks anxiously at me. “Will you?” he asks.
A thousand jinn could not stop me from being a part of something so wonderful and true. I glance at Saja’s bright face and gaze into the eyes of Ali Baba and his family.
“Yes.” I smile as I speak my very own magic words. “I will.”
Author’s Note
I first heard the exciting story of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” as a child, listening to a collection of audio recordings from The Arabian Nights. It was my favorite of the tales, and daring young Marjana never ceased to intrigue me. Around that time, my father took my brother and me to see the film Gandhi, starring Ben Kingsley, which had a lasting impression on me. Afterward, the kind, unassuming voice of Ali Baba from the audiotapes was forever paired in my mind with Kingsley’s image of soft-spoken Gandhi, and most likely influenced my idea of making Ali Baba a peaceful humanitarian, who gave away his treasure instead of keeping it for himself.
The Arabian Nights, or The Thousand and One Nights, is part of both Arabic and European literature and is a jumble of narratives—epics, fairy tales, fables, comedies, political works, and more—some of which have roots in Sanskrit, Persian, and Greek literature. The tales are framed around a central story of a young woman named Scheherazade, who volunteers to marry a king who murders a new wife every night. Each evening, Scheherazade ends her tales on such cliff-hangers that he keeps her alive in order to hear what happens next. In this way, the thousand and one stories save her life and the lives of countless other women.
An important and recurring theme throughout the Nights tales is the idea of predestination and the relationship between free will and fate. Arabic folklore abounds with proverbs extoling the power of fate, such as What is written will be fulfilled, which literally means What is written on the forehead must be seen by the eye. Many protagonists of The Arabian Nights tales set out to beat fate but find that their evasive actions actually become the very vehicle that fate uses to bring about their destiny, just like in Abu-Zayed’s story about the man trying to trick death. Marjana sees fate as a wind blowing toward a certain destination, while Master seeks to avoid his fate by sneaking away to the cave and stealing the treasure. He ends up losing everything, just as the fortune-teller Abu-Zayed predicted.
Marjana’s story takes place in the mid-tenth century CE, when the Buyids had taken control of medieval Baghdad from the Abbasids, and it was an increasingly lawless city. During this time, it was home to a vast counterculture of street folk. Beggars, pickpockets, treasure hunters, musicians, comedians, mimics, snake charmers, sorcerers, swindlers, and storytellers crowded the busy markets, all desperately surviving by means of their wits and wiles.
Around this period, territorial bands of ruffians and vagabonds called ayyarun also plagued the streets. These armed gangs collected money from area merchants in exchange for protection from rival gangs. Their leaders really did ride on each other’s backs and used helmets, shields, and harnesses woven from plaited palm leaves.
Tucked inside this rough-and-tumble setting lies another historical reality of Marjana’s world; in the medieval Middle East, women moved in a sphere completely separate from men. The harem is the best illustration of the sharp divide between the genders. All wives in a household lived in a separated section of the home with their young children and extended female relations, servants, and slaves, forming a close, sometimes complex community. Male khādim guards, eunuchs, also lived in the harems to protect the women and children and to keep a close eye on them. Marriage was not usually seen as a romantic union between a man and a woman but a matter of property transfer from the father to the groom, who acquired the woman to begin his own familial line.
Though women were generally discouraged from stepping outside these bounds, there existed subcultures within the broad, rich culture of the medieval Middle East that offered alternative perspectives on women’s roles. During the time of our story, there was a growing movement of Muslim mystics called Sufis who sought to experience the spiritual reality behind their religious texts and rituals and grow closer to Allah through spiritual learning known as tariqa. Sufism, known as tasawwuf in the Arabic-speaking world, continues to be practiced by many Muslim worshipers today.
As Rasheed tells Marjana, Sufis practice meditation, rhythmic movement, music, and chanting to open their hearts to the divine and to connect with Allah. Like Ali Baba’s family, Sufis emphasize the unity in nature and devote their lives to meditation and devotion to Allah and to an existence free from worldly gain. Sufis advise respect and honor for the feminine and integrate women in their ceremonies, valuing them as active participants.
Eighth-century Sufi Rabi’a al-’Adawiyya of Basra is one example of the many celebrated women in the history of the movement. As a child, Rabi’a was sold into slavery and freed herself from a cruel master through her faith in Allah. Later in life, she chose not to marry in order to devote herself to God. Rabi’a is remembered as one of the greatest Sufis in Islam.
Another intriguing subculture involved the Safavid women from Iran. Their “soul sister” vows were common in the sixteenth century, and I wanted to include this fascinating ritualistic union among two female best friends in my tenth-century story. These unions were considered vital and were recognized and fostered by the entire community.
Ali Baba’s wife, Leila, mentions several actual ways in which these kindred spirits communicated their most intimate moods and feelings using kitchen supplies as secret gifts with coded meanings, though I have altered their meanings slightly for the sake of the story I wanted to tell. The vow of sisterhood entailed a fierce loyalty and was often displayed by dressing alike, moving in the same social circles, not talking about each other behind one another’s back, and even inheriting property. The engagement involved a sort of matchmaker, a reputable woman who arranged the union just as Leila describes it in the story. The couple then visited a shrine on a religious holiday to make their union public. One woman would declare, “In the name of Ali, the Shah-conqueror of Khaybar,” and the other would reply, “Oh God, accept and fulfill our desire.” Afterward, there was celebrating with dancing and drinking of sherbert.
While these historical pictures of medieval Middle Eastern women are refreshing and complex, female characters in The Arabian Nights tales are generally confined to two strict categories: dangerous women, such as witches and adulteresses, or safe women—devout, sensible creatures who are merely decorative to the plot. The slave girl Marjana, however, seems to possess both the bold, passionate characteristics of the former and the loyalty and integrity of the latter.
As a dancer, Marjana possesses an energy and vivaciousness. She certainly embodies boldness, taking over Ali Baba’s mess, patching up his brother’s mishap, diverting the robbers, then incapacitating them when they showed up later, and finally saving Ali Baba and his son from the captain. No one could deny Marjana’s fierce loyalty. But what are her motivations? Why is she so passionate and brave? What could possibly provoke a slave to risk her life more than once for the sake of a new master?
Since the traditional tale never gives us the answers to these questions and relegates Marjana, the natural choice for the leading role, to the background, I thought it time to pull this fascinating young woman into the limelight and let her shine.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Charlie Ilgunas for his enthusiastic collaboration and hard work on this project. I am also grateful for the constructive words of encouragement and critique provided by readers Anne Marie Pace, Francoise Bui, Erin Murphy, Alex Lenzi, Elizabeth Reimer, and Jennifer Duddy Gill, with a special appreciation for the insights and guidance of Tasneem Daud.
Thank you to Hunger Mountain VCFA Journal for the Arts for awarding the middle grade category of th
e Katherine Paterson Prize in 2011 to an excerpt of an early version of The Forty Thieves, and to the Lascaux Review for awarding it the Eldin Fellowship in 2015. I would also like to acknowledge the folks at Cricket Magazine Group for first publishing a shorter, serialized version of The Forty Thieves in Cricket magazine in 2016.
Finally, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to my family for their enduring love and support.
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