“Scheherazade, you have calmed my heart
“And filled it with love.
“I have listened to your wise and smiling words,
“And now my soul is joyful.”
We picture the Arabian Nights as a phantasmagoria of rich textures, colors, and songs, exotic locales and mighty spells. But to me the heart of the story is right there: a courageous plunge into almost certain death, the power of stories to transform, blind hate changed into conscious love, and they all lived happily ever after.
The Tales of One Thousand and One Nights are an Arabic text with a complex history in the Western world. For one thing, the two stories within the Tales that everyone knows—Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves—are nowhere within the original text! It was the doing of the work’s first translator, Paul Gallard. As he translated a collection of tales, passed down through oral tradition, from Arabic into French, Gallard thought that Ali Baba and Aladdin made fun additions to the set. And you know, the Arabian and Persian storytellers who shared and embroidered these stories down the years probably would have agreed.
It’s not just the original tales, but the wealth of interpretation in the Western world, that make The Arabian Nights such rich scope for the imagination. The Arabian Nights have touched my life time and again, never quite a constant, but never forgotten. Disney’s Aladdin of course was a childhood staple of mine (though watching it now I’m a bit disenchanted with the stereotypical hook-nosed and gap-toothed villains). I loved the 2000 Hallmark miniseries Arabian Nights, with a passionate Scheherazade determined to save the Sultan not just for the Kingdom’s sake, but for his own. And most recently, Catherynne M. Valente’s novels The Orphan’s Tales have won my heart with their diamond-cut language, bewildering mythology both real and invented, and the turnaround of the frame story, where the teller is an exiled, enchanted girl, and the listener a wide-eyed Princeling who exclaims, after each tale, “That was a wonderful story!”
Indeed, what a story.
But there’s things I accept in a story that I wouldn’t accept in real life. Your hero’s bloodline will certainly determine her character and destiny? Sure. A couple of adventurers spend an hour together, perhaps sing a duet, and are irrevocably in love? As long as they’re cute, I’m game. A conqueror breaks her word and burns down a city with her dragons? She’s my favorite character!
Different fictional universes require us to suspend our certainties in order to go on a vicarious adventure. Some of these certainties are practical—like that dragons are real, and can talk and fight against Napoleon. Some are moral—like that a sovereign who first murders his wife, then abuses his power in a systematic campaign of rape and murder, can be redeemed, with a wife, a family, and all his power intact, and that is a satisfying ending.
Fairy tales and other myths are comforting and beautiful, and inspiring on a mystical level that doesn’t always align with our humdrum world. But as Catherynne M. Valente, Neil Gaiman, and others have proven, you can get some very interesting results when you go into a familiar tale, and start asking questions.
In writing The Ninety-Ninth Bride, I wanted to keep a beautiful and elegant language, but I also wanted to make sure that the characters felt real, not cheap stock characters. As an Arab American (half-Lebanese, on my mom’s side), I regularly question the simplistic, two-dimensional Arab characters that populate so much media, proving that we haven’t really moved that far from Orientalism today.
And when it came to three-dimensional characterization, where to start but with the greatest storyteller herself? I scrutinized what made up a character like Scheherazade—with all those brains, that boldness, not to mention stamina, what is she really after? And Scheherazade’s little sister, Dunyazade—frequently excluded from retellings, but an integral part of her sister’s gambit—also began to reveal new depths. She trusts her sister absolutely, and has the gift of listening, which can also be a heroic attribute. In the end, she became central.
In the further interests of making the world feel real and not “exotic,” I tried to make Islam seem a natural part of the world’s fabric, a day to day faith that is neither universally uplifting nor scandalously wicked. However, I ended up drawing on Catholic mythology unintentionally. There’s more than a few tales of a mortal—sometimes a prodigal sinner, sometimes a ploughman-saint—who is blessed by a visitation. But after all, this is a fairy tale world—some divine providence is certainly in order.
A Chat with Catherine F. King
The Ninety-Ninth Bride is a retelling of the frame story—surrounding Scheherazade and the Sultan—of The Tales of One Thousand and One Nights. Please can you elaborate on what drew you to this particular tale? Are there any specific themes in this frame story that you wanted to explore and subvert in your version?
I’ve loved this tale since I was a little kid; I love the story of Scheherazade more than any of the tales within the Arabian Nights. As an Arab-American girl it’s very hard to find compelling role models who don’t slink about in belly dancer outfits or hide discreetly behind veils and curtains. Of course, I always had a wonderful role model—in the form of my mom—but girls need fictional inspiration, too.
The theme that I specifically found myself countering is the idea that women are expendable. That casually killing off female characters off in order to make a backstory more fraught is an acceptable way to enhance drama. This is an idea that still sticks around in the media we consume today, and it gets a little worrisome after a while.
Speaking of fairy tales and folklore, are you a fairy tale enthusiast? Do you have any favorites you’d like to share with our readers? Conversely, do you have a least favorite fairy tale (you must also tell us why, of course).
Oh, definitely. As a kid, my favorite fairy tale (that I’d never seen adapted into a film) was Toads and Diamonds. I still think it could make a great film. As a grown-up, I still love it, but my all-time favorite would be Beauty and the Beast, in its many shapes and forms, including East O’ the Sun and West O’ the Moon and Cupid and Psyche.
Then you get modern stories written in the fairy tale style, formal yet fanciful. There’s The Little Mermaid, by Hans Christian Andersen, and Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince… but neither story is exactly happy. Both end in death—brutal death. But that sadness is what gives them power. They’re certain that the soul is destined for greater things than mortal happiness.
But there is one modern fairy tale I really despise: The Princess and the Swineherd, also by Hans Christian Andersen. It’s this horrible fable that combines the worst of Andersen’s Romanticism (“Oh, no, it’s artificially made and therefore isn’t real, it must be evil!” He would have hated e-readers) with a humungous dose of slut-shaming. In the story, a prince sends a nightingale and a rose to a princess that he’s courting. She rejects them, because she’s one of those technophiles obsessed with the latest gadget. So the prince does what any rejected guy does: disguises himself as a swineherd in the princess’ palace, wrings this princess through some dumb tests of chastity, when she fails the tests and her father finds out, the princess is cast out to live on the streets. Whereupon our hero resumes his princely raiment, approaches the bereaved girl, and informs her that she’s a slut before walking away, leaving her to cry in the mud. Because, you know, she had it coming.
Andersen was an odd duck. He felt things keenly, and when it comes to The Princess and the Swineherd I think that’s the kindest thing I can say.
We’d love to hear about your experience writing short fiction. What would you say are the advantages and potential pitfalls of writing short fiction?
My biggest pitfall when it comes to short fiction would definitely be the brevity. I want to expand on every character, provide backstory and description, maybe segue into a musical number. The challenge for short fiction, then, is in curbing myself. Keep things short, keep the pace swift and the language clear, and make every element fight for its right
to be there.
The plus side of that, of course, is that in short fiction every word contributes and has power. In the right hands, the right words can add up to stirring scenes and powerful emotional crescendos. You also get a certain freedom when you don’t have to elaborate—you leave things to the reader’s imagination. The empty space at the end of the story brims with everything left unsaid.
What are you working on next?
My current project is a YA novella dealing with an asexual coming-of-age story, set among the theater kids of a normal California high school. There’s no dragons, no magical powers, no kingdoms or princes in need of saving… it’s a very strange experience to write.
Finally, a question we ask all of our interviewees: We Book Smugglers are faced with constant threats and criticisms concerning the sheer volume of books we purchase and read—hence, we have resorted to ‘smuggling books’ home to escape scrutinizing eyes. Have you ever had to smuggle books?
I’ve smuggled books with love, care, and a little brute force into a suitcase, praying it would remain below luggage weight restrictions and also praying I could lug it all through the airport as I flew transatlantic.
Furthermore, in my old workplace, the Levantine Cultural Center, I was told to prepare a press release about Rabih Alameddine’s An Unnecessary Woman. I read the blurb and it sounded terrifically boring. I sighed and opened the book—and found that I couldn’t put it down. I expected to just read ten pages to write a smidgen publicizing it, but found myself utterly hooked. And yes, I smuggled the Center’s only advance copy of the book home so that I could finish it in luxury, telling myself that I was just taking my work home with me.
It’s now a finalist for the National Book Award, so maybe I wasn’t the only one smuggling it home after hours.
About the Author
Catherine Faris King is a Los Angeles based writer who studied English with an Emphasis in Creative Writing at Whittier College, and French Literature at the Sorbonne, in Paris. She is thrilled to be making her publishing debut with The Book Smugglers.
Book Smugglers Publishing
Book Smugglers Publishing: Fall 2014
Hunting Monsters by S.L. Huang (10/7/2014)
In Her Head, In Her Eyes by Yukimi Ogawa (10/21/2014)
Mrs. Yaga by Michal Wojcik (11/4/2014)
The Mussel Eater by Octavia Cade (11/18/2014)
The Astronomer Who Met the North Wind by Kate Hall (12/2/2014)
The Ninety-Ninth Bride by Catherine F. King (12/16/2014)
For other original & subversive fairy tales, visit goo.gl/XE14Wl.
Copyright Information
The Ninety-Ninth Bride
Published by Book Smugglers Publishing
Copyright © 2014 Catherine F. King
Cover Illustration by Jacqueline Pytyck
The Ninety-Ninth Bride Page 4
