Nov 7– “The Story of the First of the Three Ladies of Baghdad” from The 1001 Nights
Summary: A woman's sisters get into bad marriages, leave their husbands, and move in with her. They go sailing to a city full of people turned into stone, except one guy who is Muslim. She plans to marry him and they sail home, but her sisters toss them overboard to try to murder them. She saves a snake from a serpent, and it's a genie. The genie turns her sisters into dogs and makes her whip them or she'll turn her into a dog too.
Commentary: I like that this one opens with a rap verse: "O PRINCE OF THE FAITHFUL, my story is wonderful; for these two bitches are my sisters, born to my father, but of another mother; and I am the youngest of the three." Spitting bars.
The prince in the story memorized the whole Quran. That surprised me, but apparently it's a real thing. If you memorize the whole thing you're a "Hazif" and you get better treatment in the afterlife, etc. There's classes for it and everything, and there are millions of people alive today who have. Makes me want to go memorize Beowulf or something.
When the prince is killed, it counts for martyrdom, which seems like it's a stretch. I guess he's technically killed on the way to Baghdad to study Islam, but does that mean you get martyred if you get in a car accident on the way to the mosque one morning?
In the end, the sisters are punished by being turned into dogs, but the main sister has to whip them three hundred times a day EACH or be turned into one herself. It's like a monkey's paw wish that she didn't even make.
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