Arabian Nights Fishbowl 3
Read the passages below, then hit "comment" to answer the questions below them. Take 15 minutes for this one:
"So he drew his scimitar, cut the two in four pieces with a single blow, and left them on the couch....Nevertheless, he could not help thinking about his wife's betrayal, and he kept saying to himself over and over, 'How could she have done this to me? How could she have brought about her own death?'" (4)How would you describe the psychology of male love as seen in these passages? In other words, what does "love" and "marriage" mean to these men? Do you agree with the men that women are full of "malice"? Do you think it's fair for the men to blame the women for having extra-marital affairs and "betraying" their husbands? Take your time on this, and give us some nice critical thinking. Are you seeing ironies and patterns yet? Make sure you include your first name + first initial of family name (example: clayb) in your comment! Always! And feel free to read and respond to other students' ideas: agree, disagree, say what their interpretation "taught" you, whatever.
"So, King Shah Zaman spent the night in the palace by himself. The next morning, after his brother had departed, he left his room and sat down at one of the lattice windows overlooking the garden. There he rested awhile and became steeped in sad thoughts about his wife's betrayal, occasionally uttering sighs of grief. Now, as he was moaning and torturing himself, a secret door to the garden swung open, and out came twenty slave girls surrounding his brother's wife, who was marvelously beautiful and moved about with the grace of a gazelle in search of a cool stream. Shah Zaman drew back from the window, but he kept the group in sight from a place where they could not spot him, even though they walked under the very window where he had stationed himself. As they advanced into the garden, they came to a jetting fountain amidst a great basin of water. Then they stripped off their clothes, and Shah Zaman suddenly realized that ten of them were women, concubines of the king, and the other ten were white slaves. After they had all paired off, the queen was left alone, but she soon cried out in a loud voice, 'Come to me right now, my lord Saeed!' and all of a sudden a big slobbering blackamoor with rolling eyes leapt from one of the trees. It was truly a hideous sight. He rushed up to her and threw his arms around her neck, while she embraced him just as warmly....
"Now, after Shah Zaman had witnessed this spectacle, he said to himself, 'By Allah, my misfortune is nothing compared to my brother's! Though he may be a greater king among kings than I am, he doesn't even realize that this kind of perfidious behavior is going on in his very own palace, and his wife is in love with the filthiest of filthy slaves. This only proves that all women will make cuckolds out of their husbands when given the chance. Well, then, let the curse of Allah fall upon one and all and upon the fools who need the support of their wives or who place the reins of conduct in their hands!' So, he cast aside his melancholy and no longer had regrets about what he had done. Moreover, he constantly repeated his words to himself to minimize his sorrow and added, 'No man in this world is safe from the malice of women!'" (5-6)
[After Shah Zaman tells Shahryar about Zaman's wife's "betrayal,"] Shahryar shook his head, completely astonished, and with the fire of wrath flaming in his heart, he cried, "Indeed, the malice of woman is mighty! My brother, you've escaped many an evil deed by putting your wife to death, and your rage and grief are quite understandable and excusable, especially since you had never suffered anything as terrible as this before. By Allah, had this been me, I would not have been satisfied until I had slain a thousand women and gone mad!" (7-8)
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