Endless imagination

Section: Arabic Novels

Number of pages: 336 pages

Scheherazade wanted the narrative to perform two functions at once; the first was to suspend Shahryar’s interest in telling him stories, so that she would not allow him to think about killing her. Thus, the narrative began to perform a defensive function. Every story that Scheherazade told Shahryar was equivalent to life itself. Therefore, the more stories Scheherazade told, the more opportunities she had in life. The narrative was life itself. The second function was to rid Shahryar of his narcissistic complex. He married the slave girl one day, and killed her the next day, until there were no more women in the city. Hence, Scheherazade saw the narrative to perform the second function, which was to rid the happy king of the effects of psychological unhappiness that made him aggressive and obsessed with killing innocent women.

"A Thousand and One Nights" is a book that was able to use imagination to transcend reality, and to herald an alternative mythical reality to create heroes and characters. However, it was never able to satisfy the educated elite by interacting with the standard language used by the high authority, which led to the collision of the two projects. Perhaps the most important thing in the "A Thousand and One Nights" project lies in the book's ability to create a flexible imagination that can claim the completion of the experience and the openness of insight. The book "A Thousand and One Nights" is ultimately a collective narrative dream that must reside in the collective memory, even if individual memory is what renews it, because it is a dream that aspires to the completion of the experience and the openness of insight.