The Fifty-first Wife-A Retelling of a Libyan Folktale

Storyteller: Salitu le3shi wala la2?
(have you prayed the evening prayer?)

Audience: Kulna msalyeen
(we have all prayed)

Storyteller: Nkharefkum Khurafa fil bhar jarafa
(I’ll tell you a tale that drags up the sea)
eIli khawaf yatla3 bara
(whoever is a scaredy-cat get out)
Wili yibi yarbah ysali 3alnibi
(and whoever wants to prosper bless the Prophet)

Audience: Alahuma sali wa salim 3aleh
(God's blessings and peace be upon him)

Storyteller: Imala asm3u zein
(right then, listen up!)

Far away there is a vast and rich kingdom you've never heard of and will never see, and it had been ruled by the same family for a thousand years. In the time of our story Zamzar was king; he was very proud of being the descendent of men as wise as they were brave, as merciful as they were just, and ruled according to the pattern they had set.

Now in that country a King had fifty wives, but not one of Zamazar's wives had given him a child. He was desperate to have an heir: not because the state was in danger, for he had many brothers; and not because he distrusted his brothers, for they were all very able and honest men, and a great help in administering a vast territory. He just didn't want to be the one to disrupt an unbroken line of succession from father to son.

Aside from this worry the King Zamzar lived fairly happily, as did his wives and his subjects, and his realm prospered - until one day he went out hunting with his nobles, and they chased a gazelle that would bring about his destruction and suffering to many others: listen and I will tell you how this came about.

This gazelle was no ordinary animal, its dappled coat was the colour of the midday sun that shone above the hunting party, its hooves were gold and gave off sparks like minature lightning as it lead them up hills, down valleys and across streams. The chase continued for many hours, and more and more of the hunting party were left behind or dropped out, but Zamzar insisted on catching this magical creature, which always remained tantalizingly within sight.

As the sun set only he and his royal guard were left to see the marvellous transformation as the gazelle became as fiery red as the disk slipping behind the mountains in front of them, and then reflected the soft purples of the sky approaching twilight. When the full moon rose in the sky they had reached the edges of the desert, and the chameleon-like gazelle was a luminous shape that lit their way. The horses, exhausted from the unrelenting pace, floundered in the sand, and one by one royal guards the fell back.

Accompanied only by Sawad, his stallion, who seemed as caught up in the chase as his royal master, Zamzar continued to follow the gazelle. He was too intent on his prey to notice that he was being led to the ruins of an ancient fortress; it was at this very place, exactly a thousand years ago, that his ancestor had won the kingdom.

The other nobles had invited this ancestor to lead a revolt against a brutal ruler, who was finally besieged with his remaining forces in this well-fortified castle. The story goes that it was the princess who had revealed secret entrances to the army outside, which was led by a man to whom she had been engaged.

However once the battle was over, the triumphant new King had made it clear that he was not ready to jeopardise the position he had won by a marriage that would antagonise his subjects. According to legend the girl had appeared as he prepared to return to the capital with his troops, and before their astonished eyes turned into a marble statue whose lips moved to pronounce three words before becoming forever still: "I wait here".

Although he achieved his ambitions the founder of the dynasty was said never to have known rest, and the priests of that country declared the fortress a cursed place to be avoided by all.

However the centuries had stripped this warning of its significance, and given it the status of a tale to tell around a kanoun (clay brazier) on winter nights; so when Zamzar saw the gazelle actually enter through the crumbling gateway, he hesitated for a few minutes, but followed it in.

Once inside the ruins he could not see the gazelle, but picking his way through the maze of broken pillars and half collapsed walls he reached the central courtyard, crossing it he heard a sound behind him and whirling round with his spear raised in expectation of the gazelle he found himself facing a woman instead. Her hair was golden as the sun at high noon, her lips were red as a the sky at sunset, her eyes were the colour of the horizon at twilight and her face shone like the full moon that now hung low in the sky.

Zamzar lowered his spear, the woman walked up to his horse wordlessly and he helped her up behind him then rode back to his palace.

When he returned a royal wedding was celebrated, and life went on as before for a few months; but then one day his new wife came to complain: one of her co-wives was insulting her, mocking the woman come out of the desert with no people and no name. The King ordered his guards to take that woman to the dungeons beneath his palace and build a wall to bury her in alive within four walls, then he told everyone that she had suddenly fallen ill and died.

Some weeks later she came with another story, how another of the wives was plotting to poison him, and again Zamzar sent the accused to the same dungeon, the wall was partly broken, she was shoved in and then it was rebuilt behind her.

And this was the way things continued, sometimes every few days and sometimes at intervals of weeks or even months a queen would be declared dead, there would be a funeral and that would be the last anyone heard of her. Of course people were suspicious, but not even the most powerful families dared accuse the King without proof, and there was none except the King, his new queen and the guards who knew their fate.

In fact they only thought they knew, because not even the guards knew that the first woman was, by God's will, still alive when they brought the last, the fiftieth wife, to meet the same end.

Together the King's wives suffered the pain of starvation, if not its effects. In fact in their prison they all became round as watermelons, because they all became pregnant.

When the first woman gave birth, and found she had twins she told the others that they should eat one of her children and she should keep the other, as long as the agreed to do the same for her. The women agreed and as each of them gave birth to twins the same rule applied, so each woman would keep one child and sacrifice the other. However the fiftieth wife, and the last to find herself pregnant, never ate her share; but she was afraid, because as God says those who do evil want those around them to slide into sin too. So she would pretend to eat and hide the meat in the folds of her r'da, until she was sure they were all safely asleep, and then she’d bury it near the wall.

So this was how things went until this woman too gave birth, and she did not have twins. The other women said "we have all lost a child, and you received your share so, twin or no twin, we are going to eat your son". But she went to her hiding place and, giving each mother her piece, she said "here are your children, leave me mine". At this all the women began crying and lamenting their own cruelty.

However only a few days went by before they agreed to start devouring the rest of their children; being older they lasted longer than their infant siblings had done, in fact each was as filling as a newborn lamb. But soon there were no more children to eat.

The mother of the baby who was now a toddler was afraid they would eat him while she was asleep. One morning she woke up and didn't find him next to her, and straightaway she stared accusing the others, who of course all denied having touched him. While they were arguing the little boy crawled in through a hole in the corner of the wall which had been rebuilt 50 times, and after him he dragged a basketful of bread.

The women all ate their fill before thinking to ask where he had got it, but when they questioned him he simply said that he had gone out and walked till he found himself in a busy street, where the smell of freshly baked bread lead him to a bakery, and he got the basket just by telling the man he was hungry. From that day onward the boy was sent to the shops to buy food with the women's jewelry, and you may be sure they all praised his mother and wished they had done as she did, and had their children around them.

After seeing the same strange little boy come in alone every morning, the baker decided to satisfy his curiosity by asking some questions - and this time his love of gossip would have a useful purpose.

"Who is your father little boy, who never comes in here with you, not even to buy you k3ak and zlabya on feast days?"
"Zamzar the King is my father" said the Prince Hadiar "and I have never seen him"
"And where do you live then, in the palace?" said the man, laughing
"Oh no! I live in a room with my father's fifty wives, and every morning I crawl out of a hole in the wall."

Now the baker thought this a funny story, and he repeated it as a joke to his many customers; so the Judge who sent his clerk for a snack got to hear it as he munched lugmit kadhi, the servants carrying an order of pies and pastries to the merchants' meeting house brought it to their masters' ears, and the Wazir's wife was told by a maidservant who had gone for some katayef dough - "my own hand's making" she'd tell the neighbours at the lama (women's gathering) as she handed it round.

That same night all the important families in the city held a secret meeting and determined to find out if the boy was telling the truth, if their daughters were really alive. The next morning a trusted servant waited for him in front of the bakery, and when he appeared asked him to show him his home.

When he reported back to the assembled notables they gathered their men and marched to the dungeons, calling on the people to join them. The palace was stormed, and the king and his golden-haired consort were killed, then the women were set free from the dungeons. They were reunited with their families, and were told how the mysterious woman who instigated their suffering had not become a corpse when stabbed, but crumbled into marble fragments.

Prince Hadiar became King at a very young age, so his father's fear of breaking a horizontal line of descent were not realised. With the advice of his uncles and his mother he soon restored the country to its former glory, regaining lost territories and, more importantly, his subjects trust. The dynasty survived for another ten centuries, but his reign was the most brilliant in the whole two thousand years of the families rule; the one the poets celebrated in their poems, the one storytellers set their tales of chivalry, heroism and magic in - and that is the highest praise of all as the Khalifa Harun al-Rashid would tell you.

Storyteller: Uw hadha hadha warham jadha
(that's the end of this tale and mercy on it's grandfather)

Sabe’a Sabaya - Libyan Folktale Retold

There were (oh the things there were!) in a time long past…two brothers who married two sisters.

The elder brother Zaid’s wife Nafisa was a wise and clever woman, who looked like most women do. His younger brother Zeyad married Jamila, who was what her name meant (a beauty). She was tall and slender as a palm tree; she had skin as delicate as jasmine, hair as dark and glossy as roub (date syrup) and the eyes of a gazelle. Her husband was as handsome as she was beautiful, and they were suited in character too, for one was as stupid and greedy as the other.

When the brothers’ father died and his debts were paid only two small farms were left. The brothers and their wives worked hard, but though they were never very poor they were never very rich.

One day Zaid decided to go to the ghawals’ palace and bring home some of their food and treasure. He told his wife of his plan, knowing that she would know how to help him.

“Elsabah rabah” (profit is in the morning) she said, "I’ll tell you what to do tomorrow.

"Next morning Nafisa was awake long before dawn. First she took a gas’a to the storeroom and filled it with wheat.

Then she picked the juiciest cucumbers from the farm and the biggest eggs from the henhouse. In the kitchen she ground some of the wheat into flour, and then she started making sfinz. Sfinz, as we all know, is better than wedding drums at waking up lazy lie abeds. And true enough when the aroma of his favourite breakfast reached him Zaid jumped out of bed and - without even washing his face - he rushed to the kitchen.

“Good morning” he said cheerfully.

“A morning of carnation and jasmine” Nafisa replied, “you had better hurry if you don’t want to miss dawn prayer at the mosque”

But, remembering that this wasn’t a day like any other, Zaid looked at his smiling wife in consternation; how could she sing at her tahouna and make sfinz when he was going on a quest as dangerous as any feat ‘Antar ibn Shadad had performed?”

“You’ve forgotten what I told you yesterday…” he protested indignantly, but before he could really begin to grumble he was interrupted by the first Adhan and had to hurry away.

Nafisa finished frying the sfinz and wrapped them in a cloth to keep warm while she prayed. Then she made date paste balls stuffed with almonds, cooked them in olive oil and put them into a leather pouch. Half the sfinz she sprinkled with salt and wrapped into a parcel, and this she packed into a gufa with hard-boiled eggs and cucumbers.

She was filling a second gufa with wheat kernels when a slightly shamefaced Zaid came back, but Nafisa was too prudent a woman to warm up cooling arguments, and they sat down to breakfast.

While they were eating sfinz with honey and sipping sage tea Nafisa gave her husband the advice he had asked for, and this is what she said:

“I’ll give you a gufa of wheat to mark your trail, because the ghawals’ magic will mislead you, and a pouch of date balls to eat on the journey, so you’re not hungry when you reach the palace. There’s a giant fig tree in their garden, you must climb up as soon as you arrive, and stay there all day and all night. The ghawal will shake it on their way in and out but if you do as I say God will keep you safe. At dawn the ghawal will set out on their hunt: eat the food in the gufa I will give you and then climb down and enter the palace from the back door. You will pass through six rooms, but you must not touch anything in them. Each room will have a table laid as if for a Sultan’s banquet, but you must not taste the food. Each room will be full of jewels and fine clothes, but you must not try them on. Each room will contain a mirror, but you must not see your reflection in it. From the seventh room you may take what you want, but remember the ghawal will come back at sunset.”

He promised to follow her instructions, and she gave him a water skin and the two gfaf, making a hole in the one full of wheat. So before the sun had had time to warm the world, Zaid set off towards the ghawals’ palace. Although he could see it far off their spells confused him and he found he was walking in circles, but he never took the same path twice because the wheat marked where he had been.

He reached the palace some time after noon and climbed into the fig tree, taking with him his two gfaf and his waterskin. He stayed in the tree all day, munching the rest of his dates. At sunset the ghawal came home, singing:

Sabe’a sabaya fi gesbaya

Sa’ad elghulah takelhen

(Seven girls, in a bowl

Happy the ghulah that eats them)

Before they went into their palace, each ghulah took hold of the tree and shook it, but Zaid was ready for them: he held on and did not fall.

Next morning, the ghawal got up early, and came out of the palace at first light. Again, each ghulah shook the tree, but Zaid held on and did not fall.

When they had gone, Zaid ate some sfinz with the eggs and cucumber his wife had packed in the gufa; then he climbed down, walked around to the back and entered the palace.

He walked quickly through the first six rooms despite the tantalizing smells and glittering sights, and when he reached the seventh he put down his two empty gfaf, and with his knife made an opening in the waterskin.

First he filled the water skin with rubies and emeralds and sapphires; with amethysts and turquoise and coral and strings of pearls…. and when it was full he tied it securely and strapped it on.

Next he put gold into a gufa: dinars and bracelets and rings; armbands and necklaces and anklets and earrings …and when it was as heavy as he could manage he covered it with the most magnificent r’da he could find: a cream and pale blue silk, shot with threads of white gold, it had taken two hundred women two hundred nights and two hundred days to weave in Samarkand.

And then he filled the last one with food. There were saffron strands and ginger roots and nutmegs; crystallized Aleppo pistachio and coconut and pine nuts; guava and mangoes and honeydew melons…When this last gufa was packed it was a little before noon.

Zaid put on a suriya of the finest linen and a jard woven from the hair of white camels, and then he picked up his gfaf and waterskin and set off home, following the wheat trail.

Nafisa had been waiting as if on hot coals for her husbands return and welcomed him home with zaghareed. That night they dined better than the Sultan in Turkey, whose cook was in a bad mood.

A few days later Jamila visited her sister. She noticed her wearing six heavy gold bangles and went home with her head full of nothing else. When her husband heard he too wondered how his brother could afford to buy jewelry, especially when he had told him that he was planning to buy more stock for his farm. So Zeyad went to his brother and asked him where this sudden wealth came from.

Now Zaid loved his brother but he knew his faults well, so he did not want him to go to the ghawals’ palace. At first he only told him that he had been lucky, and would share his good fortune with his brother. Zeyad however insisted that he should be told were the money came from, and this was how their argument went:

Zaid said: "I'll give you a quarter."

But Zeyad refused

Zaid said: "I'll give you half."

But Zeyad refused

Zaid said: "I'll give you all"

But Zeyad still refused

“You must tell me where you got all this” he said "so I can get more than you."

So Zaid told him exactly what he had done, and before they parted repeated his instructions to make sure he remembered:

"make a trail, take food with you, stay in the fig tree for a night and a day, hold tight to the tree when the ghawal come, enter the palace from the back, don’t touch anything in the first six rooms, don't look into the ghawals’ mirror, and don't eat their food when you are in the palace."

Zeyd took a bucket, bored holes in it and filled it with chalk. He did not take any food with him, thinking that his brother was just maliciously complicating his task.

"There is food where I am going," he thought, "why take any with me?" So early next morning he set off, but of course the chalk was difficult to see and he had a hard time reaching the palace as he kept going round in circles. When he finally reached it he went in straight away because it was getting dark and he was hungry.

Ravenous, he saw a feast fit for an Emir ready spread in the first room he entered, so he sat down to eat. The first sip of pomegranate sherbet, the first bite of roast lamb was in his mouth, and he was made mute. Then the fool dressed in rich clothes - the first glance in the mirror to see what he looked like in his new outfit, and he was struck blind. The first word of the ghawals’ song in the distance heard while he was still in the palace, and he was deaf.

Terrified he hurried out, found the fig tree and clambered up just as the ghawal came home, singing:

Sabe’a sabaya fi gesbaya

Sa’ad elghulah takelhen

(Seven girls, in a bowl

Happy the ghulah that eats them)

As they passed under the tree, they shook it. Blind, scared, and weighed down with the food he had eaten, Zeyad fell quickly. So the ghawal ate him, except for his head, which they kept.

Next day, worried, his older brother decided to go after him. Nafisa thought for a while, and then sat down and sewed her husband a brightly coloured costume with bells everywhere. When he wore it he looked like the ghoulish jester Bu Sa’adiya, and when he moved he made enough noise to wake the dead. Again, she gave him food for the journey and a gufa of wheat kernels. Early next day, he set off, singing:

Kulma gutlak ya'ebn umi khud rub’aa gutli la

Kulma gutlak ya'ebn umi khud nusa gutli la

Kulma gutlak ya'ebn umi khud kulla gutli la

(Whenever I told you o son of my mother, take quarter- you said no

Whenever I told you o son of my mother, take half - you said no

Whenever I told you o son of my mother, take all - you said no)

So he sang, until he reached the palace. The ghawal heard his song and his bells, and as ghawal like Bu Sa’adiya, they welcomed him joyfully. He came closer and saw that they were playing with his brother's head, throwing it from one to the other.

He approached a ghulah and asked her “honoured sister, whose head are you playing with, and how did you get it?”

She replied, “When we came back from our hunt yesterday the first mirror told us of a fool who broke into our palace, drank and ate at our table, and wore our clothes.”

“Indeed to act so he must have been as you call him (a fool).”

“So he was, it took us less time to gobble him up than it would take you to think up a new song.”

Then all the ghawal invited him to sing and dance for them. In return he asked that they allow him to join their game and, when he had finished his songs, to take the head away with him. They agreed, saying they had no more use for a fool’s head. So Zaid sang for the ghawa,l and they were so pleased with his songs that they sent him off with many precious gifts. When he returned to the village he went to Jamila and gave her his brother's head, and the gifts that came with it.

And that was the end of greed!

published in the Tripoli Post