There is an Eastern story passed from woman to woman that teaches one to be free. Nothing can stand in the way of a woman’s freedom, not even the greatest love.
“The Tale of the Woman in the Feather Dress” exists to remind women that they have wings, and when they spread them, nothing should stop them from crossing the boundaries of rivers and oceans, from leaving forever. And when one of them forgets her gift, neglected wings will bring her nothing but misfortune,” warns the woman who tells the story.
Dark-skinned, bearded men, with black, passionate eyes veiled by a thick fan of lashes, were so afraid of this story that they decided to erase its meaning and impact. They changed the ending and, to soothe their great anxiety, built magnificent, luxurious palaces for their women. They brought there the most beautiful products of human hands, delicacies and jewels. They allowed the women only one thing not to do: cross the threshold of the palace chambers. They called the palaces harems.
Fatima Mernissi heard this story as a little girl from her grandmother Jasmina, who lived in a harem. Only years later did she discover—her friend told her—that her grandmother’s oral story differed from the official version found in “The Thousand and One Nights”.
The story recounts the adventure of a wealthy merchant who squandered his fortune and, wishing to reflect on his life so far, left for distant islands. One night, while watching the beach, he noticed a strange creature: a great bird gently descending onto the seashore. When he crept closer, the bird suddenly straightened up, shed its feathery covering, and the most beautiful woman he had ever seen appeared before the astonished man.
“She possessed the beauty of every creature in the world, magical lips like Solomon’s ring, hair darker than night, lips the color of coral, and teeth shining like pearls. Her waist was beautifully shaped, and her thighs were strong and mighty like marble columns. Between their pillars stood a magical arch, a niche illuminated like a silver cup or a crystal vase.” ¹
But what attracted the merchant most was the extraordinary mystery of the naiad. Half woman, half bird. Desperately in love, one night he stole the feather dress and abducted the woman. He took her to Baghdad, to his home, where he married her. His wife bore him two sons, and he, increasingly calm and certain that he would spend his entire life with her, began travelling on business to support his family.
One day, when he returned from a particularly long journey, he opened the door and found his beautiful wife in the recovered dress, their sons in her arms. He did not even have time to approach her before she flew away. She left him a farewell message telling him to look for her on the Wak Wak Islands if he truly desired her. According to grandmother Jasmina, despite years of searching, the man never found his wife. This is how the story intended only for women ends.
I was curious about how the two stories differed: one told by Jasmina, the other written down in “The Thousand and One Nights”. The official version is titled “The Story of Hassan Al Basri”. In it, the merchant Hassan finds his wife and children after several years of searching. The entire happy family lives together for a long time to the glory of Allah.
The story was given a happy ending, but it lost its romantic sense of longing, its catastrophism and its unfulfillment. It lost something that had made great travellers search for the Wak Wak Islands for millennia. More than one man wished to discover the place where winged women had their home. An Arab historian from the ninth century placed them near Zanzibar; Marco Polo identified them, among other possibilities, as the Islands of Women: Socotra. Others said they were the Seychelles or Madagascar, or Malacca; still others placed them farther away, around China or Indonesia. But to this day no man has found the way to them.
Why was the ending of this story changed in the official version of “The Thousand and One Nights”? Fatima Mernissi believes it was because Arabs, who were mainly engaged in trade and travelled very often, spent most of their time away from home. They may have been desperate after hearing that their wives were learning freedom from an oral tradition that could not be controlled in any way. They did not want an official story to exist in which a hard-working husband could face abandonment and, after some long journey, find his home empty, without the slightest chance of finding his wife.
Fatima’s friend adds that grandmother Jasmina’s story touches the most sensitive point of male nature, its greatest fear: the fear of abandonment. When someone leaves us, when they shatter our perfectly organized world, it is as if we too had partly died. The idea of locking such irrational, mysterious creatures, eternally ready to set off, in golden cages may have arisen from this terror.
During her student years, Fatima often attacked her friend. She asked him why no man in the West had come up with such a cruel idea as locking women in prison-palaces. Her friend defended himself by saying that he did not know the reason, because he did not know Western men either—he did not know their fantasies or obsessions. He could only speculate that perhaps they did not know that their women also had wings.
¹ Fatima Mernissi, Le harem européen, Le Fennec 2003. Translation of the excerpt: Grażyna Hanaf
Grażyna Hanaf