Who is Howling in Arabian Nights?

It must be a wolf on a chilling night. The descendant of the one who smelled the blood of the prophet Yousuf. His brothers threw him into a well and lied to their father that a wolf had killed him—the one who undeservedly bore the burn of the blame among all the animals of the desert. We are so quick to assume Arabia is an astronomical stretch of sandy dunes margined by horizons. But it is not like that everywhere, especially in inhabited areas, places of settled life near water holes, valleys, and places where caravans used to meet their suppliers and buyers along the trails in the past but have grown to be modern-day towns.

I read Alfa Layla Wa Laylah (Thousand Nights and a Night) in Malayalam copy I borrowed from the college library. I did enjoy it myself. I owned a copy of my own in English much later in 2003 from a used bookstore in Kozhikode. Last week, my son had heard something about a tale from his school and came home asking if I had any such a book in our collection. "Home is where books are” Richard F. Burton cannot be wrong. I remembered mine and rushed upstairs to grab it, hoping to make the best of the kids eager to read. Only to find the copy lying on the table unattended sooner to my disappointment. Naturally, I craved a revisit and went through it settling on “When It was 18^th Night”.  Burton had given a footnote for a sentence “She was delighted and clapped her hands, whereupon a door was opened.”

The footnote goes thusly. “I need hardly say that in the East where bells are unused, clapping the hands summons the servants. In India, men cry “Quy hey” (Koi hai?) and in Brazil whistle “Pst!” after the fashion of Sapin and Portugal.” In Kerala, where I am from, it sounds more like “Kooi” often inviting someone’s attention or in the past, requesting the boatman at a ferry to wait a little while the man so close rushes to board the boat. The same whistling language was once used to declare the sighting of the moon confirming Eids or Ramalan, the holy month of fasting, as well as the local match victories, festivals, and childbirths.

Burton has always surprised me. Nothing he has penned is more wonderful than the very life he lived as his own.  Among numerous adventurers, he had undertaken a Hajj pilgrimage in disguise and made erstwhile classics like Kama Sutra (1883), The Perfumed Garden (18860 and Arabian Nights (1885 -1888) available to the English-speaking world. He lived his words in a way, with all the controversies around his life kept under the carpet. As 2024 is about to bid adieu, I remind myself of Burton “Conquer thyself, till thou hast done this, thou art but a slave; for it is almost as well to be subjected to another's appetite as to thine own. Starting in a hollowed log of wood — some thousand miles up a river, with an infinitesimal prospect of returning!” I wish the same to all my readers. Merry Xmas. Happy Cake Day and New Year.