Fate: the Big F word according to the Arabian Nights

‘Curiosity killed the cat’-sounds like a line straight from the text Arabian Nights, doesn’t it? The second part of this saying, ‘ but satisfaction brought it back’ sounding even more like an excerpt from the book, is actually a 16th-century quote from the playwright Ben Jonson. Curiosity is a constantly recurring theme in the book that often enters, like a devious omen, the banal lives of mundane characters like the fisherman, or farmers. Curiosity brings many characters fortune and many dismay; the Arabian Nights offer no identifiable pattern as to the outcome of indulging curiosity. Rather the moral that can be gathered from the tale is that free will is the sacrifice that must be made to indulge one's curiosity. The tale shows several examples of characters who find themselves in a situation out of their control because they were eager to know more. 

The premise of the Arabian Nights starts off with King Shahrayar in a fit of anger against his wife’s infidelity targeted at all women; he makes a vow to sleep with and then kill every woman in his kingdom. Shahrazad, the vizier's daughter uses the element of suspense and wonder to her advantage, making the king too curious to execute her, hence ending the cycle of murder. She starts a story every night but just as morning arrives she ends the story at a point where the king keeps her alive so he can hear the end of it until he eventually falls in love with her and marries her.

The first story that Shahrazad narrates to the King Shahrayar, The Tale of the Ox and the Donkey features a curious character that unfortunately doesn’t meet a happy end. A merchant had the God-given boon to understand the interactions between animals. He overhears his ox seeking advice from his donkey as to how to get out of the day's labor set out for the ox by the merchant. To the merchant's amusement from secretly understanding this interaction, the donkey suggests conning the farmer by acting ill. The wife gives into temptation and pesters her husband to tell her what he found funny. Unfortunately for the merchant, he was granted the boon on the condition of keeping mum about it, if not he will meet his destiny of death immediately. Even after telling his wife the sticky situation he is in, she insists on wanting to know what his amusement was about because her curiosity is unbearable; so unbearable that she is willing to let her husband die to know the secret. When seeking advice from his rooster and dog, they suggest to the merchant that he beat his wife with an oak branch for pestering him about his amusement. He ended up locking his wife up and beating her until she exclaimed, ‘Leave me alone! I don’t want to know anything!’ [Haddawy 20] Curiosity led the wife to an unfortunate fate when she insisted on knowing what the merchant was laughing about, she made a trade-off and lost her free will, leaving her fate in the hands of the merchant, who unfortunately abused her for wanting to know more. This is one of the many instances in the book where curiosity leads the character astray but the Arabian Nights don’t show enough of a pattern to tell if curiosity good or bad, but the tales offer evidence that indulging curiosity is inadvisable because it takes away one's free will.

Another story narrated by Shahrazad is called the Porter and the Three Ladies. In this story, seven men including a porter entered the house of three ladies. They agreed beforehand that the men wouldn’t discuss things that didn’t concern them; and wouldn’t pry into the ladies’ business. After hours of merrymaking, the ladies called two slave women and tortured them to the amusement of their seven guests. One of the ladies revealed marks made by a rod on her back after she tore her dress off while playing the lute. This sparked the interest of the men who thought they could overpower the three women to satiate their desires and get information. The porter was tasked to inquire about what the commotion and ambiguity were about. Breaking their contract, the ladies kept their end of the bargaining, warning the men of unpleasant consequences if the worried themselves about things that didn’t concern them. Seven large slaves came out if the closet and tied the guests up-because of the curiosity, their lives were in danger. Had the men listened to the three ladies, complied with their request to stray away from private topics, and not tried to overpower them to get the information they were eager to know about, they wouldn’t have risked their lives. By inquiring about their business, they made a trade of their free will and left their future to fate-by acting on their curious instincts, they put themselves in a situation out of their control and in the control of the seven slave men.

In the context of the main story, these tales told by Shahrazad are nested stories where one story leads to the next which leads to another. Each night when Shahrazad finishes the story at a climax, the king is filled with a curiosity that keeps her alive; he loses his free will and is bound by his thirst for knowledge that he can’t go through with his vow and execute her. This technique of egg-nesting her stories is a prime example of using curiosity to her advantage to save her life.

What is the role of curiosity? Curiosity is an element that enters the lives of the mundane, making their lives turn upside down, teaching them a moral at the end. The wife learned through being eager that she shouldn’t seek to delve into her husband’s affairs. The seven men learned through indulging their eagerness, the importance of respecting a promise and not prying because of curiosity. The Arabian Nights teach the reader that people leave their future to fate when they are curious enough to let their free will go. I disagree with this moral that the Arabian Nights preaches and finds that leading life in such an austere, rigid fashion may impede us from learning through experiences, especially those out of our control. How we handle an unforeseen situation can help us learn a lot about ourselves and conflict management and fear shouldn’t always hinder us from taking unexpected paths in life, even if it led several characters astray.