The Thousand and One Nights

The Thousand and One Nights is a collection of tales compose by many individuals. It starts with the story of two great Kings and brothers named Shahrayar the oldest and Shahzaman the youngest. Both kings are betrayed by their wives. After this terrible news both kings become irritated and end up killing their wives. The older king went further with his actions it says that “it became King Shahrayar’s custom to take every night the daughter of a merchant or a commoner, spend the night with her, then have her put to death the next morning” (B414). The residents of the city become frustrated and asked in their prayers to “the creator of havens” to end king Shahrayar’s actions. Witnessing what was happening in her city, a well educated women named Shahrazad decides to marry King Shahrayar “ so that [she may] either succeed in saving the people or perish and die like the rest” (B414). Her father tries to convince her not to do it but he is unsuccessful. Since she was a well educated woman she knew tales that can transform the life of any person. So she told great tale for thousand nights and one night and at the end the life of King Shahrayar have change for good. He said “my soul is change and joyful, it beats with an appetite for life” (B471).
Similarly to the story telling of Shahrazad, Mr. David Grossman wrote a novel of his own experience. His novel is about a mother named “Ora whose son has gone off to battle with the Israeli army” (NY Times). However, the story on his book is very similar to his own experience. Mr. Grossman lost his son during “the final hours of the 2006 Lebanon war” (NY Times). As any person would do, he suffers from the loss of his son. However instead of turning insane as king Shahrayar did Mr. Grossman decides to write and tell the story to the world which is the way he finds relief from his sufferings. In fact he says that “writing is my home. It [is] a place where I again recognized my self” (NY Times). Mr. Grossman also writes books for children and he is working on something new which “is a mix of drama, poetry and prose” (NY Times). This writing might one day be use to transform the life of a person the same way the tales from The Thousand and One Nights transformed King Shahrayar.

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