Passage of the Day

The Passage of the Day is actually a full short story from the Arabian Nights called The Hunchback. This is a twisted tale of murder and guilt that presages Poe, Hugo and Weekend at Bernie’s. Here’s the quick version: A tailor and his wife like to party. They are coming home… wait, I have to quote the first paragraph as it’s weirder than I could ever paraphrase:

There was, in ancient times, in the city of El-Basrah, a tailor who enjoyed an ample income, and was fond of sport and merriment. He was in the habit of going out occasionally with his wife, and they might amuse themselves with strange and diverting scenes; and one day they went forth in the afternoon, and, returning home in the evening, met a humpbacked man, whose aspect was such that as to excite laughter in the angry, and to dispel anxiety and grief: so they approached him to enjoy the pleasure of gazing at him, and invited him to return with them to their house, and to join with them in a carousal that night.

So, that’s a really odd entry point. But they have dinner, and the wife thinks it’d be hilarious to stuff an entire fish in the hunchback’s mouth and force him to swallow it. He chokes. He dies. That will not do, so they cover him up and carry him through the dark to the Jewish doctor’s house, knock and run. He trips on the body, thinks he killed the guy in the process, and carries him out to an ally. A drunk Christian broker walks by, sees a slumped hunchback appearing  a bit menacing, and punches him senseless. Being a Christian, when he’s caught beating a Muslim, it’s a serious offense.* The trial begins, and the doctor confesses out of guilt, then the tailor confesses when the doctor is about to be sentenced. It goes on from there, but put that in your lit exam and you’ll get a C- and a dirty look. I recommend reading it.

Why Disney chose Alladin (actually Ala-ed-Din) over this one, I’ll never know. Coincidentally, there’s actually another version of the story in some translations called The Little Hunchback. In that one, the tailor’s hard at work and he sees a little hunchback who just wants to entertain him with a tambourine. The hunchback tragically dies, choking on the fish the tailor’s wife had cooked for him with love. Why? Whether it’s Disney or parents two hundred years ago, the story’s the same. No moral of treating the poor  (and any guest) with respect, instead these kids grow up thinking the ugly welfare leech got what was coming to him, and it’s alright to ditch the dead body if you were just trying to help in the first place.

*Given that Americans have recently shown they know zilch about Muslim history, I’ll add this. He could drink because the rules on alcohol generally didn’t apply to non-Muslims (and in some areas of the world Muslims can drink certain alcoholic beverages, anyway). I won’t get into it too much, but the reasoning generally centers around the necessity of prayer multiple times a day, and not being allowed to pray if one is drunk or has imbibed forbidden things–that is one of the bases for the alcohol prohibition, and it doesn’t apply to non-Muslims. Christians and Jews were usually allowed to live relatively peacefully in Muslim countries, but once a Christian does something like assault someone or–gasp–marry a Muslim, the gloves were off.