Fairy Tales andLong Tails: Middle Eastern & Arab Romances

We’ve all heard the classic, archetypal story of Romeo and Juliet (and it’s various versions) and how their romance ends in legendary tragedy. I thought it would be appropriate to write about similar legends which have been carried down through the centuries, but from different cultures, and which are still spoken about today. Some of these stories are pretty passionate (compare Edward and Belle’s pangs of the heart-strings to this lot, for example), and most of them are quite tragic stories, which is probably one reason they have resounded over the years. Here are a couple which are probably the most well known stories in the Middle East, being sung today in stories, being portrayed in paintings and being slipped into popular references and films.
Heer Ranjha
Firstly is the most famous Punjabi romanctic legend which comes to mind, and one that is still depicted in story-telling and pictures today. Heer is a beautiful young woman of the prestigious Jat caste, and from a wealthy family, while Ranjha is the youngest of the four brothers (also from the same caste), who spends his time playing the flute and basically skiving away from working the lands. After an argument with his brothers (presumably about him being a lazy sod), he storms away from his village and travels around until he reaches the village where Heer resides. Offering to look after her father’s cattle, Heer becomes mesmerised by his flute-playing (a olden day Justin Beiber fan, perhaps), and they begin to meet secretly for years. Eventually they are caught by Heer’s uncle, and she is married off to another man (which was always the best answer in those days). A heartbroken Ranjha wanders the Punjabi hills as a jogi until he again finds the place where Heer is living, and manages to convince her parents to let them get married. Mr Meddling-Uncle again interferes, however, and poisons Heer on the wedding day, leaving a heartbroken Ranjha to follow suit and poison himself too.
Layla and Majnun
This is a similar love story, this time of Arab/Middle Eastern descent, and has several (often embellished) versions. The version more familiar to me is one in which the lovers meet as young children in school, where ‘Majnun’ (which means mad-man, his real name was actually Qais) used to get beated by the schoolmaster for not paying attention to schoolwork. Yet wherever he was beaten, Layla would be the one who bled his wounds. Sounds Stigmata-type creepy, but it’s meant to be romantic. This led to a lot of uproar about devilry and a whole lot of scaremongering, and the children were seperated until they met in their youth (so they were teenagers really) and carried on their love affair. Along came another meddling relative, this time in the form of Layla’s brother Tabrez, who refused to let them get married, leading to a fight in which Tabrez is murdered by the crazed-with-love Majnun. The standard punishment is, of course, a good stoning or two, which Majnun is subjected to until Layla agrees to marry another man to save him. See a pattern here? Layla is married off (cattle again) while the boyfriend is exiled to the deserts. Layla’s hubby, however, got fed up of Layla pining after Majnun like an emo, and, with his men, went to hunt him down and kill him. The climax of this story is that when Hubby kills Majnun, at the exact same miment, Layla also dies.
The less dramatic version of this story is pretty much the same except for the mystic bleedings and the lovers both dying after writing a lot of poetry.

There’s a few more stories (to come soon!) which follow a similar theme of unreconciled, noble love and a lot of wandering around/soul-searching/tending sheep which is often the results in tragic endings.
Can any of you think of any more popular romances from non-Western cultures?

Sassi Punnu love story

Sassi was another romantic soul, the daughter of King Adamkhan of Bhambour. At her birth the astrologers predicted that she was a curse for the royal family’s prestige. The king ordered that the child be put in a wooden chest with a ‘taweez’ tied on her neck and thrown into the river Chenab. The chest was seen floating by Atta, the washer man of Bamboon village. The dhobi believed the child was a blessing from God and took her home and adopted her as his child. Many, many years passed by and the king did not have another child, so he decides to get married again. When he heard that the daughter of Atta, the washer man, was as beautiful as the angels, the king summoned her to the palace. Sassi was still wearing the tabiz (amulet), which the queen mother had put around her neck when she was taken away to be drowned. The king recognized his daughter immediately on seeing the tabiz. The pent-up sufferings of the parents flowed into tears. They wanted their lost child to return to the palace and bring joy and brightness to their lives, but Sassi refused and preferred to live in the house where she had grown up. She refused to leave the man who had adopted her.

                                                                             


Sassi did not go to the palace but the king presented her with abundant gifts, lands and gardens where she could grow and blossom like a flower. As all the rare things of the world were within her reach she wanted to acquire knowledge and sent for learned teachers and scholars. She made sincere efforts to increase her knowledge. During this time she heard about the trader from Gajni, who had a garden mad with a monument, the inner portion of which was enriched with exquisite paintings.
When Sassi visited the place to offer her tributes and admire the rich art, she instantly fell in love with a painting, which was a masterpiece of heavenly creation. She soon discovered this was the portrait of Prince Pannu, son of King Ali Hoot, the ruler of Kicham.
Sassi became desperate to meet Punnu, so she issued an order that any businessman coming from Kicham town should be presented before her. There was a flutter within the business community as this news spread and someone informed Punnu about Sassi’s love for him. He assumed the garb of a businessman and carrying a bagful of different perfumes came to meet Sassi. The moment Sassi saw him she couldn’t help saying,” Praise to be God!”

 view-from-punnu-fort-turbut-balochistan. pakistan                   


Punu’s Baluchi brothers developed an enmity for Sassi. They followed him and on reaching the town they saw the marriage celebrations of Sassi and Pannu in full swing, they could not bear the rejoicing. That night the brothers pretended to enjoy and participate in the marriage celebrations and forced Punnu to drink different types of liquor. When he was dead drunk the brothers carried him on a camel’s back and returned to their hometown Kicham.

The next morning when she realized that she was cheated she became mad with the grief of separation from her lover and ran barefoot towards the city of Kicham. To reach the city she had to cross miles of desert land, the journey that was full of dangerous hazards, leading to the end of world.
Her end was similar to the end of Kaknoos bird. It is said that when this bird sings, fire leaps out from its wings and it is reduced to ashes in its own flames. Similarly Punnu’s name was the death song for Sassi who repeated it like a song and flames of fire leapt up and she was also reduced to ashes.

Folk Tales of Pakistan: Sohni Mahiwal

Folk Tales of Pakistan: Sohni Mahiwal

• It’s dark and the river is in flood

• There is water all around me

• How am I going to meet Mahiwal?

• If I keep going, I will surely drown

• And if I turn back

• I would be going back on my promise

• And letting Mahiwal down

I beg you (O pitcher!), with folded hands,
Help me meet my Mahiwal
You always did it, please do it tonight, too

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I WISH, I TOO, WERE BACKED IN THE FIRE OF LOVE

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by ghulam sarwar

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Pakistan, like every other culture, has its share of folklore. In fact, a very generous share — particularly of the love tales

Folklore is a mixture of beliefs, facts and fiction. The stories are told and retold by successive generations, embellished by poets, sung and celebrated by common folks and enacted and filmed by entertainment industry. Over time, the facts and fiction get so interwoven that often it becomes difficult 

to separate one from the other.

It is always a poet, though, that immortalizes a love story. But a poet chooses to sing a particular story, and not the other, because of its inherent beauty and poignancy. While the Persian poet, Nizami, introduced Layla-Majnun to the world, Shakespeare immortalized Romeo and Juliet. Waris Shah cried a river over Heer and made her a household name in Pakistan and Northern India, and Sohni and Mahiwal first captured the imagination of Fazal Shah and, through his poetry, got embedded into popular imagination.

I chose the story of Sohni and Mahiwal for this post because I find it so touching, so tragic, and so real. Even though Sohni and Mahiwal lived, loved and died, relatively recently there is no one consistent account of their story. However, there is an unmistakable common thread that runs through the different versions.

Sifting through different accounts and glossing over some, here is, briefly, what I could gather of this beautiful and enduring story:

Sometime during the late Mughal period, there lived in a town on the banks of the Chenab, or one of its branches, a potter (kumhar) named Tulla. (The town is identified either as present day Gujrat or one of the nearby towns.) Tulla was a master craftsman and his earthenware was bought and sold throughout Northern India and even exported to Central Asia. To the potter and his wife was born a daughter. She was such a beautiful child that they named her Sohni, meaning beautiful in Punjabi.

Sohni spent her childhood playing and observing things in her father’s workshop. She watched clay kneaded and molded on the wheel into different shaped pots and pitchers, dried in the sun, and then fired and baked. Sohni grew up not only into a beautiful, young woman but also an accomplished artist who made floral designs on the pots and pitchers that came off her father’s wheel.

Sohni’s town was located on the trading route between Delhi and Central Asia, and trading caravans often made a stopover here. One such caravan that stopped here included a young, handsome trader from Bukhara, named Izzat Baig. While checking out the merchandise in town, Izzat Baig came upon Tulla’s workshop where he spotted Sohni sitting in a corner of the workshop painting floral designs on the pots. Izzat Baig was taken by Sohni’s rustic beauty and charm and couldn’t take his eyes off her. In order to linger at the workshop, he started purchasing random pieces of pottery. He returned the next day and made some more purchases at Tulla’s shop. His purchases were a pretext to be around Sohni for as long as he could. This became Izzat Baig’s routine until he had squandered most of his money.

When the time came for his caravan to leave, Izzat Baig found it impossible to leave Sohni’s town. He told his companions to leave, and that he would follow later. He took up permanent residence in the town and would visit Sohni at her father’s shop on one pretext or the other. Sohni also began to feel the heat of Izzat Baig’s love and gradually began to melt. The two started meeting secretly.

Izzat Baig soon ran out of money and started taking up odd jobs with different people, including Sohni’s father. One such job was that of grazing people’s cattle — mainly buffaloes. Because of his newfound occupation people started calling him Mahiwal, a short variation of Majhan-wala or the buffalo-man. That name stayed with him for the rest of his life — and thereafter.

Sohni and Mahiwal’s clandestine meetings soon became the talk of the town. When Sohni’s father came to know about the affair he hurriedly arranged Sohni’s marriage with one of her cousins, also a potter, and, ignoring Sohni’s protests and entreaties, bundled her off to her new home in a village somewhere on the other side of the river.

Mahiwal was devastated. He left town and became a wanderer, searching for Sohni’s whereabouts. Eventually, he found her house and managed to meet her in the guise of a beggar and gave her his new address — a hut across the river. Sohni’s husband, meanwhile, discovering that he could not win Sohni’s heart no matter what he did to please her, started spending more time away from home on business trips. Taking advantage of her husband’s absence, Sohni started meeting Mahiwal regularly. She would swim across the river at night with the help of a large water pitcher (gharra), a common swimming aid in the villages even today. They would spend most of the night together in Mahiwal’s hut and Sohni would swim back home before the crack of dawn. On reaching her side of the river, she would hide the pitcher in a bush to be used for her next trip the following night.

One day, Sohni’s sister-in-law (her husband’s sister) came visiting. Suspecting something unusual about Sohni’s nocturnal movements, she started spying on her. She followed Sohni one night, and saw her take out the pitcher from the bush, wade into the river and swim across. She reported the matter to her mother (Sohni’s mother-in-law). Both of them, rather than informing Sohni’s husband, decided to get rid of Sohni. This, they believed, was the only way to save their family’s honor. The sister-in-law quietly took out Sohni’s pitcher from the bush and replaced it with sun-dried, unbaked pitcher.

As usual, Sohni set out at night for her meeting with Mahiwal, picked the pitcher from the bush, as she always did, and entered the river. It was a stormy night. The river was in high flood. Sohni was soon engulfed in water. She discovered, to her horror, that the pitcher had begun to dissolve and disintegrate.

What shall she do now? Different thoughts rushed through Sohni’s mind. Abandon the trip? Or continue trying to swim without the help of a pitcher — and drown? Her inner struggle at this point is best expressed in a saraiki song made memorable by Pathanay Khan in his inimitable voice: Sohni gharray nu aakhdi aj mainu yaar mila gharrya

Roughly translated and paraphrased the song runs as follows:
Sohni (addressing the pitcher):

It’s dark and the river is in flood
There is water all around me
How am I going to meet Mahiwal?

If I keep going, I will surely drown
And if I turn back
I would be going back on my promise
And letting Mahiwal down

I beg you (O pitcher!), with folded hands,
Help me meet my Mahiwal
You always did it, please do it tonight, too

(The pitcher replies):

I wish I, too, were baked in the fire of love, like you are
But I am not. I apologize; I cannot help

Hearing Sohni’s cries, Mahiwal, from the other side, jumped into the river to save her. He barely managed to reach her. As the story goes, their bodies were washed ashore, and were found the next day, lying next to each other.

With their death, Sohni and Mahiwal entered into the world of legends and lore. And, in their death the sinners became saints.

Architectural Love Story: 10 Castles Built for Love

Architecture is influenced by Eros, Greek god of sexual love and beauty, also known as Roman counterpart Cupid. Architecture can be beautiful and a thing to love. But there are some castles built specifically for love as loving tributes, gifts, or even erected for love lost. Nothing is more powerful than love and expressing love in architecture is divinely romantic. However, love and tragedy are reoccurring themes to these castles. For Valentine’s Day, here are 10 castles built for love.

Boldt Castle on Heart Island, New York

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Valentine’s Day 1905 was to be the day that George Boldt gave his wife the five-acre Boldt Castle estate in the Thousand Islands. He had this medieval and Victorian architectural styled castle built as a testimonial of his love for his wife, Louise. Boldt Castle was to be an eleven-building complex, the most grand in the Thousand Islands. Among many amazing architectural landmarks, there was the Yacht House, a gigantic playhouse Alster Tower, the Power House, and a fairytale version 120-room home modeled after a Rhineland Castle. One year before Boldt Castle was to be completed, Louise, aged 41, died. Brokenhearted, George Boldt stopped the construction and never returned to the island. After more tragedy of vandals set free on the island, there is a bit of a happy ending. Drawn by the romance of the place, now couples come to be wed at Boldt Castle.

Taj Mahal in Agra, India

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The Taj Mahal was built for love, but tragically as a mausoleum and in memory of love lost. After the death of his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, Emperor Shah Jahan began building a tomb that would be the most resplendent monument ever built by man for a woman. While the dome of the mausoleum and its four standing minarets are built out of white marble, all the outlying buildings within the Taj Mahal complex are primarily built out of red sandstone, combining Persian, Indian, and Islamic architectural styles. The central focus of the complex is the tomb and you can tour it virtually here.

Swallow’s Nest Castle: “Castle of Love” in Crimean, Ukraine

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Built in 1912 near Yalta in the South of Crimea, the Swallow’s Nest is one of the most romantic castles of Neo-Gothic style. The Swallow’s Nest Castle was originally named “The Castle of Love.” However, the romantically named “Love Castle” started with humble beginnings as a wooden cottage. There is little proof that this “Castle of Love” was built for a great love . . . more like a lover’s nest. Perhaps not constructed for true love but built for the purpose of making love. In 1927, an earthquake measuring 6-7 on the Richter scale, cracked the 130 ft Aurora Cliff. The huge crack closed the castle for the next 40 years. The cliff and castle have since been fortified and restored. The public flocks to Swallow’s Nest Castle to look over Ai–Todor Cape, the Black Sea, and to dine in the restaurant now within the castle’s walls.
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Dobroyd Castle in Todmorden, England

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Dobroyd Castle at Todmorden started as a promise of love and turned into a honeymoon home. John Fielden, the son of a wealthy industrialist, fell in love with a local weaver girl, Ruth Stansfield. Fielden proposed to her, but she said she would marry him if he would promise to build her a castle on a hill. When completed, Dobroyd Castle had 66 luxurious rooms, a stable for 17 horses, boasted four small turrets and a main tower. The initials of John and Ruth were engraved in a dozen places, the monograms JFR carved into the Devon marble and Caen stone, as a testimony to their love. However, in a social climb to “immortalise the name of Fielden,” John sent his wife to finishing school in Switzerland to improve her education and learn social etiquette. Distance apart did not make the heart grow fonder, alienating the couple. When she died, he remarried. But John was crippled after being kicked by a horse and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Love and tragedy.

Kellie’s Castle in Batu Gajah, Malaysia

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Kellie’s Castle is Malaysia’s oldest castle and built for love by Scottish planter William Kellie Smith for his wife Agnes Smith. She missed home tremendously and had also blessed him with a son. Construction began in 1915, combining three architectural styles – Greco-Roman, Moorish, and Indian. A Spanish flu epidemic killed most of the 70 Indian construction workers. Kellie Smith built a Hindu temple near the castle to please the Indians and to restart construction. Kellie Smith left for England to fetch a lift for the castle tower, but he died shortly thereafter from pneumonia. Construction on the castle built for love was left uncompleted. The castle ruins are rumored to be haunted.

Stratford Castle in Durban, South Africa

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Stratford Castle in Durban, South Africa, now is placed within Camelot Residential and Golf Estate, but it too started off as a kiss of inspiration from true love. The Castle’s cornerstone on the North wing is engraved with Sir Walter Raleigh’s immortal words: “But true love is a durable fire, In the mind ever burning; Never sick, never old, never dead; From itself never turning.” The castle was built upon the spirit of those lovely words. Do you wish you could build a castle for your true love? How about buy one? Stratford Castle is for sale to the tune of $365,000,000 and equipped with, among many things, a golf course within Camelot (and neighbors).

Mystery Castle in Phoenix, Arizona

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Mystery Castle is a castle built for a princess. Sounds like a magical love story, but it started on a sad note of despair. Boyce Gulley left from his home in Seattle, sick at heart after being diagnosis with tuberculosis. He slipped away from his wife and daughter, who he did not want to watch him die, and began one of the most beautiful yet odd love stories every recorded. With his last few pennies, he purchased a mining claim of 80 acres in the foothills of South Mountain. He then spent the next 16 years building a castle by hand while waiting to die. He used natural materials and old abandoned artifacts. With the memories of his daughter when the two of them built sand castles on the Pacific beaches, memories of the times when she cried as the tide washed them back into the sea, he built the Castle Made From Love. His Mystery Castle would never wash away and she would have it forever. After Boyce died, his daughter, Mary Lou Gulley, discovered her inheritance and received the love offering of Mystery Castle.

Coral Castle in Homestead, Florida

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In the early 1920′s, a man named Ed Leedskalnin was left by his fiancé the day before their wedding. Heartbroken, yet intending to leave the mark his undying love, Leedskalnin worked for 28 years on his tribute to his lost love. Working only at night, managing to move tons of stone, he built his lost beloved “Sweet Sixteen” an intricate and stunning castle made of coral. Mystery surrounds Coral Castle, starting at the gate which is a piece of nine ton coral. Leedskalnin claimed to know the secrets of the great pyramids. Yet neither his knowledge nor his devotion to his lost love brought her back to him. It has, however, brought untold thousands of visitors to Coral Castle.

Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California

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This California “Castle” is a story of love and of tragedy, built less in an effort to remember her beloved husband and more for the love of her own life. Sarah Winchester, the widow of gun magnate William Winchester, believed that her life was endangered and that she was haunted by the ghosts of those killed by Winchester rifles. Her master building plan was only to keep continuous construction so she would be safe and perhaps live forever, or for as long as the house was being built. Her “castle” was an architectural reflection of her psyche, built for 38 years without ceasing, into a maze-like mansion “full of twists, turns, and dead ends, so that the spirits would get lost and never be able to find her.” There are about 160 rooms, 47 fireplaces, 10,000 window panes, two basements and three elevators. Before the 1906 earthquake, the house had been seven stories tall, but is now only four stories. The Winchester Mystery House is allegedly haunted yet open for tourists. Love comes in all shapes, sizes, and colors as does tragedy.

Prasat Hin Phimai in Phimai, Thailand

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The Legend of Pajitt and Orapima begins with a prince named Pajitt. The king wanted his son to take a wife, so Prince Pajitt traveled the countryside for months until he spotted a pregnant light-skinned woman. He considered her his soulmate, but he could not marry a widow. Instead, Pajitt planned to marry the unborn child when she, Orapima, reached the age of 16. As she grew, they fell wildly in love. Before he could marry Orapima, he returned to the King for the wedding payment to her mother. Orapima was kidnapped, but Pajitt rescued her. While they rested in the forest, a woodsman killed Pajitt with an axe and stole Orapima. She killed the woodsman and returned to Phimai where she built a sanctuary, Prasat Hin Phimai. Heartbroken, she prayed for her true love and the reincaration of Pajitt’s spirit. Prasat Hin Phimai was built, painted, and sculpted on the inside with scenes from her life with Pajitt. One day, a young man saw her handiwork and was brought before her. She recogonized Pajitt’s spirit and they lived happily ever after. Today, in the small town of Phimai, lies one Thailand’s most extensively restored Khmer temple complexes as seen above . . . the sanctuary and “castle of love” Orapima had constructed as she waited on her beloved Pajitt’s reincarnation.