Shahrazad and the Power of Stories

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I’ve been thinking about Shahrazad the storyteller.

In the frame story of The Thousand and One Nights, a sultan has been forcing a new person to marry him every night and killing her in the morning. To stop the deadly cycle, Shahrazad (also spelled “Scheherazade”) volunteers to be his next bride.

That night, she begins weaving a tale so compelling that the sultan decides to wait on killing her in order to hear the rest. Night after night, she keeps telling  stories. Wild, fantastic stories. Stories within stories. Stories with plot twists and cliffhanger endings. Stories that keep the sultan on the edge of his seat for so long that he never does get around to killing her.

She saved herself through her stories. With only her words and her wit, she also saved the rest of the kingdom in the process.

Of all the characters between the pages of The Thousand and One Nights, the actual hero is Shahrazad.


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