Arabian Nights

Oh I come from a land
From a faraway place
Where the caravan camels roam

Where they cut off your ears / Where it's flat and immense
If they don't like your face / And the heat is intense
It's barbaric, but hey, it's home

Where the wind's from the east
And the sun's from the west
And the sand in the glass is right

Come on down, stop on by
Hop a carpet and fly
To another Arabian Night...

Just so happens that we walked into Times bookstore one evening with lad, and almost made it out unscathed - almost. Found a copy of the Arabian Nights (unfortunately Penguin didn't reprint it as a greenback) and thought, what the heck. We don't recall ever reading the complete Arabian Nights, although we may have read bits of it here and there (come on, surely most people would have heard of Ali Baba and the Fourty Thieves as well as Aladdin). So Arabian Nights now join our current bookjuggle.

It's certainly an entertaining read, but we were shocked at the amount of sex there is in the book. And it's not your steamy sex kinda read but rather sex is mentioned in a very off-hand manner.

'...Then he mounted her, and winding his legs around hers, as a button loop clasps a button, he tossed her to the ground and enjoyed her...'

'..."I want you to mount me and show me how nicely you can sit on my saddle..."

"...Soon he took her maidenhead and was pleased..."

WTF. It's really F indeed. We wonder just how bewildered we would have been trying to make sense of some of those sentences if we had read the Arabian Nights when we were young.

Sex aside, the book itself is good. There are stories that lead into another story, and some situations that are just plain hilarious - we could never understand how people could wring their hands for days while weeping, tearing their garments to tatters and slapping themselves when distressed...and then just yesterday we witnessed first hand Ezra indulge in some self-slapping.

As it is we're currently in the middle of Aladdin, and it's rather unfortunate that we keep having the song 'Prince Ali' play in our head. Well at least we're not picturing the Disney characters acting out the original stories. Seems that what Lil' Y said was true, "We've been Disneyfied and McDonaldized."

Ooo, just remembered that on our trip back from Sg Sedim we did singalong to the cartoon version 'A Whole New World'. Just wondering, how is it that everyone else (including Lil' Y) ends up singing Aladdin's part while we had to do Princess Jasmine? No one remembers her part kah? Never mind. Got to solo her part. We loves counterpointing.