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Group 8: “The Tailor’s Tale: The Lame Young Man from Baghdad and the Barber,” “The Barber’s Tale,” “The Tale of the First Brother, the Hunchbacked Tailor,” & “The Tale of the Second Brother, Baqbaqa the Paraplegic”

Summary: “The Tailor’s Tale: The Lame Young Man from Baghdad and the Barber” 

One day, a young man falls in love with the judge’s beautiful daughter. He pines for her until he grows ill. An old woman arranges for him to meet the beautiful woman. To prepare for the visit, he asks a barber to cut his hair. The barber, a highly educated man, will not stop talking and cut his hair.

Hours pass. The barber keeps talking but never finishes his job. The young man leaves, but the barber follows him and stands outside the beautiful woman’s house. When a servant of the household screams, the barber assumes that the young man is being killed. As the barber searches the home, the young man hides in a chest. When he jumps out of the chest, he breaks his leg. The barber follows him even now. 

Summary: “The Barber’s Tale”

The barber explains that he once lived in Baghdad, where the caliph arrested ten robbers and put them on a boat. The barber jumped in the boat with them, thinking it was a party. After the executioner chopped off the robbers’ heads, the barber explained why he was on the boat in the first place.

The barber then tells a story about each of his six brothers. 

Summary: “The Tale of the First Brother, the Hunchbacked Tailor” 

The first brother falls in love with a beautiful woman. However, this woman, her husband, and their maid play a series of tricks on him. First, they do not pay him for the clothing he makes for them. Then, they trick him into marrying the maid, but before the wedding, they put him in a mill where a miller ties him to a yoke and whips him. Later, the maid and her mistress tell him that, while the master is away, they want to have sex with him. Just as it looks like the tailor will sleep with both women, the master appears. He lashes the tailor and parades him through the city as a warning to others. 

Summary: “The Tale of the Second Brother, Baqbaqa the Paraplegic”

One day, a woman invites the second brother, Baqbaqa, to a beautiful house to meet a lovely woman. She warns him, though, that he must refrain from meddling and not talk too much. There, ten ladies appear. They hit him, dye his eyebrows red, pluck his mustache, and shave his beard, but he doesn’t resist. He finally meets the lovely woman. Hearing she likes to play chase, the man takes off his clothes and runs after her. Suddenly, he falls through the earth and into a marketplace where he’s crippled for being naked. He’s arrested, lashed, and banished from Baghdad. 

Analysis: “The Tailor’s Tale: The Lame Young Man from Baghdad and the Barber,” “The Barber’s Tale,” “The Tale of the First Brother, the Hunchbacked Tailor,” & “The Tale of the Second Brother, Baqbaqa the Paraplegic”

The barber is one of the strangest characters in The Arabian Nights. A highly educated man, he seems at first like a wise advisor to the young man who has been invited to visit a woman who has been isolated by her father. However, the situation quickly turns awry when the barber will not stop talking and do his job. At first, his verbosity is irritating and tiresome. Soon, it becomes infuriating and insane. When the barber becomes a stalker, he causes the young man injury and nearly death. Finally, the barber’s behavior is extreme enough to drive the young man from his own city. Like the previous tale of the hunchback and his multiple murderers, this story is an example of dark humor.

The garrulous barber proceeds to tell his outlandish tale, which soon branches into six tales, each with a physically defective brother as its main character. The frame tale of Shahrayar and Shahrazad continues, but it has clearly taken a back seat to the character’s tales being told. Shahrazad’s strategy of story within story within story within story is working as the tales continue like links in a chain, seemingly infinite, which keep her alive, night after night. Like the barber, Shahrazad is a woman highly educated in many subjects. The well from which she draws her stories is deep and wide, and it appears that she, like the barber, can talk forever.

Two different hunchbacks appear in these stories. In both Eastern and Western literature, hunchbacks often appear as symbols of social revilement. Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Manthara from the Sanskrit Ramayana, Shakespeare’s Richard III, and Verdi’s court jester, Rigoletto, are perhaps a few of the most famous hunchbacks in literature. In each case, the physical deformity mirrors a psychological or social flaw. However, the hunchbacks in The Arabian Nights are not explored fully as characters. They are solely the object of ridicule and entertainment.

There are several tricks played in these stories, extending one of the motifs of The Arabian Nights, that of tricks and cunning. The poor hunchback, the brother of the barber, is the victim of a cruel trick that results in a lashing and public shaming. The second brother is likewise duped by a woman who tricks him into chasing her. He mysteriously passes through some kind of portal that lands him in a public marketplace, naked and shamed. These incidents are amusing to the audiences in the stories, to the feast-goers listening to the barber, to Shahrayar, and to those who listen to or read the tales. However, the unfortunate victims are treated horribly. These tricks are not lighthearted. They are cruel and heartless, as are many of the tales.

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