Chapter 59 Let's listen to the next chapter

One thing should not be forgotten in Baghdad: the search for "Arabian Nights". The reason is simple. Children all over the world, including us, first learned about Baghdad from that collection of stories.After knowing it, no matter what news you hear about Baghdad in the news media, you will carefully pray for it, because this is the city that belongs to our childhood, and we don’t want to let it hurt. Baghdad is seen and heard these days, both in its history and in its present day.Needless to say its humiliation, even its glory is always murderous.I have always wanted to find some traces of the city that belonged to our childhood, but I was afraid of diluting the serious topic.I once saw a sculpture on the street from the car window. I was in a trance and seemed to have something to do with it. But when I searched again, I was overwhelmed by another stereotyped leader sculpture.It wasn't until today that I was about to leave that I hesitated and asked.

The press officer smiled and waved his hand, telling us to follow him.First came to the intersection of a street, looked up, it was the sculpture I saw in the car window.A girl was watering a large number of jars, and many jars were still spraying water, which showed that they were already full. From the perspective of sculpture art, this is top grade.What is commendable is the treatment of those dozens of jars, which seem to have no sense of sculpture, but there is a girl on top of them, and they all become the most secular physical sculptures.The second is the use of fountains, which continuously make the whole sculpture full of vitality and aura.

In fact, water is used instead of oil here, and it should be poured with hot oil. It is based on "One Thousand and One Nights", called Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, a very famous story.It is said that Ali Baba discovered a treasure house of the robbers and brought several bags of gold coins home. His brother also went to get it after knowing about it, but was killed by the robbers.The bandit came to chase and kill Ali Baba’s family again. After repeated failures, he made a living. A bandit disguised himself as an oil seller and carried dozens of oil jars to Ali Baba’s house to spend the night. In fact, only one jar was oil, and every other jar There is a robber hiding.This matter was discovered by a clever maid. She boiled the jar of oil and poured spoonfuls of oil into other jars. Dozens of robbers were scalded to death.

This story is pleasant to hear at first, but it is a bit too cruel when you think about it carefully.Then let's take the happy side, which can be regarded as the victory of justice over evil. The second related sculpture is by the Tigris River, which depicts the starting point of the whole book "Arabian Nights": the king wanted to take revenge on the woman because of his wife's infidelity, married a girl every night, and killed her the next morning. .In order to prevent such atrocities, a girl named Shan Ruzod voluntarily married the king. She told the king a story every day, and she stopped abruptly when she reached the most exciting point, and she will tell it tomorrow.The king's appetite was hung in this way, unable to kill her, hanging for a whole thousand and one nights.

In fact, these one thousand and one stories have subtly completed an enlightenment education for the king. Not only did he no longer want to kill, but he really fell in love with her.So the next thing has become very common: the two grow old together. The beginning of "Arabian Nights" is truly beautiful, and I think this is also an important reason why it has been passed down through the ages.But, with all due respect, this sculpture is not beautiful. Two people sit and stand, wooden and clumsy, without any physical charm and expression language.Reminiscent of the sculpture I saw just now, the jar is better than the human body.This is understandable. In Arabic aesthetics, the depiction of the human body has always been inferior to the depiction of patterns.This probably has something to do with Islamic civilization's opposition to idol worship and portrait display.It is a normal phenomenon that religious ideas control the focus of aesthetics.Look at the large number of propaganda sculptures on the streets today, even the proportions of the human body are not quite right. What is even more interesting is a giant sculpture at the gate of our hotel, which is probably complaining about the embargo of the United Nations. The rain was pouring, and the tragedy turned into a joke and a child's play in an instant.Let it go for now, but the only two "Arabian Nights" sculptures in such a dense group of inferior sculptures did not do a good job of the human body, which is a pity.

The story of "Arabian Nights" began to spread from the eighth century to the ninth century, and it took hundreds of years to finalize, across most of the Middle Ages in the Arab world.The Middle Ages may not be as dark as people described before, but it is a fact that ignorance and barbarism covered up the brilliance of reason for a long time.In such an era, legends and stories are like wildflowers growing tenaciously under huge rocks. They can best express the reasonable structure of a nation's group and gain world significance. Therefore, their status should be far higher than ordinary literati creations.

Regrettably, due to various reasons, the overall state of the Arab world coming out of the Middle Ages is not as good as that of Europe. As a result, "Arabian Nights" has not been overshadowed by many rising stars.Italian Boccaccio's Decameron has been greatly influenced by The Thousand and One Nights, but after the Decameron there are many masters, but The Thousand and One Nights has always been lonely. On the streets of Baghdad, where the vicissitudes of life have changed for thousands of years and is still suffering, the only image related to culture is still it. I am happy for it and sad for it.

That being the case, let's stand in front of its sculpture for a while and appreciate the meaning of those stories. There are so many stories, but there are only two, which is indeed too few, but these two alone have touched some basic philosophies in the world.You see, for the evil in the world, whether it is a robber or a king, there are two ways to deal with it, one is to eliminate it, and the other is to dissolve it.Of course, defusing is the best policy, but it does not mean persuasion.Persuasion is of little use, but "Arabian Nights" advocates combing the most beautiful voices in the world into long streams, slowly grinding with a cruel heart.This long flow spit out from the girl's mouth, it could be cut off from time to time, but it never stopped, and the limit was expanded a thousand times overnight. In the end, the weak defeated the powerful, and the beauty subdued the evil.The king actually surrendered and was taken prisoner, whether he liked it or not was the second.

All goodness seems to be a legend, all beauty is facing killing, viewed from a distance, they have no power, but at the junction of day and night they can create expectations.It is anticipation that becomes the lifeline of kindness and beauty. If you want to know what will happen next, let's listen to the next chapter to break it down. As long as you are willing to listen, everything can continue, and as long as you can continue, everything can change.The history of civilization is written in this way.The profound meaning of folklore is really amazing. November 18, 1999, Baghdad, overnight at Rasheed Hotel