Cultural Stories: The Carpenter’s Daughter

William Gudykunst said, “One of the major factors influencing our effectiveness in communicating with people from other cultures is our ability to understand their culture.” Communication is about more than just the words we say; it is about both language and culture, what we communicate through words and actions. Here at Crossroads Cultural Exchange, we believe that we can't separate learning language from learning culture. As one of out teachers says, "Culture is the spirit of a language."

In my first year of learning Moroccan Arabic, I greatly appreciated that my teachers taught me not only grammar and vocabulary, but also cultural proverbs, teachings, and stories. The stories especially taught me things that were under the surface of Moroccan culture. Now, that same teacher who told me that "Culture is the spirit of a language” has shared with a me a book of Moroccan fairy tales, called Tales of Fes, translated by E. Powys Mathers. Reading and reflecting on the fairy tales, myths, folktales, proverbs, and sayings from another culture helps us gain insight into that culture in ways we otherwise may not glean. Let’s look together at one such tale, called The Carpenter’s Daughter, taken from Tales of Fes.

The Carpenter’s Daughter

Once upon a time, there was a poor carpenter whose wife died in childbirth, leaving a daughter on his hands; in truth, a beautiful baby, but one whose upkeep was a grave burden upon her father, and who therefore seemed to have been born under very sad auspices. How could the unfortunate man take care of his child when he had no money, no relations, no slave, and was worn out by his work? 

But Allah constitutes himself a Father to the fatherless.

As soon as he returned home after the burial of his wife and had anxiously opened his door, he found all the house as clean and well-arranged as when the dead woman had looked after these things. Better still, the cooking had been done and a meal set out. He had nothing to do but to wash his right hand, and dip it into the dish, saying: “Bismillah. In the name of God!” to drive away the devil. 

To crown all, the little girl had been carefully swaddled and was sleeping peacefully. 

Yet there was no one there. And the miracle was repeated every day. A mysterious hand looked after the child and directed the house. The reason for these things was that the People of the Invisible had adopted the girl, and now looked after her and breastfed her. And she, being under the protection of the Jinn, developed with miraculous rapidity, growing greater, “wick and qandil,”1 by night and day. 

When she was three, she seemed to be twelve, and her intelligence was remarkable. Her father had given her the name of Aisha, in memory of the favorite wife of the Prophet. 

 Now at that time there was a Sultan upon the throne who delighted in all fantastic things, and whose habit it was to ask strange questions, which his people had to answer or forfeit their heads.

“Who will tell me”, he asked, “ what the Na’oura2 says?” 

Many persons had already been put to death for their silence, and at length the Sultan sent for Aisha’s father and asked him the same question, offering him a thousand dirhams or death.

But all that the carpenter could do was to obtain a delay of three days. 

“Do not torment yourself so, my father,” said Aisha, when she saw the good man return in terror to his house. “Follow my advice. Do not wait for the three days. What is the good of that? Go to the Sultan tomorrow, sit down by the na’oura which turns in the garden, stay there listening for a quarter of an hour, and then recite the verses which I am about to teach you.”

The carpenter did these things. After pretending to listen with great attention to the na’oura as it turned, as it turned slowly groaning among the citrons and the jasmines, he advanced towards the throne of the Sultan, and said: 

                   “O Commander of the Faithful, this is what the na’oura says: 

                    ‘I was a quince tree spreading perfume and giving

                                      all sorry lovers back their sighs.

                                  The Sultan cursed me suddenly. I stand 

                                  A silly plank and weep from all my eyes.’” 

Now you must know that the Sultan was afflicted with ringworm and hid the fact most carefully. One day the branch of a certain quince tree had knocked off his fez and surrounding turban, setting his head bare before all his retinue. Being furious that his malady was discovered, he had caused the tree to be cut down and a na’oura made of its wood. 

How had the carpenter known of this detail? This seemed extraordinary to the Sultan, and he hurried to put a second question, giving a three days’ respite as before. This time he required to know what the water sang as it boiled upon the fire. 

And this time also, young Aisha consoled her father, as he sat in his house groaning and brooding upon death. 

“Go to the palace,” she said, “sit down before the stove, lay your ear near to the kettle, and say to the Sultan: 

                                     I was quick water, and the wood I fed 

                                     When I was living, burns me now I’m dead.”

The Sultan had to be contented with this answer.

“But now I wish,” he said to the carpenter, “that you bring me a vegetable garden on the back of a camel.”

This time the poor man gave up hope entirely. “Beautiful verses will not help me now,” he said, “for the matter is too material. My last hour is written for tomorrow.”

“How can you so lack courage?” asked the ingenious Lalla Aisha. “ You have only to ask for eight days’ grace, and Allah thereafter will provide!” 

As soon as her father had obtained this delay, she set earth and dung in a saddle-tray and sowed various seeds within it. 

At the end of a week all the vegetables had begun to sprout, and there was nothing left to do but to fasten the saddle-tray to the back of a camel.

But the Sultan propounded a further test. 

“You must come to me,” he said, “at the same time mounted and on foot, and weeping and laughing at the same time.”

But it was weeping and by no means laughing that the carpenter returned to his own house.

“Good-bye, my dearest daughter,”he said. “Soon you will have no father at all” 

And he explained the Sultan’s strange and contradictory conditions to Aisha.

“If it is only that,” she said, “you may be quite tranquil. Go and find a quiet little, little donkey, such a one as can walk between your legs without your sitting on him; also you must take some onions with you, for they can draw tears from your eyes without preventing your laughing at the same time.”

“My daughter is a true afrita,” said the carpenter to himself next day as he made his entry into the palace in that bewildering fashion.

But though the Sultan could not help laughing, he was a little vexed also, and therefore he set a fifth problem, though promising that it should be the last. 

“Make me a robe out of a block of marble, he said.

“Do not weep, my father,” cried Aisha, when she heard of this. “Simply go back to the Sultan and require him to send you some threads of sand with which to sew the robe.”

The Sultan was quite disarmed by this request and gave the carpenter a rich reward; at the same time he insisted upon knowing who had so wonderfully counseled him. 

“It was my daughter, who has been raised, I think, by the Masters of Earth.”

“I wish her for my wife!” cried the king. 

“For in truth no other could have shown such fine and handy intelligence.” 

He took Lalla Aisha bent En-Najar for his legitimate Queen. And the two lived together for many happy days. 

Now the Sultan frequently gave justice to his people at the palace entrance, and one day he had to judge between two men who were disputing over a newborn foal. One owned a gelding, the other a mare; and both animals had dwelt in the same stable, with each of the men looking after them on alternate days. 

“My mare was full,” said the plaintiff, “and on the day when she was due to bring forth, it was my comrade’s turn to look after the stable. When I entered in the evening, I saw the newborn foal under the gelding and not under my mare. O Commander of the Faithful, does it not nevertheless belong to me, in spite of this perfidious substitution?”

“May Allah make the days of our master the Sultan innumerable,” said the other. “My animal is beyond all doubt the mother of the foal.”

Then said the Sultan: “The foal belongs to the man under whose beast it was found. You may retire.” 

Ulcerous with indignation, the master of the mare went aside to hide his angry tears. Now the Queen’s window looked out upon the tribunal and Lalla Aisha had heard the sentence pronounced. Therefore she had pity on the unfortunate man and, without showing herself, called to him through the lattice, asking the cause of his grief. 

“This is what you must do,” she said. “You must return to the Sultan and say to him: “I sowed my field near the river with grains of corn, but alas! The fishes have eaten all the young shoots.”

“But do fish eat grass and the like?” cried the sultan, with a great laugh.

So the owner of the mare, still following the Queen’s advice, cried out: “But do geldings bring forth?”

“Who told you to say that?” said the Sultan, and then low to himself: “I only know one person in my kingdom capable of that.”

“I heard a voice through a window,” answered the man, “but I saw no one.”

Being furious that his wife had spoken to a man, the Sultan ran to Lalla Aisha saying: 

“I send you back to your father. You are no longer my Queen. But you have my permission to carry away with you a single chest filled with anything you most care to take.”

When that night came, Lalla Aisha mixed with the Sultan’s food a soporific dose sufficiently strong to keep him in a deep sleep for several hours; then she placed him in the chest which it was her right to take away. Slaves followed her with it, and she took the road to the carpenter’s house. 

The Jinn, who kept Lalla in the charge of their protection, had prepared all in the house for a reception of great splendor. As soon as the Sultan began to wake, a fortifying soup was given to him and, as he sat up, he began to admire the beauty of his surroundings.

“You are at my home, dear master,” said Lalla Aisha. “You gave me permission to bring away what was dearest to me.”

The Sultan threw himself at her feet, asking forgiveness for having suspected her, and thenceforward their happiness was as perfect as it can be among mortals. 

Ouasalam!

Glory be to Allah!

 1qandil: oil lamp made out of clay              

 2Na’oura: water-wheel.

Questions for Reflection:                                  

1. In this story, Lalla Aisha was raised by the spirits that live in her father’s house. Moreover, all the housework is done by these spirits. This idea actually exists in Moroccan culture. Moroccans, especially the older generation, think that their houses are inhabited by spirits that should be respected and feared. What do you think about this?

2. The carpenter, before he started to eat, washed his hands and then dipped his right hand into the dish, saying, “Bismillah” (in the name of God). The man did this to drive away the devil. For you, if you pray before eating, why do you do this?

3. The carpenter named her daughter “Aisha.” He did so to name her after the favorite wife of the prophet Mohammed. In your culture, how do you choose names for your children? Do you tend to name them after family members or righteous people? Who chose your name, and how?

4. “Lalla,” “Si,” and “Sidi,” are some of the titles given to people in Morocco for respect. Do you know other titles in Moroccan society?

Do you enjoy this type of cultural exploration? You may enjoy one of our Moroccan cultural workshops, available online or at our center in Fes.

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