{"id":38799,"date":"2012-09-19T15:16:39","date_gmt":"2012-09-19T19:16:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=38799"},"modified":"2012-09-19T15:44:06","modified_gmt":"2012-09-19T19:44:06","slug":"open-sesame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/09\/19\/open-sesame\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Sesame"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Artist: John Gagliano<\/p><\/div>\n

A writer stands outside a story yelling, \u201cOpen Sesame!\u201d and the story, as if a seed, opens. And treasure is found inside. That treasure, of course, is just another story, and it all begins again\u2026<\/p>\n

Or else, say the writer is no different from any other of his tribe\u2014say he\u2019s actually a thief. And the story is no story, but really a mountain. \u201cOpen Sesame!\u201d (this writer continues)\u2014the mountain opens and my meaning is revealed.<\/p>\n

A version of this nonsense\u2014this magician\u2019s stage business\u2014occurs in the tale \u201cAli Baba and the Forty Thieves,\u201d popularly known from the One Thousand and One Nights<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But Ali\u2019s tale is not to be found in the oldest manuscripts of that collection. Some scholars believe it to be the invention of one Youhenna Diab, known as Hanna of Aleppo, an Arab Christian storyteller said to have communicated it to Antoine Galland, the first translator of the Nights<\/em> into French. Others argue for a purely Western source, and believe that Ali is the incorrupt fiction of Galland himself (though Richard Burton, the first translator of an unexpurgated Nights<\/em> into English, claimed that Ali was to be found in an Arabic original, a mythical manuscript often forged but never found).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Indeed Galland (1646\u20131715) is the earliest source for this famous exclamation: \u201cS\u00e9same,\u201d he has his Baba say, \u201couvre toi!\u201d The ponderous Burton (1821\u201390), on the other hand, has given us not \u201csesame\u201d but \u201cOpen, O Simsim!\u201d<\/p>\n

In the first two decades of the nineteenth century, the brothers Grimm collected what would seem to be a German variant under the title \u201cSimeliberg.\u201d In their telling a mountain somewhere in the Reich opens to disclose its myriad riches when addressed with the word Semsi<\/em>: \u201cBerg Semsi, Berg Semsi, thu dich auf.\u201d The Grimms, who were, we should remember, philologists and compilers of a dictionary, explain this Semsi<\/em>\u2014given in subsequent editions of their work as Simsi<\/em> and Semeli<\/em>\u2014as an archaic German term, or name, for \u201cmountain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilhelm Grimm, the younger of the brothers and the better writer, notes, \u201cThis name for a mountain is, according to a document in Pistorius, very ancient in Germany. A mountain in Grabfeld is called Similes and in a Swiss song a Simeliberg is again mentioned. This makes us think of the Swiss word \u2018Sinel\u2019 for \u2018sinbel,\u2019 round.\u201d<\/p>\n

Was Ali Baba Galland\u2019s creation or only a character adapted from European folklore? Should we think that Galland, that forty-first thief, in an ostensible translation of Arabic into French, gave us, instead, an immemorial German children\u2019s story in Oriental guise? Thus far we have an errant Arab original, a French s\u00e9same from the seventeenth century, a German Semsi collected in the early nineteenth century, and an English Simsim from later that same century. Our understanding is further complicated when we think that Burton, whose English is the latest of the revisions discussed here, has left us with seemingly the most authentic salutation: his Simsim is nothing but the Arabic word for \u201csesame,\u201d Sesamum orientale<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Which came first, Simsim<\/em> or Semsi<\/em>? S\u00e9same or a more germinating seed? As our tale\u2019s setting is \u201cthe Middle East\u201d (a British fantasy), opinions and arguments support every agenda, obliterating synthesis. While Sesamum orientale<\/em> was prized by Babylon for its ability to repel curses, Simsim<\/em> has been alternatively interpreted as a derivation from Arabic\u2019s shems<\/em>, meaning \u201csun,\u201d and even as a corruption of the pacific Salaam<\/em> (\u015eemsi is also a Turkish name, originally an honorific, meaning \u201cthe illuminated\u201d). Word wealthy we might be, but still wedged between cave walls and protective boulder admitting no light. Information rich but still greedy, as scholars have been greedy for two centuries, for an Arabic source for a German folktale\/French art story that, in our Englished day, has become the quintessential narrative of Arabia.<\/p>\n

The mountain opens for the voice, the voice rolls away the sepulchral stone\u2014reveals the truest treasure: emptiness, proverbial silver, metaphor\u2019s gold, echo gleaming unisonous. The most valuable coin has always been with us, within us: the word, the call, whether shared, lent, borrowed, or stolen. There is no cavern more mysterious than the mouth, bound by air and bony ignorance.<\/p>\n

I first heard Ali Baba\u2019s cry not as a reader of Scheherazade\u2019s crepuscular, mortal, entertainment, but as a pajamafied fanatic of weekend TV. In loony cartoons come Sundays, with even the scrambled Sinbads and Aladdins and genies and Harun al-Rashids addressing the rock face in gumptious New York immigrantese, \u201cClose, seza me!\u201d (after botching the opening act, with hapless \u201cOpen Sarsaparillas\u201d and \u201cOpen Saddle Soaps\u201d).<\/p>\n

I write this in the winter of the eighth and, Insha\u2019Allah, last year of an American presence in Iraq\u2014birthplace of the Nights<\/em> (and of writing itself). In Iraq, Ali Baba served as U.S. military slang to characterize \u201cthe natives,\u201d much as Vietnam\u2019s Charlie was used to dehumanize the enemy of that previous lost war. In time, however, many Iraqis themselves began using the epithet to describe the GIs who looted Iraqi museum property, businesses, and homes; soldiers who need demonstrate no causality, nor do they need any magic formula to burst down doors\u2014just force.<\/p>\n

Joshua Cohen<\/a> is the author of<\/em> Witz, A Heaven of Others, and<\/em> Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto.<\/p>\n

Excerpted from the Fall issue of<\/a><\/em> Frequencies<\/a>, a new biannual journal of artful essays, published by Two Dollar Radio. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A writer stands outside a story yelling, \u201cOpen Sesame!\u201d and the story, as if a seed, opens. And treasure is found inside. That treasure, of course, is just another story, and it all begins again\u2026 Or else, say the writer is no different from any other of his tribe\u2014say he\u2019s actually a thief. And the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[8683,8685,7262,7265,8684,3281,8145],"class_list":["post-38799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-ali-baba","tag-antoine-galland","tag-brothers-grimm","tag-fairy-tales","tag-legend","tag-myth","tag-the-arabian-nights"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOpen Sesame by Joshua Cohen<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"September 19, 2012 \u2013 A writer stands outside a story yelling, \u201cOpen Sesame!\u201d and the story, as if a seed, opens. And treasure is found inside. 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