Free In Arabian Nights by Tahir Shah

receive.'
     
    The next day I was reading in the large garden courtyard, glancing
from time to time at the tortoises meandering through the
undergrowth. The sun was blazing gold against a cobalt sky, and
I was thankful for the peace. Out of the corner of one eye I saw
a shadow approaching fitfully and heard feet shuffling over the
rough terracotta path. I looked up and spotted Hamza edging
towards me, his favoured woolly hat stretched nervously
between his hands.
    'Monsieur Tahir, you must forgive me,' he said.
    'Forgive you for what, Hamza?'
    The guardian didn't reply at first. He stood there, chewing his
lower lip.
    'Hamza, what is it?'
    'I am going to leave you and find another work,' he said.
    'But, Hamza . . . you have worked here for twenty years.'
    'Yes, Monsieur Tahir, twenty years.'
    'What is the problem? I'm sure we can solve it.'
    Hamza lowered the lids over his eyes and swung his head
from side to side in an arc.
    'It is the shame,' he said.
     
    From the outset, it seemed that the Arabian Nights had something
for everyone. Early on, a shrewd publisher realized that if
the language was simplified and the sexual innuendo toned
down, the books would appeal to children. The attraction to
younger readers was so widespread that our society tends to forget
the collection has strong adult content and was designed very
much as an entertainment to be kept far from children. Some
translators, like Burton, highlighted the mature content. During
decades of Victorian repression, he relied on the surfeit of
innuendo and the outright lewdness contained within the
collection to reach a vast swathe of sophisticated society eager for
such raunchy material.
    One of the reasons Burton released his edition by private subscription
was to avoid censorship laws that hammered books
offered for public sale. The so-called Society for the Suppression
of Vice hunted authors contravening the strict moral code,
threatening them with hard labour. Publishers who released
their work were fined or closed down, as were the printers who
actually manufactured the books. While Burton toiled at the
translation, word of its licentious nature reached the ears of
the censorship squad. His wife, Isabel, wrote to the printer saying
she thought their London apartment was being watched.
The printing firm, Waterlow's, feared being hit with the
Obscenity Publications Act and pressured Burton to sign a
contract assuming all responsibility for his text.
    In a further safeguard to avoid prosecution for pornography,
    Burton announced the arrival of his forthcoming series with a clarification,
    stressing that the volumes were reserved for academia alone: 'It is printed
    by myself for the benefit of Orientalists and Anthropologists,' he wrote,
    'and nothing could be more repugnant to me than the idea of a book of this
    kind being published or being put into the hands of any publisher.'
     
    After hearing Abdelmalik's words, I tried to do as I had been
forced as a child, to look beyond what my senses revealed. I went
down to Casablanca's old town, a place charged with a full
spectrum of life. It was Friday morning and the streets were
packed with severe-looking housewives laden with shopping.
There were street hawkers, too, touting the usual range of
pressed flowers, puppies and Shanghai bric-a-brac.
    In the middle of the bustle I found an impressively
dilapidated men-only café. I strode in, ordered a coffee and sat
down near the window. The room was curved like the shell of a
snail, a counter running through it in an arch. Behind it, a man
in maroon and black was steaming yesterday's croissants on a
1930s espresso machine. At each table sat the regulars cloaked in
their jelabas , smoking black tobacco, staring into space.
    When the waiter had deposited the c afé noir along with five
sugar cubes in a twist of newspaper, I took out a wad of cotton
wool. Then I shut my eyes, shoved the cotton in my ears and up
my nostrils, and closed my mouth and hands. It was as