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Why are we afraid of foreigners? Because we fear they might attack and harm us. We are all
afraid of Cowboys because if some poor stranger approaches their borders they automatically go
for their guns. Yet we are not afraid of Sinbad the Sailor, because in
One Thousand and One
Nights
the public story-tellers, “the Ouccac”, in ninth-century Baghdad used to recount how
being fortunate enough to visit distant lands and communicate with foreigners provided him
with gratifications and benefits. In the Cowboys’ civilization, the stranger is always the enemy
because power and control stemfromcontrollingborders; withSinbad, incontrast, dialoguewith the
foreigner was enriching.
Sinbad is the opposite of an immigrant. He always returns to his point of departure, Baghdad.
He sets off from Baghdad in all seven of his journeys, sailing down the Tigris to the port of Basra,
and setting sail when the monsoon blows from west to east, on ships laden with Arab and Persian
merchants, sailing the Indian Ocean to the ports of the islands of Malaysia, Indonesia and China.
Sinbad and any merchants who had managed to come through the shipwrecks tied up at Asian
ports for seven or eight months at a time, waiting for the season when favourable monsoon winds
would blow from east to west. Yet Sinbad was not a mere fictional character; he stood for a class
of Baghdad merchant who gained wealth and pleasure from their travels and from speaking to
foreigners.
Fatema Mernissi
—
Prince of Asturias Award
for Literature
2003
Excerpt from the speech given on
the occasion of receiving the Prince
of Asturias Award for Literature
on 24/10/2003.
24
th
O
ctober
2003
