The Magic Carpet Flight Manual

**addition to post: the programme is now available to listen to online or download here**

The name of this programme alone makes me want to listen to it. The Magic Carpet Flight Manual will air online and on the BBC World Service this Friday (times here):

Web-dreaming one day, writer Cathy FitzGerald stumbled on a site belonging to a museum in Iran. It purported to tell the "true history" of the flying carpet and detailed its many uses – military, as a means of aerial attack; commercial, as a vehicle for the transport of goods; and cultural, as a device to help readers in the library at Alexandria reach the high books. The article appeared across the web, rarely with any caveat or credit.

In search of a "real" flying carpet, Cathy tracks down the article's author, Azhar Abidi, who helps her separate carpet fiction from carpet fact. She goes on to meet a physicist working on levitation in the quantum world, and a Japanese astronaut who took a carpet ride in space.

Cathy FitzGerald explores the past, present, and future of the magic carpet and wonders what our desire to defy gravity tells us about ourselves.

from the BBC website

I love the term 'web-dreaming', it sounds so much more inspirational and productive than the haphazard, frantic click-throughs I too often indulge in. Web-hunting, web-scrounging, web-sifting, web-tunnelling all come more easily to my mind, but from now on I will only web-dream. Funnily enough I came across the peculiar museum website mentioned a while ago whilst researching magic carpets for a previous carpet post.

The author of the fictional history of the carpet Azhar Abidi is a writer, born and raised in Pakistan, who now lives in Australia (thanks to Matt at Books and Adventures for the link to his blog). Marina Warner has also been interviewed for the programme and her fascinating podcast on magic carpets, which is well worth listening to, is still available online here.

Photograph by churl CC license: some rights reserved.

Scheherezade’s Bequest

Issue 10 of Scheherezade’s Bequest is now online at the Cabinet Des Fées website. It's one of my favourite journals and I can't wait to settle down this evening to read it. I am also incredibly excited because I have a story in this issue.

It's a contemporary tale inspired by the opening lines of the Grimms' tale The Raven, in which a mother wishes her fractious baby daughter would become a raven and fly away so that she could get some peace; the girl promptly does. I wanted to see what would happen if the raven couldn't fly away. (In the original tale 'she flew into a dark wood and stayed there a long time, and her parents knew nothing of her'. The tale then follows the adventures of the man who must release the raven girl from the bewitchment.)

Ravens appear frequently in myth, fairy tales and folklore, joining a host of other birds (there's a wonderful article on bird lore by Terri Windling here). I have always been fascinated by tales in which people are transformed into birds. I suppose it's because of the sense of freedom I imagine in flight, although in fairy tales being transformed into a bird is as often an ordeal as it is the form someone chooses.

One thing I was intrigued to find out when I was researching real (as opposed to literary) ravens is that they are playful birds and one of the few species who make their own toys. There's lots more raven info on Wikipedia and you can also hear a raven here (as recorded by naturesongs.com).

Free public lecture by Marina Warner

'The Figures in the Carpet: Magic and the 1001 Nights'

On Tuesday 24th November, Marina Warner will give her inaugural lecture as Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities at Queen Mary, University of London. If you can get there this is an opportunity not to be missed:

Professor Warner, an expert on fairy tales, will focus on the story of the magic carpet, its appearances in the Arabian Nights and its connection to airborne fantasies prior to the invention of flying machines.

“For as long as people have told stories, flight has been a magical, divine power conferred on fairy tale heroes and heroines,” explains Marina Warner, who is also a professor at the University of Essex, in the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies.

“And many myths and tales tell of fantastic flying vehicles that enable such characters to take to the skies,” she says. “Most famous of all of these is the ‘magic carpet’; synonymously linked to the Arabian Nights and everything the stories promise – free-floating fantasy, exoticism, pleasure, and trouble-free travel,” she added.

This well-known symbol has a history and a context, and Professor Warner will explore how they are interwoven with modern ideas of narrative, fantasy, and consciousness.

All the details you'll need to attend are here.

And for those, like me, who wish they had a flying carpet so that they could get to London for the lecture, but unfortunately don't, here's an excerpt and link to a tale from the Arabian Nights which features a magic carpet;

The Prince called to the crier, and asked to see the tapestry, which seemed to him to be valued at an exorbitant price, not only for the size of it, but the meanness of the stuff; when he had examined it well, he told the crier that he could not comprehend how so small a piece of tapestry, and of so indifferent appearance, could be set at so high a price.

The crier, who took him for a merchant, replied: "If this price seems so extravagant to you, your amazement will be greater when I tell you I have orders to raise it to forty purses, and not to part with it under." "Certainly," answered Prince Houssain, "it must have something very extraordinary in it, which I know nothing of." "You have guessed it, sir," replied the crier, "and will own it when you come to know that whoever sits on this piece of tapestry may be transported in an instant wherever he desires to be, without being stopped by any obstacle."

From The Story of Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Paribanou (as retold by Andrew Lang in The Blue Fairy Book)

If the story seems familiar it might be because elements of it inspired Lotte Reiniger's 1926 feature-length silhouette film The Adventures of Prince Ahmed (this is a great link if you're interested in Reiniger's work).

And I couldn't resist linking to this 2007 article from New Scientist: Three ways to levitate a magic carpet. Perhaps one day a trip down to London on a magic carpet may be more than just a dream!


Addition to the post: a podcast of the lecture is now available here.