Arabian Night
\/ HEN the bands of mystery had been finally loosed, the casket of explanation uncorded, and’ Allah invoked for the last time, I learnt from an unimpressed announcer that I had been listening to Mazil, a play by Maxwell Gray, produced by the NZBS. Nay, nay, I fel€ like saying, surely, by Allah, the palms of the Arabian desert told this one! But current idiom restored, I sorted the story from its embellishments, and found a typical enough Eastern story, centred round Mazil, the coveted mare that Sheik A refuses to part with. Sheik B (the villain) gains possession of Mazil by posing as a beggar and trading on Sheik A’s mercy, but gives the mare up when he realises that by his act he has threatened the Law of the Desert. So a moral is pointed and everything ends happily with Sheik A promising to give Sheik B Mazil’s foal, This simple story, how-
ever, was completely overwhelmed by the luxuriant crop of language that sprang up round it-even allowing for the fact that it takes more than an extravagant metaphor and a sprinkling of Allahs to give an Arabian setting to a couple of New Zealand voices. But how one overcomes this difficulty without resorting to the clumsiness of an. announcer with a verbal backdrop is completely beyond me. '
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 422, 25 July 1947, Page 9
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222Arabian Night New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 422, 25 July 1947, Page 9
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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