Well, I think the time has come for us to get to know each other a bit better! That’s why I want to share a short story of my everyday life with you. It’s not a very special one, however, it brought a lot of memories and I admit a lot of nostalgia too. Here it is!

While researching for interesting blog ideas I somehow landed on https://slots.info/netent/. As you can see this is a very informative platform filled with detailed reviews of hundreds of online slot variations. Then, I not-at-all-accidentally found this perfect example of how the most exotic collection of Middle Eastern folk tales – ‘One Thousand and One Nights’ or ‘Arabian Nights’ have now lost their mysterious yet profound appeal. Wonder why? Observing the slot review I noticed my mind shifting in a wrong but inevitable direction. The animated moustached Arab on the reels seemed threatening and the dagger next to him did increase the danger even more.

I went back in time remembering the days when I used to listen to stories from ‘Arabian Nights’ on my parent’s gramophone record player. A velvety female voice was reading the stories, there were mystic sound effects and strangely named characters such as Shahrayar and Shahrazad. I realized that I have probably listened to these stories so many times that the exotic names sounded just like the name of a childhood friend of mine, totally normal and totally not scary. But, back to Netent’s video creation! While watching the reels spin, I felt nostalgia to those long-gone childhood days but most of all to the days when ‘Arabian Nights’ was an innocent fairy-tale collection, ‘Shahrayar’ didn’t sound like a terrorist and an animated fez or a dagger on a slot machine wouldn’t seem inappropriate.

I couldn’t help but wonder, was the exotic charm of warm Arabian nights forever gone? What happened to the endless-sun-and-sand picture? Has Islamophobia really grown so beyond borders? And most of all, isn’t this thought scary to you? The thought that our fear is creating a different reality even in harmless fairy tales based on fate, love, praising God, and pleading mercy. My immediate reaction was to get the book and start reading, 20 years later when today’s world has nothing to do with my sweet childhood 4 walls and the vintage record player in between. A mixed set of feelings kept me reading for quite some nights in a row. And yes, there was violence, lies, betrayal there were cultural differences, but the story was greatly enthralling. Just as Sheherezada left her stories unfinished to spark the interest of the angry king and grant herself another day of life, I felt intrigued, not scared or threatened.

Though it sounds like a story against women, it actually creates one of the strongest and cleverest heroines that the world of literature has ever known. Her character goes beyond religion and veils while the angry king falls in love. Sounds like a Hollywood-worth screenplay, right? The one thing that it definitely DOES NOT sound like is a CNN Terror Breaking News!