Our Arab folk heritage abounds with many grandmothers’ stories that they used to tell us when we were small children. Among those folk stories is the story of the Locust and the Bird from our brotherly Tunisian heritage.
Zahra was staying at her grandmother’s house for several consecutive days. During the period she stayed, she would go out every day to water the flowers in the backyard garden. One day, she saw a shiny green locust standing on one of the flowers. She kept contemplating it until her grandmother came, grabbed the locust with her hands, and said to the children, “Here is the bird’s wife, oh children.” The boys cheered a lot, but Zahra asked her grandmother to tell her the story.
The grandmother said, “In ancient times, there was a poor man called Asfour who lived with his wife, nicknamed Al-Jarada. They had nothing but a small, humble cottage where they lived together. But what annoyed Al-Jarada was that her husband Asfour had stopped working. So she would resort to patching clothes and selling them to obtain some money.
One day, Al-Jarada returned home angry and said to Asfour, “What is wrong with you sitting here while the men are in the market working?” He said to her, “You see the condition; what should I do?” She told him to go to the market and rub some sand with his hands, claiming he was reading fortunes, so people would gather around him and give him abundant money.
Asfour heard his wife’s words, brought a bag filled with sand, and went to the market. He kept rubbing it. People began to gather around him, wanting to know their fortunes. Asfour would rave and claim things for them, so more and more would come.
In light of what happened, one of the fortune-tellers went to their chief and told him what had happened, conveying his concern about the matter, fearing that Asfour would obtain customers from them. The chief decided to go to him and test him. If he succeeded, he would add him to their group and make him one of them. If he did not succeed, he would expel him and expose him to the people so he could not annoy them in their livelihood again.
The chief went out carrying a bird under his clothes. He went to Asfour and asked him if he knew what was hiding under his clothes after introducing himself. Asfour’s face paled, and he began to wail, “Were it not for Al-Jarada, Asfour would have fallen.” The chief was astonished and realized that Asfour was foolish, so he took him into his group and asked him to be one of them. Al-Jarada began talking among the women that her husband predicted and became famous for this work.
But fate willed that a theft occurred at the Sultan’s palace, so he ordered all the fortune-tellers in his country to be gathered to tell him who had committed the theft. He began cutting off the head of everyone who did not know the answer. Their chief was summoned, who was more skilled and intelligent than Asfour. He told the king that he had someone who could know the location of the treasure, deciding to sacrifice Asfour with great cunning.
The Sultan approached Asfour and asked him to know the thief. Asfour had nothing to offer the king, so he requested a grace period of forty days and thirty-nine chickens and one rooster. The Sultan granted his request, feeling that Asfour would provide him with proof.
Asfour had no idea what he would do, except that he would sit and eat the forty chickens and the rooster, then go toward the execution block to have his head cut off like the others, for he truly did not know what to do.
While Asfour was staying at the house, he sat eating the chicken and said to his wife, “This is the first of the forty; it’s done.” Here, one of the gang members was spying on him. As soon as he heard Asfour talking like this, he ran to the gang leader and told him what he had heard—that Asfour knew they were forty people and said the first one was done.
Here, the gang leader sent one of his men every day, and they would return frightened by what Asfour was saying. “This is the second of the forty. This is the third of the forty,” until the last day came. The gang leader went himself to listen. He was terrified when he heard Asfour say, “This is the head of the forty; it will be cut off.” Al-Jarada heard him and opened the door.
Behold, the man was pleading with Asfour to let him go, and he would go outside the country and never see him again. Meanwhile, Asfour stood looking at him in bewilderment, while Al-Jarada caught the thread of the conversation and told her husband that this was the leader of the gang that had stolen the Sultan’s treasures. She asked him not to expose them before this thief. Asfour puffed his chest and asked him about the location of the treasure so as not to hand him over to the Sultan. The thief told him the location. In the morning, Asfour went to the Sultan and told him about the treasure’s location. Indeed, the Sultan found what he was looking for. Asfour became close to him, and he and Al-Jarada lived in a wing inside the Sultan’s palace.