It is Ramadan 
and it is Egyptian Chronicles’ annual time for Egypt’s Old Radio Arabian nights once again.
This year Scheherazade will tell us the tale of the Cursed Lady’s Wall which is a very interesting and amusing tale or rather a tale inside a tale as usual.
Aired in the 1960s I believe, this tale started in the 493th episode of the One Thousand and One Nights Radio show on the Egyptian main state radio channel. Yeah, that show had more than 400 episodes. They do not do this anymore in radio or in TV in Egypt.
Now a quick reminder: The One Thousand and One Nights radio show was created and produced by the Radio Legend Mohamed Mahmoud Shaaban aka Papa Sharo. The stories of the show were inspired by the original Nights book and they were written by Taher Abu Fasha. The show was narrated by a number of famous Egyptian actors. Of course, Scheherazade was narrated by legendary Egyptian actress Zozo Nabil.
Now enough talk and let’s go to our tale.
This year Scheherazade attracts her king’s attention by telling a short uncompleted tale that actually would start in another tale. At first she started telling about how Sheikh Mansour lived and died before his original time to die would come because of that magical box with golden lock found in the city of Al-Gor of the magnificent city of temples, gardens and palaces.
Nevertheless, the story of Sheikh Mansour starts in another city, far faraway in another tale.
Our story teller than moves to China where our original story starts.
In one of China’s provinces, there is that very big and extremely old city. The oldest thing in that city was a very old wall surrounding a very old house which had become ruins through times. The house an the wall are owned by a very old lady who nobody in the city know anything about except that she is too old. The people of the city came to life and found her with no family or relative here and there living in solitude.
It is not a surprise then to find the people in the city calling that old lady as the Cursed one nor it is a surprise to hear myths and stories about how her house and her wall haunted by ghosts and demons.
One day an earthquake hit the city and the unexpected happened that old cursed lady’s wall was broken down.
The people did not care for other buildings in the city, they all cared and spoke about that ancient wall that became officially ruins. They spoke about it more and even decided to break the taboo and go to investigate it especially rumors spread that pieces of Gold were found in the broken wall. As the frenzy spread in the city, Vizier Nooman decided to send troops to stop the chaos at the wall.
Surprisingly as he was telling the Sultan about the frenzy about the gold and how some people believed that there were treasures buried under the wall , the Sultan decided to mob outside the wall from his subjects too searching for the treasures of the cursed lady too !!!
By the way this year a new Arabian Nights TV show is produced with all the bells and whistles of the CG animations in the world.
I believe the TV show won’t be a hit because simply it is not based on the original Arabian nights books or even the tales of Taher Abu Fasha.
Thank you very much for bringing this classic saga to us. It is so good to hear it again, after all these years, in its original production.
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