Throughout many of the stories of Ghaya, the fourth wife / smart wife / smart girl theme always goes to the bottom of the barrel.
The story of The Vizier’s Daughter is a prime example. The vizier got in hot water with his king and the king wanted to have him killed. To carry this out, the king asked him three different questions and gave him three days to answer each. The vizier’s daughter ‘Aysha, answered the questions and saved her father. As punishment for getting all the questions right, the king made the daughter his wife. ‘Aysha outsmarted him again, having three sons by him without his knowledge. Finally, at the end of the story, they were happy together and the soon-to-be second wife was cast out by the king.
In Ftaytma the Harridan it is not the wife that takes center stage. Instead, another woman who is described as a tomboy saves the day through her tricks which reunites the wife with the husband. The tomboy gets paid for her work.
In Shadli Ben Adli, a succession of three daughters try to marry a man. Only the youngest is able to figure out how. After a while, the husband gets swallowed up by the ground and she goes on a quest to find him. Several ogre maidens help her. A black slave girl tricks her and gets the guy, but not for long. In the end, the youngest daughter gets the black woman torn apart by four camels and all the daughters and their mom come to live with the husband – yet again, happily ever after.
Each of these three tales shares the common theme of a smart girl triumphing over others. The first and third stories feature the intelligent woman as the heroin. In the second story, the intelligent woman makes off with lots of money, but isn’t looked on with much favor. As a tomboy, she’s looked down on by the Beldi women. Beldi women are not tomboys!
Through all three stories, Ghaya was teaching the listener how to properly act in Beldi society. These three stories show that smart women are valued in Beldi society as long as they don’t overstep their bounds. Aside from pure entertainment, the Beldi women appear to tell stories to inform their offspring in the customs and traditions of their culture – much like Grimm’s fairy tales or a modern book of fables. Thus, strong and smart women are highly valued and, at times, the source of jealousy among other women. Everyone wants to be the smart woman that drives the other wives back to their fathers.
On the same theme of teaching the young generation how to be Beldi, these stories also teach children to discriminate against blacks and people outside of Beldi culture, especially Bedowins. That is very evident in Shadli Ben Adli where a black woman grabs the youngest daughter’s man only to later be torn apart by camels because she is too vain and stupid to avoid the youngest daughter’s traps. Of course, having Ogre friends helps a lot. A good portion of the other stories that I did not summarize also included heavy elements of racism and discrimination against other classes of people. Every word is unconsciously carefully crafted to teach the young generation to not trust blacks, despise Bedowins, and strive to be the smart girl who kicks the other wives out of the house.
Without stories such as these, a small society such as the Beldi will quickly loose cohesiveness. They would no longer have a common past. Rather than just teach women to be strong, these stories teach women how to maintain their society.