Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax
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The Fish and The Crab
Posted on July 8, 2003 in Myths & Mysticism
I’ve been rereading
The Arabian Nights and More Arabian Nights as adapted by Jack Zipes. I came across the fable — loosely tied to the larger tradition of the tales told by Scheherezade to the angry Sultan Shanidar — of the Fish and the Crab.
It goes like this: the pond in which the fish lived began to dry up and they despaired. They met in the deepest part of the pool and agreed to take their concern to a crab who was the ruler of their domain. The crab listened to their woe and chided them thusly:
Don’t you know that Allah takes care of all his creatures and that He determined their daily food before their creation and that he appointed each of His creatures a fixed term of life and certain provisions? Why then should we burden ourselves with something when we can never know His secret purpose?
This works out, in the end, as one of those “everything turns out well” tales where a downpour fills the pond fuller than it has ever been before.
Many who believe themselves to be men and women of Faith would tell such tales as a comfort. But what of the Crab’s willingness to face uncertainty? The story’s conclusion destroys its moral, I feel: what is Faith if it only persists when things might still turn out well? What of those put to the sword or pressed under great stones like Giles Corey was at Salem for their consciences? Such “Faith” is a weak thing indeed if you cannot hold it in the face of the threat of nothingness. Had the pond dried up and the fish suffocated, would they have cursed Allah with their last breathes or meekly accepted what they could not control?
This is the flaw in the fable. This, too, is the flaw in many consciences.
I believe that the Crab was prepared for any eventuality. The Crab had Faith. But what of the fish? And what of the storyteller?
This particular fable happens to originate from within Islam. It could just as well be told of Christianity. I think the essentials of genuine Faith as well as bogus Faith cross traditions.
