RugNotes: Azhar Abidi's scholarly essay on The Secret History of the Flying Carpet.

"Friday, August 06, 2004
Azhar Abidi's scholarly essay on The Secret History of the Flying Carpet.
The Australian: No carpeting for Arabian Nights hoax [August 07, 2004]: "No carpeting for Arabian Nights hoax
By Kate Legge
August 07, 2004
AUTHORITATIVE footnotes accompany Azhar Abidi's scholarly essay on The Secret History of the Flying Carpet.

According to Abidi, newly discovered 13th-century Persian scrolls he had translated have "shed new light on the real story behind the flying carpet of the Arabian Nights".

"Their existence was denied, their science suppressed, their manufacturers persecuted and any evidence about incidents involving them systematically erased," Abidi writes.

Abidi says Genghis Khan ordered his Mongol hordes to destroy these miraculous inventions, save for one, which he wanted buried with him to journey heavenward.

Literary journal Meanjin's chief sub-editor did not twig until he began checking the sources cited by Abidi, whose travelogues the magazine had published previously. On the trail of Australia's latest literary hoax, the sub-editor rang editor-in-chief Ian Brittain.

Brittain laughed and confessed that Abidi was an honourable trickster "taking readers for a ride", in the tradition of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, who created parallel worlds with mock footnotes, imaginary anecdotes and hypothetical texts.

Brittain's reference to a literary escapade in a brief foreword is the only clue that Abidi's claims are fabricated in the spirit of magical realism.

Born in Pakistan, Abidi, 36, studied engineering in London and works as an industry fund manager in Melbourne where he lives with his Australian wife and their child.

He spun his virtual history of flying carpets to explore the nature of truth and the idea that a myth has its origins in facts which can be unravelled if we suspend our disbelief.

Two Iranian websites have published his essay, prompting internet exchanges on the finer technical points of piloting carpets and how to turn and land them. Abidi bears no comparison with Norma Khouri, who allegedly sold a fictional story about honour killing as a personal memoir. But he does lead a double life, calculating investment risk by day and writing fiction at night. He has penned two novellas, which Australian agents and publishers initially rejected -- one saying the prose was too beautiful to have commercial prospects in this country.

His luck changed when an American talent scout read his work and showed it to an agent who represents Nobel prize winner Jose Saramago.

Abidi now has a contract with Penguin USA for Passarola Rising, a novella which, like his essay on flying carpets, probes the notion of truth.""