The poor man's wife flourishes, the Sultana gets thinner and scrappier by the minute. So the Sultan sends for the poor man and demands the secret of his wife's happiness. 'Very simple,' he replies. 'I feed her meat of the tongue.' The Sultan buys ox tongues and larks' tongues; still his wife withers away. He makes her change places with the poor man's wife and she immediately starts thriving, while her replacement soon becomes as lean and miserable as the former queen. For the tongue meats that the poor man feeds his wives aren't material, of course. They're stories, jokes, songs; in this fable from Kenya, this is what makes women thrive.

LRB 8 November 1990 | PDF Download