Speak, bird, speak again.
by Ibrahim Muhawi.
FOREWORD.
It was with great pleasure that I watched a joint collaborative effort between a man of letters and a social scientist come to fruition. The marvelous results of this partnership lie in the pages ahead. Not only are there forty-five splendid Palestinian Arab folktales to be savored, but we are also offered a rare combination of ethnographic and literary glosses on details that afford a unique glimpse into the subtle nuances of Palestinian Arab culture. This unusual collection of folktales is destined to be a cla.s.sic and will surely serve as a model for future researchers in folk narrative.
For the benefit of those readers unfamiliar with the history of folktale collection and publication, let me explain why Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales represents a significant departure from nearly all previous anthologies or samplers of folktales. When the Grimm brothers collected fairy tales, or Marchen, from peasant informants in the first decades of the nineteenth century, they did so in part for nationalistic and romantic reasons: they wanted to salvage what they regarded as survivals of an ancient Teutonic heritage, to demonstrate that this culture was the equal of cla.s.sical (Greek and Roman) as well as prestigious modern (French) cultures. The publication of Kinder-und Hausmarchen in 1812 and 1815 sparked a host of similar collections of fairy tales from other countries by scholars imbued with the same combination of nationalism and romanticism. By the end of the nineteenth century, numerous folklore societies and periodicals had been initiated to further the collection and a.n.a.lysis of all types of traditional peasant art, music, and oral literature.
Unfortunately, despite the laudable stated aims of these pioneering collectors to preserve unaltered the precious folkloristic art forms of the local peasantry, all too often they actually rewrote or otherwise manipulated the materials so a.s.siduously gathered. One reason for this intrusiveness was the longstanding elitist notion that literate culture was infinitely superior to illiterate culture. Thus the oral tales were made to conform to the higher canons of taste found in written literature, and oral style was replaced by literary convention. The Grimms, for example, began to combine different versions of the "same" folktale, producing composite texts which they presented as authentic - despite the fact that no raconteur had ever told them in that form.
The Grimms and their imitators were trying to create a patrimony for purposes of national pride (long before Germany was to become a nation in the modern sense), and tampering with oral tradition suited their goals. Texts that are rewritten, censored, simplified for children, or otherwise modified may well be enjoyed by readers conditioned to the accepted literary stylistics of so-called high culture. Such texts, however, are of negligible scientific value. If one wishes to understand peasant values and thought patterns, one needs contact with peasant folktales, not the prettified, sugar-coated derivatives reworked by dilettantes.
Sad to say, the vast majority of nineteenth-and even twentieth-century folktale collections fail to meet the minimum criteria of scientific inquiry. The tales are typically presented with no cultural context or discussion. Of their meaning (we do not even know if their tellers were male or female), and rarely is a concerted attempt made to compare a particular corpus of tales with other versions of the same tale types. Let the reader think back on folktale anthologies he or she may have read, as either a child or an adult. How many of these standard collections of folktales contained any scholarly apparatus linking the content of particular tales to the cultures from which they came? Appallingly, these criticisms apply even to collections of folktales published by reputable folklorists. The highly regarded Folktales of the World series, published by the University of Chicago Press, for example, includes volumes of bona fide folktales from many countries, but the tales are accompanied by only minimal comparative annotation. The reader may be informed that a given folktale is identifiable as an instance of an international tale type (as defined by the Aarne-Thompson typology, available since 1910), but little or no information is given on how the tales reflect, let us say, German, Greek, or Irish culture as a whole. This criticism applies as well to most folktale anthologies published in other countries.
Another reason for the inadequacy of nineteenth-century folktale collections, especially those representing countries outside Europe, is that the collectors were typically not from the place where the tales were told. English, French, German, and other European colonialist administrators, missionaries, and travelers recorded stories they found quaint or amusing. Either informants self-censored the tales to protect their image or else the collectors, who were not necessarily fully fluent in the native languages, simply omitted details they deemed obscene (by their own cultures" standards) or elements that were not altogether clear to them. Thus most nineteenth-century collections of tales from India or the Middle East contain only the blandest tales, sometimes in severely abridged or abstract form, with no hint of even the slightest bawdy or risque motifs. Although folklorists today are not ungrateful for these early versions of folktales, they cannot condone the lack of honesty in the reporting of them. What remains badly needed are collections of folktales made by fieldworkers whose roots are in the region and who speak the native language of the taletellers.
In the present volume we have two scholars with the requisite expertise. Ibrahim Muhawi was born in 1937 in Ramallah, Palestine (nine miles north of Jerusalem). After completing high school at the Friends Boys" School in Ramallah, he went to the United States where, in 1959, he earned a B.S. in electrical engineering at Heald Engineering College in San Francisco. Then came a dramatic shift of intellectual gears, with a B.A. (magna c.u.m laude) in English from California State University at Hayward (1964), followed quickly by an M.A. (1966) and a Ph.D. (1969), both also in English, from the University of California, Davis. After teaching English at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada (1969-1975), and at the University of Jordan in Amman (1975-1977), Muhawi joined the English department at Birzeit University in the West Bank, where he served as department chairman from 1978 to 1980. It was there that he met the coauthor of this book.
Sharif Kanaana was born in Arrabe in the Galilee, Palestine, in 1935, and he too received his higher education in the United States. Following a 1965 B.A. in psychology and economics from Yankton College in South Dakota, he transferred to the University of Hawaii where he was awarded an M.A. (1968) and doctorate (1975) in anthropology. After teaching anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh for four years (1972-1975), he became chairman (1975-1980) of the sociology department at Birzeit University, and from 1980 to 1984 he was affiliated with An-Najah National University, West Bank, as dean of the Faculty of Arts (1980-1982) and acting president of the university (1982-1984). In 1984 he became the director of the Birzeit University Research and Doc.u.mentation Center.
In 1978, when Muhawi was teaching modern poetry, Shakespeare, and composition courses at Birzeit University, he was reintroduced to a rich tradition of Palestinian folklore through the pages of a locally published journal, Heritage and Society (Al-turath wa-al-mujtama). Although he had grown up with this tradition, his formal education first in engineering and later in English literature had not led him to seriously consider it as an object of study. Now, however, he began to remember his childhood when he would seek out and avidly listen to the tales of the best raconteurs in the town of Ramallah.
During this time, Sam Pickering of the University of Connecticut, a former Fulbright Scholar at the University of Jordan and a colleague of Muhawi, a.s.sumed the editorship of Children"s Literature . He wrote to Muhawi asking for ill.u.s.trations of Palestinian traditions. Muhawi approached Sharif Kanaana, whom he knew as an advisory editor of Heritage and Society and as author of several papers on Palestinian folklore that had appeared in that journal. He discovered that Kanaana had already collected a substantial sampling of Palestinian folktales, and when he heard the oral renditions on tape he was spellbound by their esthetic quality and expressive power. The two scholars decided to pool their talents and collect, from throughout Palestine, as many types of tales from as wide a range of raconteurs as possible.
Collecting the tales proved to be only the first step. Transcribing and translating the tales took many, many hours of arduous, meticulous work. Then, to make the tales intelligible to readers unfamiliar with Palestinian society, Muhawi and Kanaana elected to prepare a comprehensive yet succinct cultural overview with special emphasis on family dynamics. The ethnographic portrait provided in the introductory essay is a remarkable achievement, and it certainly facilitates a better understanding of the tales that follow. The relationships and tensions between generations, siblings, in-laws, and males and females are lucidly delineated. The anthropological influence is also felt in the very organization and sequential order of the tales, which move from the concerns of childhood through the life cycle to the intricate details of marriage arrangement and beyond. The anthropological bias, however, is always balanced by attention to literary topics; the poetics of opening and closing formulas, for example, are discussed in depth, and careful comparative annotations relate these tales to other Arabic folktales as well as to the international folktale scholarship in general.
This extraordinary combination of anthropological and literary expertise has achieved a set of exquisite folktales, translated accurately, sensitively, and lovingly, together with a dazzling array of ethnographic and folkloristic notes providing a landmark entree into Palestinian Arab ethos and worldview. I am not sure either of the coauthors could have written this volume alone. It is precisely because such close attention was paid to the concerns of the humanist and the social scientist alike that this collection of folktales is so special.
This collection is important for yet another, political reason. These tales belong to a people, the Palestinian Arabs. Whatever one"s view is of the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, it cannot be denied that the event caused considerable dislocation and fragmentation of the Palestinian Arab people. It is somewhat a.n.a.logous to the colonial powers in earlier times claiming territory which was already occupied. It is perhaps a tragic irony of history that the Jews, who themselves have been forced by bigotry and prejudice to wander from country to country seeking even temporary sanctuary, have through the formation of a "homeland" caused another people to become homeless. Although this complex issue has engendered great emotion on all sides, one fact is beyond dispute: there was once an area of the world called Palestine, where the Arab inhabitants had - and have - a distinctive culture all their own. It is that culture that is preserved so beautifully in the magical stories contained in this volume. In this context, all people, regardless of political persuasion, should be able to appreciate the value of these magnificent folktales: as oral products of the creative spirit of the human mind, they belong not just to the Palestinian Arab community but to all humankind.
Some readers may choose not to refer to the scholarly apparatus, preferring instead to enjoy only the tales themselves, but scholars will surely be grateful for the thoughtful notes and "afterwords" the authors have provided. I have repeatedly heard literary folklorists claim that the fairy tale genre is dead. These misguided academics continue to pore over such purely literary collections as the Arabian Nights or the celebrated collections of Perrault and the Grimms, not realizing that the fairy tale is alive and well in the modern world. This collection of Palestinian Arab folk-tales includes a great many fairy tales (i.e., Aarne-Thompson tale types 300-749), and they provide eloquent testimony that the fairy tale still flourishes. Such tales, I have little doubt, will be told as long as birds sing!
ALAN DUNDES.
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
Every book is a collective effort and this one, even more than most, is no exception. The authors are happy to acknowledge the contribution of the following individuals and organizations to the completion of this book.
First and foremost, of course, our thanks are due to the women and men from whom the tales were collected - those for whom we have names as well as those for whom we do not. For initial encouragement to proceed toward publication, we are grateful to Dr. Sam Pickering. For help during the long evenings in the village of Birzeit, where we sat hammering out rhymes and discussing the proper level of formality for the translation, we wish to thank Donna Bothen and Terrance c.o.x. For his advice on specific matters relating to Palestinian and Arab culture, and for his general concern over the welfare of the project and his unstinting support of it throughout, we wish to thank Dr. Osama Doumani.
Thanks are also due to our colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, for their invaluable support and encouragement. We are grateful to Dr. Bridget Connelly and Dr. Laurence Michalak for their comments on the first draft of the Introduction. For the generous contribution of her time in discussing certain aspects of the transliteration, we thank Barbara DeMarco. Dr. John R. Miles deserves our deepest grat.i.tude for his unflagging support of the project from the moment he read the first draft of the tales in 1980. And to Professor Alan Dundes, for his enthusiasm about the work, his encouragement during difficult moments, and his guidance in folkloristic matters, we wish to express our most sincere appreciation.
For a very fruitful professional a.s.sociation, we thank also the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Berkeley and its staff (Dr. Ira Lapidus, Chairman; Dr. Laurence Michalak, Coordinator), as well as Dr. William Hickman, who originally invited Ibrahim Muhawi to become an a.s.sociate of the Center. In particular, we are grateful to the Center for the postdoctoral fellowship awarded Dr. Muhawi in 1983.
For their financial support, the authors would also like to thank the following organizations: the American Palestine Educational Fund (now the Jerusalem Fund); the Ford Foundation; the American Federation of Ramallah, Palestine; and the Kayali Scholarship Fund.
The authors also wish to express our deep appreciation to the editorial staff of the University of California Press for their excellent and dedicated guidance.
Finally, we wish to single out Jane Muhawi, who, more than any other individual, made a significant contribution to this book. Without her encouragement, editorial skills, and native ear, this book would not be what it is.
NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION.
The system adopted in this book for transliterating the Palestinian dialect follows the guidelines established by the Zeitschrift fur arabische Linguistik Zeitschrift fur arabische Linguistik , articulated in , articulated in Handbuch der arabischen Dialekte Handbuch der arabischen Dialekte , by Fischer and Jastrow, two editors of that journal. Readers are referred to the grammatical discussion in Chapter 10 of that work ("Das syrisch-palastinenische Arabische") and to the examples provided in Section VII immediately following the chapter. , by Fischer and Jastrow, two editors of that journal. Readers are referred to the grammatical discussion in Chapter 10 of that work ("Das syrisch-palastinenische Arabische") and to the examples provided in Section VII immediately following the chapter.
The list of characters used for transliterating the Palestinian dialect phonemically is as follows:
Short vowels are represented as a a , , e e , , i i , , o o , and , and u u , and long ones as , and long ones as a a , , e e , , i, o i, o , and , and u u ; diphthongs are rendered ; diphthongs are rendered aw aw and and ay ay . .
Because an apostrophe, or hamza, before an initial vowel indicates glottalization, readers should note that the absence of this apostrophe is itself a phonetic marker indicating elision of that word-initial vowel with the final consonant of the preceding word. Furthermore, in the transcription of Tale 10 (Appendix A) only the definite article is hyphenated, whereas in the smaller pieces of discourse included elsewhere in the book hyphenation is used somewhat more extensively.
KEY TO REFERENCES.
All references to works are keyed to the Bibliography. In the footnotes to the tales, book and article t.i.tles are shortened for ease of use. The Folkloristic a.n.a.lysis following the tales proper utilizes even more abbreviated forms, as explained in the introduction to that section.
In footnotes, Roman numerals always indicate volume number, whether for a book or a journal article. Arabic numerals preceding preceding a colon indicate the issue number of the journal being cited, in references for which this information is essential. Arabic numerals a colon indicate the issue number of the journal being cited, in references for which this information is essential. Arabic numerals following following a colon always indicate page references. a colon always indicate page references.
INTRODUCTION.
The Tales
The forty-five tales included in this volume were selected on the basis of their popularity and the excellence of their narration from approximately two hundred tales collected on ca.s.sette tapes between 1978 and 1980 in various parts of Palestine - the Galilee (since 1948 part of the state of Israel), the West Bank, and Gaza. The criterion of popularity reflects our intention to present the tales heard most frequently by the majority of the Palestinian people. Both our own life-long familiarity with this material and the opinions of the raconteurs themselves helped us to a.s.sess a tale"s popularity. We made a point of asking the tellers to narrate the tales heard most often in folktale sessions of the past, and in most cases we selected only those tales for which we had more than one version. In the few cases where variants were not available (e.g., Tale 44), excellence of narration was the determining criterion, as it was in choosing a version (always taken as a whole and without modification) from among the available variants.
In this collection we have included only the type of tale known in the Palestinian dialect as hikaye or xurrafiyye - that is, "folktale" proper. With such terms as Marchen, wonder tale, and fairy tale all used to designate the kind of narrative under discussion here, the word folktale almost defies definition. The Arabic terms, however, provide us with helpful clues. The first, hikaye (which, correctly translated, means "tale"), is derived from a root that means not only "to narrate" but also "to imitate (artistically)." Hence the designation hikaye puts the emphasis on the mimetic, or artistic, aspect of narration, whereas xurrafiyye (properly translated, "fabula") is derived from a root stressing its "fabulous," or "fict.i.tious," aspect. (The term xurrafiyye, we must note, is the more inclusive of the two, for it is also used to refer not only to folktales but to other types of fictional oral narrative as well.) This "fabulous" element in folktales has doubtless led the community to consider them a form of kizib or "fantasy" or "fiction" (literally, "telling lies"). And in fact it was by recourse to such a label as "a tale that is all lies from beginning to end" (as in the last episode of Tale 37) that we most frequently elicited the type of material we sought. The other designation used to obtain them, hikayat "ajayiz ("old women"s tales"), has major implications for our understanding of this genre, for it dearly indicates that society considers the telling of these tales to be a woman"s art form. Of the seventeen tellers included here, only three are men.
In all likelihood there is a direct relationship between the first label ("all lies") and the second ("old wives" tales"). To the extent that the tales are thought to consist of lies, adult men tend to shun them, even though the vast majority of these men were exposed to them repeatedly as children. And to the extent that they are "old wives" tales," folktales are perceived by men as being somehow silly, their telling an activity fit only for women and children. The fabulous element in folktales lends them an air of improbability and unreality. A man who likes to listen to and tell folktales (in other words, an active male carrier) is considered to be a niswanji, or one who prefers the company of women to that of men. In their gatherings (diwan), men prefer to listen to epic stories (sira), like that of Abu Zed il-Hilali, which is frequently sung to the accompaniment of the rababa (single-stringed instrument with a flat sound box made of wood and goat skin). They also like to hear tales of Bedouin raids (gazw) and adventure (mugamarat). These, collectively, are known as qissa (stories). Their content appears more realistic. It is not necessarily thought that the events described in them actually happened, only that they could have happened. The heroes of these stories, especially if they have a historical basis, are thought to have lived just yesterday and their conduct is considered exemplary.
Another major difference between folktales (hikaye) and stories (qissa) that hinges on the gender of the narrator lies in the manner of delivery. Because most folktale tellers are women, their narration involves little gesticulation or physical movement. The performance aspect of telling tales is minimized, with the tellers relying on their voices and the power of the colloquial language to evoke a response. The tales told in the diwan, in contrast, may involve a considerable amount of physical movement and acting out of the narrative. The distinction is especially apparent in cases where one person tells both types of story. For example, Safi", one of our best tellers (see "The Tellers," below), in performing to a male audience in the diwan, would often jump up from his chair and try to act out the narrative, whereas in telling folktales he remained seated and hardly moved at all. Folktales thus offer their tellers a greater potential for linguistic expression than do epic stories. They are told from memory, and their language, though poetic in itself, is still the language of prose and the speaking voice. The tellers are free to give linguistic shape to the tale, to tell it in their own way, even though they cannot change its form. The stories narrated in the diwan, unlike folktales, are frequently in the measured language of poetry, which must be recited rather than spoken, sometimes even with the aid of a printed text.
The Palestinian folktale is a highly developed art form. Its style, though not artificial, follows linguistic and literary conventions that set it apart from other folk narrative genres. It relies on verbal mannerisms and language flourishes not used in ordinary conversation, especially by men. Women were largely responsible for developing this style, and they carry on the tradition. To sound credible, men who tell these tales must adopt the narrative style of women. Safi, for example, was reluctant at first to admit that he knew folktales. He wanted to narrate the tales of romance and adventure preferred by men at the diwan . We therefore had to tape several hours of these romantic tales before he consented to tell folktales. The art of the narrators consists in their ability to use creatively the narrative style received from tradition. Folktale style matures with age, and it is not surprising that the majority of tellers represented here were over sixty years of age when the tales were recorded (a fact also perhaps indicating that the Palestinian folktale tradition is dying out; more on this below). The cultural significance of old women"s dominant role in folk-tale narration is not to be underestimated. As we shall see, women in their maturity are at the apogee of their authority in the society.
Folktales, moreover, are told in a special setting that distinguishes them not only from the stories recited in the men"s diwan but also from other types of folk narrative current in the society. Among these are tales ill.u.s.trating proverbs (matal), describing a rare event (nahfe, nadre), or recreating a past occurrence (salfe); animal fables (hikayet hayawan); jinn tales (hikayet jan), saints" legends (hikayet wili); myths (ustura); and memorates (mugamara). A good ill.u.s.tration of the last category occurs at the end of Tale 42, where the men are sitting around on their side of the tent exchanging stories. These forms of narrative do not require a special setting for their telling. They are occasional and come up by chance in the course of ordinary conversation, when someone might say, "This reminds me of ...," and then proceed to tell the appropriate story. The narration over, normal conversation resumes. These stories are rarely told for their own sake, as folktales are, but are usually used to ill.u.s.trate a point, offer subtle recommendation concerning behavior, or volunteer a different perspective on a subject.
The settings in which the folktales presented here were recorded generally resembled the authentic folktale settings of the past, except for the presence of the tape recorder. The tales were all recorded at the homes of the tellers in the presence of a small audience, usually consisting of the collector and members of the teller"s family. Occasionally children would be present, influencing thereby the course of the narration. Other than providing appreciative responses and asking the occasional question about unfamiliar words or expressions, the collector played a largely neutral role. Once a session began, tellers usually volunteered tales of their own accord. At the end of each telling, the collector thanked the teller, saying, "G.o.d save your tongue!" Although it was not difficult to locate tellers, it was not always easy to get the material we were seeking (as in the case of Safi).
In the past, folktales were told for entertainment, usually after supper during winter evenings, when work in the fields was at a minimum and people were indoors with time on their hands. During the summer there were likely to be other forms of entertainment or subjects for conversation, such as weddings and festive occasions, and folktales were not told. The most common setting for taletelling was the small family gathering, consisting of two or three mothers from a single extended family and their children, combined perhaps with a neighbor or two and their children. Although men were occasionally present at these sessions, they preferred to spend their time in the company of other men at the diwan . Large gatherings and formal visits are not appropriate settings for the telling of tales, which requires a relaxed and spontaneous atmosphere, free from the constraints imposed by the rules of hospitality.
Telling these folktales, then, is a social activity, part of a culture that puts heavy emphasis on the oral tradition and verbal ability and where conversation is valued for its own sake. People do not go visiting expressly to hear folktales, but rather because they enjoy each other"s company and like to sit around in the evening chatting (sahra). They go where conversation is good, and the evenings entertaining. (The house of Safi is popular because both he and his wife are good conversationalists and storytellers.) At these small, intimate, family gatherings people casually drift into telling folktales. Someone might say, "Tell us a tale!" and if the mood is right a session begins. Usually the oldest woman present is deferred to. If she knows a tale and wishes to tell it, she will proceed with an opening formula such as "Testify there is no G.o.d but G.o.d!" When she finishes, she p.r.o.nounces a closing formula, and someone else will take a turn. (Not all the tales in this collection, it should be noted, begin with an opening formula or end with a closing one. The closer a recording session came to duplicating an actual folktale setting, the more likely the tellers were to p.r.o.nounce the formulas.) The opening formula creates an air of expectation as the session unfolds. A casual evening"s visit turns into an esthetic occasion for the duration of the telling. The atmosphere is aided by the dim light of an oil lamp or a kerosene lantern and by the att.i.tude of the audience, who huddle around a day brazier (kanun) warming their hands over the embers. In modern times the experience of a folktale session would be equivalent to going to the cinema. The introductory formula ushers the audience into a s.p.a.ce radically different from the s.p.a.ce outside. Darkness, light, and shadow help shape the experience, as does the modulation in the teller"s voice. Once begun, the tale is narrated straight through to the end. Long interruptions are not appreciated, nor would it be permissible for someone else to start another tale. The continuity of narrative time is essential, allowing the element of fantasy in the tales to take over the listeners" imaginations and help them break from ordinary experience. The audience are encouraged to suspend their disbelief until the dosing formula brings them back to the world of everyday reality.
For such a setting, a special style and narrative att.i.tude are necessary. The style imitates the speech patterns of ordinary conversation (we recall the root meaning of hikaye, "tale," as "to speak"), and the narrative att.i.tude reflects beliefs about magic and the supernatural that Palestinian society attributes more readily to women than to men. For men in general, not only is the fictional world of the tales something of a lie, but the manner of speech required to bring it into being sounds artificial as well. Folktale style depends on a variety of devices to put the action into the realm of fiction, whereas the story style preferred by men tends to emphasize historicity. The fact that the most common opening formula (wahdu l-lah, "Testify that G.o.d is One!") is a kind of invocation to dispel the influence of jinn and ghouls would seem to indicate that the telling of folktales is a magical process involving the aid of powers whose influence must be neutralized before the narrative even begins. It would, for example, be totally inappropriate for someone to interrupt an ordinary conversation with an opening formula and then proceed to tell a folktale. The gap between the domains of life and fiction must remain absolute.
Among other devices of style that help to maintain this distance - and which audiences expect in a successful narration - are the frequent threefold repet.i.tions, a pa.s.sive manner of delivery, and a reliance on verbal mannerisms and flourishes that are more characteristic of women"s speech than of men"s. Threefold repet.i.tion (which is certainly not unique to the Palestinian folktale) lends an air of unreality to the events, as though an action were not valid until ritualistically repeated three times. Three is a magic number in many cultures, and in the tales its power works at the level not only of action but also of sentence structure. The most frequent syntactic pattern in all the tales is the parallel sentence with three verbs ("She reached out her hand, took the ring, and bolted the door again"), reflecting the paratactic pattern of narration in the tale as a whole. Absence of gesture removes visual stimulus, throwing listeners back on the expressive power of language. Finally, the verbal flourishes and mannerisms derived from women"s speech give the tales their particular character and are to be found in every tale without exception, even in those narrated by men. Those encountered most frequently in this volume include exclamatory interjections of all sorts (e.g., "Far be it from the listeners!" - bid an is-samin - when a socially odious subject is mentioned) and the forms of address used by women among each other ("O you whose face has been smeared with soot!" - ya msahhara).
Thus we see that the tale creates a time and s.p.a.ce set apart from the rest of life in which events and transformations, because they have no equivalent in experience, can be understood only by the imagination and not by rational thought. The narrative att.i.tude appropriate to folktales must somehow present the possibility of magical transformation as though it were an ordinary event, yet still allow the narrator to remain skeptical. Tellers frequently interject remarks such as "If the tale is to be trusted!" (an alienating device in the Brechtian sense) to remind listeners that the tale is, after all, a fiction. In this manner the narrative att.i.tude identifies the elements of a possible fictional world but distances it from experience. For example, because merely to mention the jinn in narrative time (that is, while the tale is being told) could bring them into being, the narrator must avoid this possibility by invoking the name of Allah. This in fact is another verbal mannerism of women: mention of the jinn (who occur frequently in the tales) is immediately followed by the formula, "In the name of Allah, the Compa.s.sionate, the Merciful!"
Although the folktales told in the type of setting just described are not specifically children"s tales, the presence of children in the audience is essential to the whole activity. One would never find grown men and women telling folktales just to one another. Of course, adults, including the men, enjoy the tales and are usually on hand during a session, but it is the presence of children that shapes the event, affecting the manner of delivery and helping to create a sense of antic.i.p.ation during which anything can happen. The tales in any case appeal to the children, who, more easily than the adults, can imagine the jinn, ghouls, and other supernatural beings that abound in them. These are frightening creatures, which mothers frequently use in warning ("You"d better behave, or the ghoul will devour you!"). The presence of the adults at these sessions, especially the mothers, is therefore rea.s.suring to the children, and the whole process helps to socialize and imbue them with the values of the culture.
Folktale sessions do not go on for long hours into the night, partly because the fellahin go to bed early but also because a natural rhythm, or span of attention, exists beyond which telling and listening become tedious. The length of a session is determined by the audience and the mood. If adults outnumber the children, the tales are likely to be more serious; with more children, shorter and more humorous stories are likely to be told. If people feel bored, or if there is an interruption from the outside, the session will come to an end. At any rate it rarely lasts longer than the time it would take to narrate four or five tales. Spontaneity is essential.
The Palestinian folktale is part of the Arabic folk narrative tradition. The tales are told in the Palestinian dialect, with its two major divisions of fallahi (village speech) and madani (city speech). Most of the tales included here were narrated by villagers only because tellers were more available in the villages, where the tendency to preserve folk traditions is today much greater than in the cities. In times past, however, the folktale tradition was as popular in cities as in villages, perhaps even more so since city dwellers had more leisure time compared with peasants, who were tied to the cycle of the seasons. City dwellers tend to be more polished in their use of language than villagers, and they are less likely to hold the variety of folk beliefs exhibited by village tellers.
The tradition, as we have noted, is carried on mostly by older women in a household setting, but it is not unusual for girls and prep.u.b.escent boys to tell tales to one another or to their younger brothers and sisters for practice or pleasure. When going visiting, for example, parents will sometimes tempt their younger children to stay at home with promises of tales from their older brothers and sisters. Once p.u.b.erty is reached, however, the boys will stop telling the tales; they now want to be regarded as men, who consider the telling of folktales a womanly, household activity, one intimately connected with the rearing of children. Before radio and television, folktales were the main form of entertainment for the young during the evenings. They were universally popular throughout the country, and there are very few Palestinians over the age of forty who have not heard them on at least one occasion. Their preservation up to the present day attests to this popularity.
Tellers have little room to improvise. Their function, as the audience understands it, is to give the tale its due by narrating it with all the stylistic devices and verbal flourishes at their command, but they may not change any of the details. Despite this expectation on the part of the audience, however, variation does arise (and necessarily so, for without variation the folktale traditions of the world would have ossified and died out long ago). Narrative details, or folk motifs, can fit into more than one plot context, and it would be surprising if different motifs were not woven into the same tale. The important consideration here, however, is not how variation comes into being - a th.o.r.n.y theoretical question in any case - but what the att.i.tudes of tellers and audience toward that variation are. If a teller should narrate a tale with details different from the ones the audience knows, she will never claim originality but will always say she is telling it the way she remembers it. Or she might say she knows two versions of the tale and has decided to tell one rather than the other. Both explanations are acceptable to the audience. In this manner, once a new motif enters a tale it becomes a part of it, particularly for those hearing it for the first time.
The folktale tradition we have been describing falls within the context of the extended family and forms part of the social life of a settled and flourishing peasant community. With the recent displacement of the Palestinian people, the social and geographic bases for the tradition have been severely disrupted. Certainly, the frequency of taletelling sessions has declined markedly, and with the people"s continued dispersal the chances that the tradition will survive are dim. Modern, educated Palestinian parents are more likely to read than tell tales to their children, and the tales they do read are frequently European ones translated into Modem Standard Arabic. Because, as we have said, the colloquial language is itself an essential aspect of the experience of the tale, the children of today are not hearing the same tales their parents did.
Yet in spite of the odds against it, the tradition still survives. Grandmothers in the villages and refugee camps still tell the tales to the children, and young people interested in the tradition do become active car-tiers. One of the tellers included in this volume is a twenty-two-year-old woman from the West Bank (Tale 31).
The Tellers
There is nothing unusual about the seventeen tellers from whom the tales were collected. They do not think of themselves primarily as taletellers, nor do they feel they have a special ability. They are all householders, the great majority (fourteen) being housewives who can neither read nor write. Only two of them live in a city (Gaza and Jerusalem); the others have lived in villages all their lives. To introduce readers to the life circ.u.mstances of the tellers, we have chosen to focus on those among them who have. given us the largest number of tales. Knowledge of their circ.u.mstances will help us understand the tales they have told.
Fatme (Tales 1, 9, 11, 23, 24, 26, 36, 38, 43), fifty-five years old when these tales were collected, is a housewife who lives in the village of Arrabe in the Galilee, next door to her father"s family. Married to her (patrilateral parallel) first cousin, she has never lived more than twenty yards from the house of her birth. She has given birth to twenty live children, eleven of whom have survived. A pa.s.sive carrier of the tradition, she does not normally tell tales, nor is she known in the village as a teller. When she did consent to tell some tales, she was apologetic because she could not remember details quickly enough. Not being literate or a regular teller, she was not entirely comfortable using the flourishes that enhance the style of the tales. She apologized frequently when using them, saying that was the way she had heard them from her mother. Nevertheless, she is a good conversationalist and, in spite of all her apologies, told the tales well.
The presence of the collector"s children, who were hearing these tales for the first time, was a great help in drawing the material from her. She would not have told the tales straight into the ca.s.sette machine, or to an audience composed only of adults. The children made her feel it was not a serious matter, and, not surprisingly, most of the tales she related are those that could be considered "children"s tales." Enjoying the telling, she laughed along with the children at the funny spots; the relaxed mood no doubt colored her choice of material, for her tales are among the most humorous in the entire corpus. (A good teller in a natural taletelling situation, it must be noted, would normally not break the spell of narration so frequently, commenting on the action and laughing with the audience. She would give the tale its due by telling it as it should be told, leaving the rest to the audience.) Safi, in contrast, is an active carrier of the tradition, that is, one of four or five in any village community who show an intense personal interest in preserving and transmitting the practice. Because he has a good memory, his repertoire is large, and he is always seeking to increase it. He differs from most other active carriers in being male and in having learned to read simple texts. He therefore has access to the material from the Arabic oral tradition available in print, such as the epic story (sira) of Abu Zed il-Hilali and tales from the Thousand and One Nights, which have left an indelible mark on his work. Indeed, he at times had recited parts of the epic stories, performing them to an audience of friends at his home in Arrabe (Galilee).
These few facts tell us a great deal about his tales (5, 8, 10, 15, 25, 44), which most resemble the type of adventure tale available in print. At age sixty-five, he is a mature teller. His sense of plotting and double-plotting is superb, and his narrative style is highly polished. The actions in his tales evolve logically, and the transitions are natural; there is none of the clumsiness in delivery or forgetfulness of detail that collectors sometimes encounter. Having been a shepherd and a plowman all his life, he has direct knowledge of the land and its contours and of the details of the husbandman"s daily life. The material culture of the Palestinian peasant is open to our gaze in his tales, as are human virtues and vices. Being an experienced teller, he was able to pace himself, filling approximately one side of a sixty-minute ca.s.sette for each of his tales.
His wife, Almaza (Tales 14, 18, 37), is also an active carrier of the tradition. She has told stories all her life, enjoys telling them, and prides herself on knowing many. Unlike Fatme, who has heard tales from only one source (her mother), Almaza has heard them from a wide variety of sources. She was in her late fifties when her tales were collected.
At age sixty-five, Im Nabil (Tales 17, 19, 28, 30, 39) lived with her son in the village of Turmusayya (district of Ramallah) when we collected her tales. Like most of the other tellers, she could not read or write, but she knew many tales - long ones, short ones, humorous ones, tales of adventure, and "tales for children." In some respects she is the archetypal old woman, the repository of old wives" tales. Because she had not told the tales in a long time, her narration was not always fluent; she halted frequently, recalling details. Nevertheless, her delivery was authoritative, and she knew exactly the type of tale the collector was seeking. Of the eight she volunteered, five were selected for inclusion.
Finally, a word about Im Darwis, who is responsible for two of the best tales in the collection (Tales 21, 45). She was about sixty-five when we recorded her. The daughter of the village chief of Der Hanna, she is married to the son of the village chief of Arrabe (both villages in the Upper Galilee). Although she can neither read nor write, unlike most of the other tellers she is not directly connected with agriculture. Both her tales weave prose and poetry in an organic manner, relying on a good memory for poetry and the ability to use it effectively in the structure of the tale. Tales like "Soqak Boqak" (Tale 21), a sophisticated romance, are rarely ever told by peasant tellers in a village milieu. Her mother, who was originally from the city of Haifa, had taught her both tales.
The Tales and the Culture
Having selected the forty-five tales to be included in this volume on the bases discussed earlier, we then had to arrange them so as to give the reader the most meaningful perspective. In many collections, tales are presented at random, without regard to form or content. We rejected this arrangement because it does not demonstrate an organic connection between the tales and the culture that gives rise to them. Other arrangements are based on the form of each tale - that is, on its Aarne-Thompson type number (for which, see Appendix C) - but this approach too was rejected on the same grounds. The best arrangement, we thought, is one that not only relates the tales to the context but also helps them cohere one to another. On considering the tales as a whole, we observed that they fit into a pattern reflecting an individual"s life cycle from childhood to old age. We therefore decided to divide them according to this pattern into five thematic groups - individuals, family, society, environment, and universe - some of which are further divided into subgroups. These categories are useful only to the extent that they help us understand the tales; the discussion in the afterword to each group will make clear why certain tales were grouped together.
Our decision to adopt this scheme is based on our desire to ground the tales in the culture from which they arise. It would be wrong to start out with the a.s.sumption that the tales merely reflect the culture, or that the culture const.i.tutes the subject matter of the tales, for then their interest would be strictly regional, limited to the cultural area from which they came. Rather, the forms of these tales, which are derivable directly from the Arabic and Semitic traditions in folk narrative, are related also to the Indo-European tradition, with which they share recognizable plot patterns (as identified by Aarne-Thompson type numbers). Certainly, the form of each tale is part of its content. If, for example, we consider "Sackcloth" (Tale 14) on the basis of plot alone, we see that it is in essence the story of Cinderella (and indeed, both tales have the same Aarne-Thompson type number). To the extent that "Sackcloth" embodies a courtship ritual in which an eager male pursues an elusive female, the content (and meaning) of both tales is similar. Yet when we examine "Sackcloth" more carefully, it becomes apparent that much of its content is derivable from Palestinian (and Arab) culture. Therefore, knowledge of at least that part of the culture embodied in the folktales will enrich our study of them; without it, a.n.a.lysis would suffer from a certain degree of abstraction. The culture and the art form are not reducible to, or deducible from, each other. The tales do not simply mirror the culture; rather, and more accurately, they present a portrait of it. It would surely be of interest to readers of these folktales to observe how thoroughly that portion of their form which is common with other traditions has been adapted by local tellers to express indigenous realities. Then we will be better able not only to understand the tales as cultural doc.u.ments but also to appreciate them as works of art.
In the footnotes accompanying each tale and in some of the afterwords following each group, we will explore further specific aspects of this relationship between the tales and the culture. Our concern here is to present the general features of Palestinian culture that inform the tales - that is, the common a.s.sumptions that hold narrators, audience, and material together. The tales a.s.sume a stable social order, which no doubt characterized Palestinian society for hundreds of years before the advent of the British Mandate in the early 1920s; the current situation for most Palestinians, however, is one of diaspora and exile, requiring adaptation and cultural change. This is not to say that the cultural a.s.sumptions informing the tales and those prevailing in modern Palestinian society have been severed. Ideals of behavior that have developed through the inst.i.tutions of the culture over countless generations do not simply vanish overnight. Even though the majority of Palestinians no longer live in extended families, for example, the standards of behavior characteristic of this ancient inst.i.tution are still current in their social milieu. Indeed, the very survival of the tales as a tradition with a recognizable narrative structure, a coherent moral universe, and a set of a.s.sumptions immediately understandable to audience and narrator alike confirms the cultural continuity of Palestinian social life.
The Palestinian folktale, as we have seen, is primarily a woman"s art form, and certain stylistic features give the tales their particular character. Yet Western readers will be struck as much by the tone of the tales - the narrative voice that speaks through them - as by their style, for the tales empower the women who narrate them to traverse, in their speech, the bounds of social convention. This speech is direct, earthy, even scatological, but without awkwardness or self-consciousness. The narrators are keen observers of the society around them, particularly those features of the social structure that touch directly on their lives. Because the tale-tellers are older women who have gone through the cycle of life, they are free of blame and at the same time endowed with the experience and wisdom necessary to see through hypocrisy and contradiction.
The "household" context of the tales, moreover, is that of the extended family, and our understanding would not be complete without some knowledge of the structure of this inst.i.tution, within which women have traditionally spent their whole lives. As in the case of Fatme, older village women who have spent their lives with contact limited almost completely to the social unit that is the extended family are not uncommon. A Palestinian proverb says, "The household of the father is a playground, and that of the husband is an education" (bet il-"ahil talhiye, u-bet il-joz tarbiye). Whatever the truth of the proverb, the fact remains that a woman always belongs in one household or the other.
Folktales, like other forms of narrative, thrive on conflict and its resolution, not only as a theme but for plot structure as well. As we shall see, the tellers do not have to invent situations of conflict, for they are common in the social milieu, just as the colloquial language, with all its expressive potential, is in the linguistic environment. The majority of conflicts embodied in the tales have their basis in the structure of society - and necessarily so, if the tales are to be accepted as presenting a portrait of that society. The organizing or orienting principle in Palestinian life is the kinship system, which defines both social position and roles and modes of interaction. Out of this stable, conservative ground arise figures in the tales whose desires put them in conflict with the established order as represented by the dictates of the kinship system, and who in the long run must learn to harmonize their separate wills with the will of the collectivity. Much can be learned about conflict and harmony simply from contemplating the definition of the Palestinian family, which is extended, patrilineal, patrilateral, polygynous, endogamous, and patrilocal. (Unless otherwise indicated, all future reference to the "extended family" will be to the Palestinian version.) We consider the elements of this definition as structural patterns that generate the types of behavior encountered in the tales. By looking more closely at these elements, then, we can learn something about the grammar of that behavior.
The extended Palestinian family has traditionally had three or more generations living in close proximity as one economic unit, sharing all income and expenses, with ultimate authority lying in the hands of the patriarch who heads it. It is patrilineal because descent is traced through the father, patrilateral because only the relatives on the father"s side are considered relatives in the formal system of relationship, and patrilocal because the wife leaves her own family to live with that of her husband. The criterion of endogamy permits a male to marry his (patrilateral parallel) first cousin, while that of polygyny allows him, under certain conditions, to marry more than one wife.
Patrilineality and patrilaterality define social ident.i.ty for the patriarch"s descendants, providing them with a ready-made basis for interacting with others, both inside the family and outside. The patrilineal bond is the foundation on which the whole system is built. Individuals are rarely ever referred to by their first names: married men with children are referred to as "Father of So-and-So" (Abu Flan), women as "Mother of So-and-So" (Imm i-Flan). Three of our tales have t.i.tles derived from this naming system (Tales 27, 33, 45). According to Palestinian practice, a full name need consist of no more than a person"s, name followed by the first name of his or her father. The oldest son will usually name his firstborn son after his own father, thereby confirming for the grandfather the continuity of his line during his lifetime. Indeed, even before they are married or have children, Palestinian men may still be referred to as "Father of (name of his own father)" in antic.i.p.ation of their having sons. From this practice we conclude that the ideological basis of the system lies in this father/son bond. With social ident.i.ty being by definition masculine, the female is simply defined out of it. If "self" is ipso facto male, then the female becomes the Other - the outsider or stranger. Thus, for the female, conflict is inherent in the structure of the system. We shall explore female Otherness in relation to several aspects of the extended family, but first let us focus on conflictual situations arising out of the general characteristics given above.
Polygyny serves as a good example of the dialogue we are establishing between the tales and the culture. It is one thing to state simply and objectively that the society is polygynous and completely different to observe how polygyny is treated in the tales, where its direct or implied occurrence (Tales 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 20, 28, 30, 35, 44) is greatly out of proportion to its incidence in the society. This frequency, we feel, serves an educational function, especially if we keep in mind that children are listening every time these tales are told. In none of the tales is polygyny presented in a good light. More than any other inst.i.tution or practice, it represents the power of men over women, setting females in compet.i.tion for the affections of the male. In the tales, as in life, it is disruptive of family unity and harmony; the only case of cooperation occurs when the wives unite against the introduction of yet another wife into the family (Tale 30). The inst.i.tution is abhorrent to women and denigrated in the culture. A proverb says, "A household with one wife is a source of pride, one with two is a laughingstock, and one with three - uncover yourself and defecate!" (bet wahade faxra, bet tinten suxra, bet talate - sammir w-ixra). Fights between (or among) co-wives will, more often than not, spill out into the surrounding community, thereby causing shame and embarra.s.sment and violating one of the most cherished of family values, that of keeping its secrets mastura, or to itself (literally, "hidden," "behind a screen").
In a polygynous situation the stage is set for conflict the moment a man decides to marry his second wife (Tales 20, 30). If he has children by his first wife, they will raise strong objections out of respect for their mother and in defense of their inheritance. The struggle between the co-wives continues throughout the formation and growth of the family, down to - and sometimes as a direct cause of - the family"s ultimate breakup. If the age difference between the co - wives is extreme, the older may save face and retain her self-respect by sponsoring the younger one, guiding her as a mother would. Publicly she might say she does not need s.e.x, that she now has sons to look after her. If, however, the age gap is not so great, struggle is inevitable. As we see frequently in the tales, the women fight and conspire against one another, each trying to win the affection of her husband in different ways. They compete in all things, especially in producing male children. The one with more sons increases her prestige in the family and her husband"s affection for her. (Note the t.i.tle of Tale 3: "Precious One and Worn-out One.") If both have children, the conflict is transmitted to the offspring (Tales 5, 6). Each woman with her children forms a subunit within the family; the mothers socialize their children to hate the other group, and each woman uses her own children to manipulate the father and thereby gain advantage for them and for her (Tales 5, 28). The husband himself may stoke the fire of conflict between his wives and their respective offspring, too, by showing preference for one set over the other.
Nevertheless, polygyny serves a useful function in the society. From the perspective of a social system that perpetuates itself through the patriarchal extended family (and leaving economic considerations aside), the purpose of marriage is to produce offspring, especially sons. A childless marriage, then, contradicts its very reason for being. Under these circ.u.mstances, polygyny enables a man to combine his personal desire to keep his first wife, whom he may love, with his duty to the family to produce children. It can best be understood in relation to the cultural view of marriage as sutra (protection) for the woman; it is economically and socially more advantageous for a woman to be married than divorced (though cases where divorce has been beneficial to the woman are not unknown), even if that means putting up with a co-wife. Polygyny is not practiced by Christian Palestinians, and for Muslims it is regulated entirely by Islamic law (saria), which restricts to four the number of wives a man may have and defines his duties and obligations to them, fair and equal treatment being of foremost importance.
Also helpful to the understanding of polygyny is the feature of endogamy, another characteristic of the Palestinian extended family. A man"s first duty in choosing a wife is to his patrilateral parallel first cousin (or, more accurately, it is the duty of the family to reserve their daughters for these cousins). In the majority of cases where polygyny is an issue, the man marries his cousin first, and when he has no children by her he mar-ties another woman (Tale 6). Only in one case (Tale 30) is s.e.xual pleasure presented (and even there through symbol) as a motivation for polygyny. In all the tales where polygyny occurs, the men love their first wives and are loath to part with them, and the first wives are always vindicated against the others.
Endogamy (Tales 6, 16, 21, 25) may be seen as a necessary adjunct of the social system defined by the patriarchal extended family because it combines the two major poles of relationship in the society - descent (hasab) and affinality (nasab) - under one roof. It serves the purposes of the family well because it guarantees husbands for the daughters and wives for the sons. Presumably, it forms the ideal marriage because it exercises a positive pull toward family harmony. When a man marries his first cousin, he is not bringing a stranger (cf. Tale 6) into the house; she will therefore, it is thought, share her husband"s economic interest. Because both derive their ident.i.ty from the same patrilineal source, it will not be easy for him to divorce her. Even when they are not related by blood, husbands and wives address each other as "cousin" (ibin ammi and bint ammi, or "son of my father"s brother" and "daughter of my father"s brother") and each other"s parents as ammi (uncle) and mart ammi (uncle"s wife).
Occasionally, however, endogamy is disruptive of family unity. When, for example, one of two brothers living together in the same family has a son, and the other a daughter, these offspring are expected to marry. But if for some reason either set of parents obstructs the marriage, conflict is bound to ensue. If they do not marry, then something is considered to be wrong with one of them (Tale 21). In this respect, as with polygyny, the tales provide a critique of the culture, because they do not automatically reflect the prevailing view that first-cousin marriage is best. In Tale 21 a young man pa.s.ses over seven of his first cousins, all of whom prove nasty and vindictive when he marries a "stranger." And in Tale 25 two sets of marriages are compared, one in which a maligned wife is actually faithful to her husband, the other in which three cousins in a row, though protesting their faithfulness, turn out to be licentious and unfaithful to their shared husband.
The two issues discussed thus far, polygyny and endogamy, are fundamentally related to the third feature of the Palestinian extended family, patrilocality. A woman may marry outside her family, but her in-laws will always consider her a stranger because she does not belong to the patrilineal network of relationships that define social ident.i.ty for them: she is not one of them. Thus, given a choice, a woman will always prefer to stay as close to her paternal family as possible (we shall see why in our discussion of brother/sister relationships below). For unlike endogamy, which does not require but merely favors first-cousin marriage, patrilocality leaves the newlyweds no choice: the bride must move into the household of her husband. This requirement, as can be immediately perceived, has major implications for our understanding of women and their behavior in the tales. At no time in her life is a woman considered to live in her own s.p.a.ce. When she is single, she lives in the household of her father; after marriage, in that of her husband. In the tales patrilocality is taken for granted and is not questioned like polygyny, although in one fantasy (Tale 44) the husband, who has just married the king"s daughter, lives with her in a palace given to them by her father.