Storytelling in Haifa, Palestine ( www.palestineremembered.com)Thanks Rabee
"According to legend, to prevent her murderous husband King Shahryar from killing her, the Persian Queen Scheherazade told a different story every night for 1001 nights.Moulay Mohammed is like a modern day Scheherazade: he tells tales of sultans, thieves, wise men and fools, he speaks of mystics, genies, viziers and belly dancers."
I thought we Arabized Scheherazade a long time ago! Next thing they tell me she's Shia!!!
While the storytellers are being silenced by TV, "The Moroccan government has blocked the internet device Google Earth so that people cannot look from above into the grounds of the king's sumptuous royal palaces." I'd like to hear a story about that! Maybe it will be called "How the King Slaughtered Ghoole Earth."
5 comments:
Amal,
This form of storytelling is a la Scheherazade is a very old one in North Africa and it inspires writers from Ben Jelloun to Hisham Matar. The fact that this folkloric form of storytelling is disappearing is really disturbing, given that I really grew up on the yarns that these storytellers weave. The most famous one in Tunisia was someone called Al-Iroui.
Anyhow, your post made me sentimental for a couple of minutes. All, the more so given that I was going to go to Marrackesh just this week from the 22-25 of Feb to attend the "Trans-Maghreb Creative Writing Forum" but had to cancel at the last minute...
hi ng,
That's a bummer you're not going. I wish I could go to Morocco and Tunisia. I can dream on...
As far as I know mo such public street storytellers in Palestine or al Sham generally. At some point coffee shops may have had them.
We women had our grandmothers.
Now, TV is king everywhere.
Hi Amal,
Take a look at this picture:
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Haifa/Haifa/Picture1374.html
Sorry here i the picture:
link
great picture. looks like street theatre with props. And there are women among the audience too. Which reminds me of another form of street sotrytelling I've seen as a little girl, which is Sandouk al 3ajab, when a guy will come around with his box and we'll pay to look inside as pictures that told a story. A pre-TV TV. And of course we have Al 7kawati tradition which I missed and only caught up with its modern reincarnation as theatre.
So I stand corrected.
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