Daily Excerpt from Syrian Folktales (Muna Imady): Note from the Author
Excerpt from Syrian Folktales by Muna Imady - Note from the Author
Kan ya ma kan are magical words
that carry me back into my Tete’s little red bedroom forty years ago. I see myself
sitting on her bed listening to her stories on a very cold winter night. The
lit soba in the corner of the room casts shadows on the walls. The
shadows dance and transform themselves into the characters created by Tete. I
reach my hands towards them, but they slip away. Tete laughs and takes out a
bag of pistachios from under her pillow and fills my little hands with them.
Most of the
stories I remember Tete telling me were told to me in the evenings. I wonder…
was it a matter of convenience, or did Tete believe that darkness was the best
time to tell stories?
Actually, in the old
days, Arabs felt that telling stories in daylight was bad luck. Daytime was
naturally for serious and domestic housework, while night was the time for
stories of make-believe.
In the
To this day, folktales still fascinate me. I
pity my children when I see them taken by the ever-lasting TV programmes and
computer games that have kidnapped them from the fascinating mystical world I
enjoyed when I was their age.
So many things
have changed since I was a little girl. Computer games, the internet, mobile
phones and satellite channels all have invaded the hearts and the minds of Syrian
children of the twenty-first century. This technology not only affects the
children but their mothers. I was struck by the fact that even women my age had
to refer to their mothers to get me a folktale from their province.
As Western
folktales have their evil witches and dragons, many Syrian folktales also have
evil and hideous supernatural beings.
There are the ghouleh which is female and something like a witch
and the afreet, which is male. Both are considered a kind of jinn and
have magical powers.
In this book, in
addition to the folktales, I have included recipes from all the Syrian
provinces, riddles, sayings and street peddler songs to give the reader a broad
picture of Syrian folklore.
I hope this modest
attempt to collect and preserve the ever-dying folklore in
Read more posts Syria HERE.
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