MSI Press Blog

  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 Euphrates region, people still say: “ Ill