The Folktales of Palestine

Cultural Identity, Memory and the Politics of Storytelling

Farah Aboubakr

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781786725790
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Literary
• Index: Literature

Folktales are instrumental in ensuring the survival of oral traditions and strengthening communal bonds. Both the stories and the process of storytelling itself help to define social, cultural and political identity. For Palestinians, the threat of losing their heritage has engendered a sense of urgency among storytellers and Palestinian folklorists. Yet there has been remarkably little academic scholarship dedicated to the tradition. Farah Aboubakr here analyses a selection of folktales edited, compiled and translated by Ibrahim Muhawi and Sharif Kanaana in Speak, Bird, Speak Again (1989). In addition to the folktales themselves, Muhawi and Kanaana's collection is renowned for providing readers with extensive folkloric, historical and anthropological annotations. Here, for the first time, the folktales and the compilers' work on them, are the subject of scholarly analysis. Synthesising various disciplines including memory studies, gender studies and social movement studies, Aboubakr uses the collection to understand the politics of storytelling and its impact on Palestinian identity. In particular, the book draws attention to the female storytellers who play an essential role in transmitting and preserving collective memory and culture. The book is an important step towards analysing a significant genre of Palestinian literature and will be relevant to scholars of Palestinian politics and popular culture, gender studies and memory studies, and those interested in folklore and oral literature.

1

Collective Memory in Palestine

Go back where you started, or as far back as you can, examine all of it, travel your road again and tell the truth about it. Sing it or shout or testify or keep it to yourself: but know whence you came.

James Baldwin (1985: xix)

Subject to our past experiences and lives, memory is an active factor in moulding and shaping our daily existence, visions and expectations. Remembering an event can be a source of enjoyment and a longing for a beautiful past, or it can be an unforgettable scar of trauma, anxiety and loss. Expressing memory, especially collective memory, can take multiple forms, depending on our position in the present and our relation to the past. Memory in modernity has been a crucial element in the formation of nations and states; it has the capacity to regenerate or destroy the flow of individual narratives in the sphere of history and identity. There has, however, been much debate over the relationship of history and memory¹ and their binary opposition.² It is, in my opinion, very difficult, if not impossible, to treat memory and history as separate entities. Memory, in fact, works within the mechanism of a society: ‘It is in society that people normally acquire their memories. It is also in society that they recall, recognize, and localize their memories’ (Halbwachs, 1992: 43).³ Because of the multiplicity of the social structure, it is hard to say that memory is monolithic. Collective remembering is a highly complex process, involving different people, practices, materials and themes. Every society has many social groups, thus many collective memories to relate to, but the ways of remembering and representing its components can be different and/or contested. In this regard, Jeffrey K. Olick describes collective memory within two kinds of models. The first is what he refers to as the ‘Traditionalist’ model, which ‘assimilate[s] collective memory to heritage, patrimony, national character, and the like, and view[s] collective memory as a bedrock for the continuity of identities’ (Olick, 2008: 24). The second model, ‘Presentist’, he argues, ‘assimilate[s] collective memory to manipulation and deception, a mere tool of the arsenal of power’ (Olick, 2008). The latter model discusses the intervention of contemporary interests in shaping the past, making the use of memory highly variable. Combining Olick’s models, I will explain what I see as the essential elements in the construction of Palestinian collective memory and identity, namely, oral history and language. I will also situate the Nakba as a contested narrative in shaping Palestinian collective memory within memory and trauma studies. Such a discussion is needed, prior to discussing the folktales themselves, in order to understand the agenda of the compilers of SBSA and Qul Ya Tayer, as well as the context of storytelling in Palestine.

Palestinian oral history

Collective memory has so far been understood as a social construct aimed at preserving and shaping a group’s cultural, social and political identity. Collective memory, as many writers and scholars consider it, is a living mobile account of a specific historical event which transcends time and place. The mobility of collective memory is based mainly on ‘everyday communication’, or what can be also referred to as ‘communicative memory’ (Assmann, 1995), which can flourish by relying on oral history. The latter is divided into two types, as stated by Jan Vansina in ‘Adil Yaḥya’s Al-laji’ ūn al-Falasṭīnīūn 1948–1998 ta’ rīkh shafawī (Palestinian Refugees: 1948–1998 Oral Historisation):

Oral history is a research methodology. It is the study of the past through a spoken language transmitted orally. There are two kinds of oral history: The first is oral heritage which is the study of a remote past through widespread oral stories in a particular society. These stories are transmitted orally over generations or within one generation at least. The second kind is the history of life which focuses on studying the near past through the accounts of eyewitnesses; it is about people’s oral stories, about their lives and experiences. (Vansina in Yaḥya, 1998: 45)

The role of oral transmission is important for the survival of memory as people interact communicatively in exchanging their accounts, jokes and experiences. Formlessness, wilfulness and disorganization, according to Assmann (1995), control the nature of oral communication among people. Via this form of communication, each individual creates a memory which, as Halbwachs has shown, is socially mediated and connected to a group. Through the practice of oral history, people gain more insight into and a better understanding of a particular collective memory. In this sense, memory is communicative since it transmits the experiences, stories and lives of individuals belonging to a specific group to other individuals belonging to the same or other groups. In other words, each individual memory exists through communication with others. These individuals consolidate their sense of belonging in a unified group by promoting a shared past over time. The sharing can be within families, neighbourhood and professional groups, political parties, up to whole nations or indeed even further (Assmann, 1995). Every individual belongs to numerous groups and therefore entertains numerous collective self-images and memories.

Oral history research is not merely about information gathering. Since the late 1970s, oral historians have established ‘the significance of storytelling and the idea that all memories are selective social constructions’ (Field, 2006: 34). Storytelling in all its forms enlightens insiders as well as outsiders; it is a vivid depiction and transitional phase between the past, the present and the future of a group’s joys, endeavours, pains, nostalgia and hope. Māhir Al-Sharīf, a Palestinian thinker and writer, considers collective memory to be ‘oral memory’. According to him, oral memory is ‘an oral discourse adopted by a group of people. … It reflects the changes that occurred in the life of the group; it expresses the need for redefining the original identity which can be at stake’ (Al-Sharīf, 2004: 128). Oral history is, in fact, perceived as vital for the preservation and continuation of a whole culture and society, especially if the latter is witnessing multiple threats and risks of disappearance. Alessandro Portelli (1991) argues that memory has more to do with the ‘creation of meanings’ than with what exactly happened in the past. The creation of sense and consensus can take different shapes and is told by different people, most of the time orally.

Much research on collective memory and orality has drawn attention to the point that nations suffering from severe political or social instability feel the urge to protect and strengthen their cultural and/or national identities. In other words, collective memory tends to play a more substantial role in shaping the self-perception and culture of peoples who have suffered historical defeats (such as the Serbs, the Jews and the Palestinians, among others). In the words of Ernest Renan (cited in Lowenthal, 1994: 50), ‘suffering in common unifies more than joy does. Where national memories are concerned griefs are of more value than triumphs, for they impose duties, and require a common effort’. Miller and Miller (1991), for example, conducted a study on diaspora Armenians who were expelled by Turkey in 1915–18. The Millers’ research aimed at measuring and analysing the degree of transmission of Armenian collective memory over three generations (grandparents – parents – children in diaspora). The results show that Armenian collective memory is strong and vivid, since Armenians ensured it was preserved by not mixing with other communities and by consolidating cultural identity through oral literature and folklore. By doing so, Miller and Miller indicated the detail with which Armenian history, cultural identity and social strata are being preserved and strengthened from one generation to the next.

Another prominent example in memory studies, showing people and institutions’ efforts in preserving and highlighting a nation’s identity, is Holocaust memory. Having been threatened with eradication, Jews witnessing the aftermath of the Nazi massacre attempted to strengthen a sense of communal destiny and identity. In so doing, the preservation of memory has been manifested in art, literature and historical archives. In addition, memorial sites are safeguarded through continuing events and commemorations, which represent a source of constant remembrance. In a study undertaken by Howard Schuman, ‘Keeping the Past Alive: Memories of Israeli Jews at the Turn of the Millennium’ (2003), Schuman conducted his research on 2,800 Israelis of different ages. The study shows that the most important and memorable two events for Israelis are first, the Holocaust and second, the establishment of Israel. With regard to the Holocaust, the study shows that there are no differences in describing the Holocaust among most Israelis across age, sex, level of education, knowledge or degree of remembrance. Schuman attributes this to the fact that the Holocaust, as a central concept in Israeli-Jewish history, receives much interest and attention especially from academic institutions and religious schools among others. The latter play a major role in helping preserve Holocaust memory through lectures, visits to sites such as Auschwitz, visits to geographical sites such as Yad Vashem and through annual commemorations of the event (Schuman, 2003).

Another key example is that of the Palestinian case, which is the focus of my analysis. Like Armenians and Jews, Palestinians have witnessed important ruptures in their history which have greatly affected their collective memory. Over the course of the twentieth century the task of safeguarding Palestinian cultural collective memory and oral history, seen in folksongs, folktales, clothing and traditional social practices, has become an urgent one, given the level of political instability and threat of disappearance. There are two main historical events that have changed Palestinians’ lives and nationhood: the Nakba and the defeat in the 1967 war. Initially, Palestinian national identity emerged during the Ottoman period, throughout the nineteenth century, but became more prominent ‘in the wake of World War I as a result of several interlinked processes and political upheavals’ (Litvak, 2009).⁴ Since 1914 Palestinians have striven to build a national identity. However, with the rise of the Zionist movement, and the expulsion of half of the Palestinian population in 1948, Palestinians marked the Nakba as one of the most tragic turning points in their memory.

Being exiled and under occupation, many Palestinians found themselves either as outsiders struggling to create new homes as refugees in different parts of the world, or as insiders living under occupation. Palestinians found themselves threatened with the loss of their identity and collective integrity since there was no official written or documented history. According to Sonia El-Nimr (1993: 55),

What has been written of Palestinians’ history (mainly by their colonizers and occupiers), ignores their culture, aspirations and point of view, and in many cases falsifies this history. As stateless people, the Palestinians have compensated for the lack of official institutions which document and preserve their history by sustaining collective memories.

Promoting collective memory under unstable social and political circumstances has become a vital element in developing Palestinian identity. For example, Palestinians in refugee camps in the Middle East regrouped themselves into similar social structures to their village society in Palestine prior to 1948. They were and are making continuous efforts to preserve their habits, costumes, customs, folk stories and sayings, songs, dances and food. Most of all they sustained intra-village marriages to secure the continuity of village communities from one generation to the next (El-Nimr, 1993). In her research on Palestinian costume, Shelagh Weir interviewed refugees from the village of Bayt Dajān who were living in Jordan, Gaza and the West Bank in the 1980s and observed the following:

Village identity and pride remain strong among refugees. Much intermarriage still takes place between fellow villagers, the older women still wear costumes which proclaim their village origins. (Weir, 1989: 52)

Along the same lines, Rosemary Sayigh noticed the same phenomenon during her research in the 1970s among the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon:

So even today a camp Palestinian’s speech gives away his/her village of origin. Other cultural methods – embroidery styles, songs, folk sayings dishes – are further evidence of village particularism, reinforced by inter-village [sic] marriage, a custom so strong it is still that marriage that camp people prefer. (Sayigh, 1998: 22)

During El-Nimr’s research into pre-1948 revolutions in Palestine, she found that in Galilee and other areas under Israeli rule, village traditions, habits, intra- village marriage and ritual occasions have been kept almost completely intact from the pre-1948 period. One of her interviewees told her,

Peasants in general are passive people, they don’t accept new things easily, especially if they are imposed on them. We kept our traditions, and we took a strong hold on them as a way of expressing our refusal of the new life and culture the Israelis are imposing on us. (El-Nimr, 1993: 54)

This is a key point in my discussion of peasant identity within the folktales in the compilation under study, being a form of protecting Palestinian cultural memory and identity, which I will elaborate in more depth in the Chapter 4.

The defeat in the 1967 war also increased the need to consolidate and revive Palestinian collective memory and identity. The hope of regaining the homeland was shattered by the defeat of Arab troops by Israel. As a result, an immediate and urgent sense of the need for securing and transmitting Palestinian heritage, culture and identity to younger generations emerged. After coming to terms with defeat, the 1970s and 1980s saw ‘the proliferation of folk songs, traditional dance, interest in and use of traditional costume, publications of collections of folktales and research about folklore’ (El-Nimr, 1993: 54). Thus, more recently, there has been an increasing interest and intense awareness of the significance of oral history in the Palestinian situation, particularly with the passing away of the older generation.

Because there is little research and documentation in the Palestinian case, in comparison to other countries affected by traumatic events, some Palestinian thinkers, anthropologists and intellectuals are making efforts to contribute to the documentation o...