Speak Bird Speak Again (11 page)

By
weaving the super-real into the fabric of the real, folk narrative
asserts the primacy of the imagination, creating a dialectical
relationship between the supernatural and the physical. It also
closes the door on facile or one-dimensional interpretations, lending
the action a timeless quality by placing it neither fully in the real
nor in the realm only of the supernatural. Of course, the jinn,
ghouls, and other supernatural beings who inhabit these tales are
derived from the general Arabic folk tradition; there is, however, a
specifically Middle Eastern dimension to belief about the
supernatural as well, which must be addressed.

Village
peasants in Palestine do not distinguish between official religion
and its teachings on the one hand and the beliefs and superstitions
of folk religion on the other. Naturally, then, no sharp distinction
exists between the domain of the supernatural and that of everyday
life, or between the realms of the spiritual and the material. All
these categories shift back and forth and merge into each other. For
example, when she cannot be seen but can make her presence felt, a
ghouleh resembles a supernatural being; yet she may also appear as an
animal, a human being, or a combination of both (Tale 19). Likewise,
the soul of a dead person may be heard, imagined, and felt; but it
can also materialize and stand next to, talk to, or even touch
someone. A religious or holy person may be very real - a relative
perhaps, with whom one shares food and engages in conversation - but
that person is also thought to have the ability to disappear and then
reappear a few minutes later in another town or village. Because we
have restricted this collection to folktales and excluded saints'
legends, there are no examples of this ability on the part of holy
men to move magically from one place to another; nevertheless, the
magic journey is a major motif in all the tales.

This
concretization of the spiritual applies to all the domains of the
supernatural, including the divine. On occasion God is heard talking,
or He may be addressed directly. At the moment of childbirth, for
example, the "gates of heaven" (bwab is-sama) are supposed
to open, and if someone were to make a request at this time, God
would respond. Another such auspicious moment occurs at midnight on
the twenty-seventh of Ramadan, at the onset of the new moon. On this
night, which is known as the "night of destiny" (lelt
il-qader), people stay up late, and some have reported seeing a door
in "heaven" open and a strong light emanate from it. God is
imagined as a physical being who could be seen if it were not for the
brilliance of the light shining from the "gates of heaven."
In the imaginary world of the tales, the very beginning seems to be
such an auspicious moment. In several tales (1, 8, 13, 40) a
childless woman asks for a baby, and God fulfills her request. It
seems to follow, then, that the distinction drawn in the West between
the sacred and the profane - between religion and life - is not
operative in the Palestinian peasant's world.

Villagers
do, however, find one major distinction very meaningful: that between
good and evil, each of which has forces or powers that pull in its
direction. These forces range along a continuum from the immediate
and tangible to the more abstract and intangible. No clear line
separates a good man or woman, a pious one, a virtuous one, and a
holy one. The virtuous man (rajul salih) and the holy man (wili) are
both physical beings who also have spiritual powers. The holy man can
make himself invisible, and he can communicate with the souls of the
dead, with spirits, ghosts, and angels. These virtuous people occur
most dramatically in the last three tales, where a heroine (Tale 43)
and heroes (Tales 44, 45) are. assisted by supernatural powers in
bringing about material blessings for themselves and their families.

The
evil forces, too, range along a continuum from the physical to the
supernatural. An evil person, such as an envious man who may possess
the power of the evil eye, is not totally disconnected from the
abstract-forces of evil. It is no accident that in the tales women's
sexuality outside the prescribed channels is often (Tales 2, 4, 8,
22) associated with ghoulishness or other evil forces. And in the
animal kingdom, the hyena and the monkey have a special significance.
Although a real animal, the hyena is traditionally linked with
supernatural forces, its effect on human beings being considered
similar to that of possession by the jinn. The same holds true for
the monkey (qird, or sadan). When the word sadan comes up in
conversation, people usually invoke divine protection by repeating
the basmala ("In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the
Merciful!"), as they would at the mention of a ghost, ghoul, or
devil. Likewise, whenever the jinn are introduced in the tales - and
they occur frequently - the teller usually invokes the name of Allah.
Along the continuum after the hyena and the monkey we find a range of
evil spirits, including ghosts (asbah), demons (afarit), the qarine
(female childbed demon), and the jinn.

The
forces of good and evil are believed to work against each other
continuously in the life of the individual, on both the material and
the spiritual level. Allah may grant a couple a baby, for instance,
but the qarine is always ready to harm or kill it (Tale 33). These
evil spirits must always be defended against; if one is sensed in the
environment, the best protection is the invocation of the name of
Allah or the name of the cross. Moreover, although evil forces will
disappear the moment the good forces are called upon or mentioned,
invocation of the devil will not cause an angel to run away. The good
forces are thought to be more powerful than the evil ones, but not
powerful enough to eliminate them. The two forces must coexist, and
the best the good powers can do is to limit the influence of evil.

Both
sets of forces have some measure of control over human behavior, and
in a sense they collaborate; if people are not behaving righteously
and acting according to the dictates of morality or religion, the
good forces may withdraw their protective influence and allow an evil
force to bring harm. Conversely, evil beings do not necessarily
embody pure, unmitigated evil, because they can bring good to human
beings. In such tales as 10 and 22, for example, ghouls and ghoulehs
assist the young protagonists on their quests. Similarly the jinn,
who according to the Qur'an are creatures of fire, are capable of
goodness. Some are even thought to be Muslims, for people see them
standing and praying, just like human beings. But some are certainly
evil: if one of these were to possess a human being, it could bring
about that person's death. The jinn nature, however, is capricious,
as we may observe in Tales 30 and 32, and the same jinni can cause
harm or do good.

Given
this interpenetration of the supernatural and the physical, of the
spiritual and the mundane, life on earth becomes the stage on which
the meting out of rewards and punishments is performed. The
supernatural need not intervene in human affairs in a miraculous way
for it to be believable; the moment-to-moment events of daily life
are one's rewards and punishments. All material and nonmaterial
blessings are gifts from Allah. Of course, rewards and punishments,
like the forces that give rise to them, range along a continuum from
the immediate and tangible, such as a good harvest, healthy
livestock, or the birth of a son, all the way to entering heaven in a
second life. Punishment can also range from, for instance, the death
of a child to entering hell in the afterlife. Thus heaven and hell
are tangible in a sense: people see them as real states of being
comparable to ordinary experience, but much more intense. They know
what these places look and feel like and can imagine them in every
detail. Paradise (il-janne) is a garden with rivers, trees, milk,
honey, beautiful women, and wine - in short, all the good things in
life, including those that are forbidden during earthly existence.
And in hell (jhannam) there is nothing but fire and big, powerful,
bad angels who allow no one to get out.

Of
course men and women, being subject to the punishments and rewards
meted out by the forces of good and evil, can hide nothing. The
angels, the jinn, the devil, and God - all have a way of knowing
everything that one thinks or does. And regardless of content,
neither thought nor action can be neutral. Everything has
consequences, either rewards or punishments. Thus only two angels
(Raqib and Atid) are necessary to keep account of a person's actions.
One sits on the right shoulder recording the good deeds, and the
other on the left recording the bad. On the Day of Judgment the two
books in which these angels have recorded an individual's life are
weighed: if the one on the right is heavier, heaven is the reward;
otherwise, hell. Here again, the angels Raqib and Atid are almost
tangible. People feel their presence and sometimes even talk to them.
At the end of prayer, a Muslim will turn the head first to the right
and then to the left, greeting the angel on each shoulder by saying,
"Peace to you!" (as-salamu alekum).

Despite
the influence of supernatural forces, human beings can do nothing
that is not predestined. Each person's fortune is written on the
forehead at the moment of birth, and life is an unfolding in time of
the plan already drawn by destiny, which is the instrument of God.
Belief in predestination does not necessarily entail abandonment of
individual effort or lack of responsibility for one's actions. A dear
logic impels toward taking initiative: even though from the
perspective of the Divine the future is known, from a human
perspective it is unknowable. And because it is unknowable, it
remains mysterious and full of promise - it can be acted upon. All
actions have commensurate consequences, and by performing good deeds
(hasanat) individuals help their destinies in this life and improve
their chances in the life to come.

But by
the same token, because the future is unknowable, consequences are
unforeseeable. One can know them only after they have taken place,
and so it is useless to worry about the future. Having acted, one
awaits the results, which one has no choice but to accept. Herein
lies the true meaning of belief in fate and predestination. It is not
that individual will is abandoned, but rather that one's fate is
accepted. People thus use the doctrine of predestination to justify
and help resign themselves to what happens, especially in the case of
misfortunes. "There is no strength or power save in Allah,"
says the heroine of Tale 42 after she falls into the well. The fruits
of action, whether bitter or sweet, must be accepted, for they cannot
be changed. Nor would it be useful to blame oneself or feel sad or
guilty when misfortune strikes, because what comes is only the
unfolding of what has already been decreed, regardless of one's
personal feelings about it. Belief in predestination thus helps
people cope with the present and eliminates worry about the future.

Using
the ideas we have thus far explored, we can begin to develop a theory
of action in the tales. Our last observation about action was that
final judgment concerning its ontological status must remain
tentative, since the tales, through their use of the journey motif in
the basic plot structure, locate action neither fully in the domain
of the supernatural nor in that of the physical. The parameters of
our discussion will be the major topics discussed thus far - namely,
the concretization of the nonmaterial; the interpenetration of the
physical and the supernatural; the distinction between good and evil,
and the balance of forces between them; the notion of rewards and
punishments as aspects of daily life; and the doctrine of
predestination. Certainly these ideas are not discrete and separable;
taken together, they form a unitary whole constituting the entire
moral outlook of the community. If, as we claim, the tales present a
portrait of that community, action in them can only reflect this
outlook.

Of
course, by "action" we do not necessarily mean only
physical activity. Through the process of concretization, or
reification, of the non-material - a very important process operative
not merely in these tales but in all folk narrative - a thought or
wish becomes an action the moment it is put into words. And in fact,
that is precisely how many tales are begun: a lack is articulated,
the fulfillment of which then becomes the central action of the tale.
Language thus becomes a silent "actor" in the drama of the
tales, giving narrative form to the unspoken attitudes, feelings, and
dreams of the community, and awareness of the power of language on
the part of the tellers is evident throughout. We recall that the
root meaning of the Arabic word hikaye, or "folktale," is
"that which is spoken," and we have already alluded to the
use of opening, closing, and protective formulas, distancing devices,
and invocations. Language, particularly in verse form, has power over
the nonhuman world in the tales - both the physical, such as animals
and rocks, and the supernatural, including the jinn, ghouls, and
divine power. By repeating a certain incantation, the heroine of Tale
35 exorcises the demon who had been haunting her, and Jbene (Tale
13), by repeating her lament, enlists the sympathy of both animate
and inanimate nature. The power of language is also manifest in
formula tales, a representative sample of which is included in Group
IV (Tales 38-41). Here language aids not only in the memorization of
the tale but in plot management as well. Tale 41 in particular,
through the use of a rhymed formula, evokes the unity and
interconnectedness of human beings with nature. It is as if the end
rhyme, which unifies the tale, also unites human with nonhuman
nature. Other potent linguistic processes in these tales are
onomatopoeia, puns, and naming, which may operate singly or in
combination. Thus Tale 1 derives its name as well as its central
action from a linguistic imitation of the sound of a rolling cooking
pot (see Tale 1, fn. 1), and the resolution of Tale 45 relies on the
use of the hero's name as a pun. Naming is itself an important
confirmation of the power of language, for by giving something a name
it can become a material reality - the "water of life"
(Tale 5), the "robe of anger" (Tale 5), the "fart"
that becomes a person (Tale 43), the name that the heroine of Tale 26
adopts ("Mistress of All and Flower of the House"), and so
on.