“I think he should marry her, and they should keep her secret together.”
“A wise answer,” said the girl, “and an unusual one for a man. Many men would have said—she is a witch; drive her away; burn her. But you understand that when people love each other, not only do they give up their secrets, they learn new ones as well. May you also find someone who will give up a secret for you.”
In the morning the king and queen came in and asked the two witnesses what had happened, and both of them said, “Your Majesties, last night your son spoke!” Again the queen was overjoyed; but the king still didn’t believe it. “I insist on one more test,” he said, “with three witnesses.”
And so the same thing happened for a third night. The girl, the prince and the three witnesses sat together quietly for a long time. Finally the girl turned to the witnesses and said, “Please, my friends, tomorrow I may face my death. Tell me a story to give me courage to face my death.”
“We have no stories,” they all said.
“Would you listen to my story if I told it to you?”
They agreed to listen and the girl began:
Once there was a man who dreamed of firebirds. One day when he was in the woods there was a great flash of golden light. He hid behind a tree and closed his eyes. When he dared to look he beheld a beautiful woman taking off a suit of golden feathers and stepping into a pool to bathe. He gazed at her loveliness. Then he reached out and stole her golden feathers and hid them away. When the woman came out of the pool she searched for them but could not find them. The man came out of his hiding place and said, “Come with me and I will give you shelter.” The woman knew that she could not fly away and so she followed the man through the woods to his house. He had a good house, and he was gentle, and she stayed with him. One day she gave birth to a child, a little boy. She loved her son very much. The boy was about five years old when he came running to his mother, one day when his father was away. “Mama,” he cried, “I was playing in the woods and I found something pretty! Come and see!” The woman went with her little boy. They came to a tree, and there in a hollow place she found her golden feathers, blazing with their golden light. She picked them up and went back to the house with her son. She sang him lullabies and put him to sleep. With one hand she stroked the little boy’s hair, and with the other she held her golden feathers.
And here the girl stopped her story and said, “I have a question for you. Now that the woman can fly again, what should she do?”
The three witnesses shook their heads. “We don’t know,” they said, “that is the hardest riddle of all.”
But the prince had been listening very carefully and he opened his mouth and said, “I have an idea.”
“I am pleased to hear you say that,” the girl said. “What is your idea?”
“I think that it is not up to me to judge the woman of your story, nor can I judge the man. Your story is both bitter and sweet at the same time. If I were the man in your story, and could see the firebird in her true form, I think that I too would do anything to keep her with me. And if I, like the woman, had once come from the sky, I think that I would never lose my desire to return to it.”
“A wise answer, O prince,” said the girl. “Some stories are not meant to be judged, but only to be heard and remembered. The woman kissed her son, stepped outside, put on her golden feathers and flew away. When the man returned, the woman was gone.”
“And what happened to her little boy?”
“Some people say that when he woke up and found his mother was gone, he cried so much that he lost his voice and became silent. And other people say that when he awoke he found a golden feather shining on his pillow, and this feather brought him luck and joy and courage and love for the rest of his life.”
In the morning the king and queen came in and the three witnesses all agreed: “Last night,” they said, “your son spoke!” The queen was jubilant and the king also believed them. They turned to the girl and said, “You have done what no man was able to do. What would you like as your great reward?”
For the first time, the girl was silent. All this time she had not been thinking about her reward, but only about her stories. The prince rose and walked towards her. He took her by the hand and lifted her up and looked her in the eyes. “Choose me,” he said.
And the girl said, “I have an idea. I’ll take him!”
So it was that they were married. It was a grand celebration. In the seat of honour was the girl’s grandmother. She was holding a big bouquet of wild herbs and flowers that she’d picked that day in the woods. As the girl walked by, the grandmother handed her the flowers and said, “You see, you should always listen to your granny!”
On the ninth night the father told his son the story of “Ali the Persian’s Bag.”
Long, long ago there lived in the city of Baghdad a mighty Caliph named Haroun al-Rashid. He loved to walk through the streets of his own city in disguise, peering in through garden gates, eavesdropping at secret windows, listening to the stories his people told. But he had trouble sleeping at night. One night as he tossed and turned he called his vizier Jafar and said, “Jafar, my heart is heavy. Find some way to lift my spirits.”
“I hear and obey without delay,” said Jafar. “I happen to have a friend known as Ali the Persian. He is a renowned storyteller, and if anything can lift a troubled heart it’s a good story. I will bring him to you.”
When Ali the Persian came before the Caliph he bowed and said, “Your Majesty, would you like to hear a story about something I heard, or something I saw with my own two eyes?”
“Tell me the truth,” said the Caliph.
“I will try,” answered Ali. “I will tell you of something that happened to me the other day. I was standing in my shop in the marketplace when I noticed a man from Kurdistan come in. He looked at this and he looked at that, and finally when he thought I wasn’t looking, he picked a bag off the shelf and walked out without paying for it. I followed him into the street, seized him by the sleeve, and began shouting, ‘Shoplifter, shoplifter! Give me back that bag!’
“‘Never!’ he cried. ‘This bag is mine. Yesterday someone stole it from me, and today I found it in your shop!’
“We began to quarrel and a crowd gathered around us. They took us to the courtroom of the local cadi, the district judge, who looked at us both and said, ‘What is the cause of this dispute?’
“‘This bag is mine,’ I said, ‘and this fellow stole it!’
“‘No, no,’ said the Kurd, ‘the bag is mine and I found it in the man’s shop.’
“The judge said, ‘For me to come to a proper judgement, you will each have to tell me what the bag contains.’
“‘I can tell you what it contains,’ said the Kurd, ‘because it is my bag. It has:
a silver jar of eye-shadow
two make-up brushes
a candlestick
two lemonade glasses with gilded rims
a waterpot with two ladles
a small carpet with two matching cushions
plus:
a pregnant cat
a jar of rice
two sacks of wheat
a bedroom suite
a female bear
a racing camel
a canopy
a kitchen with two doors
and a company of Kurds—
and they have all concurred that the bag is mine!’
“When I heard this nonsense I said to the judge, ‘Your Honour, do not let your judgement be blurred by the absurd words of this false Kurd you’ve just heard! The bag is mine and I can tell you what’s inside. It has:
a house in ruins
a school for adolescent delinquents
a dog kennel
four chess players
tents and tentpoles
the city of Basra
the city of Baghdad
the ancient palace of Shaddad ibn-Aad
a smithy’s forge
a shepherd�
��s crook
a fishing net
five handsome boys
twelve delightful girls
and one thousand leaders of caravans—
and every single one of them will tell you that this bag is mine!’
“The Kurd burst into tears. He said, ‘Most honourable magistrate, do not let your mind be misled by the malice of this mendacious Middle Eastern merchant! The bag is mine and only mine and it contains:
one stone fort with fourteen towers
thirty-two alchemical powers
four more men playing chess
a mare and a stallion and a newborn foal
a lance
a rabbit
a roaring lion
three kings from the east
two courtesans and a comedian
a rabbi with two cantors
a priest with two deacons
a mullah with two servants
a captain with two sailors
an honest man with two liars
and a judge with two witnesses
and both of them will swear and testify that the bag is mine!’
“When I heard this nonsense my fury rose to my nostrils (and believe me, Commander of the Faithful, it hurts to have your fury right up your nose), and I cried out, ‘O Judge, the bag is mine and it has in it:
lotions and potions
philtres and enchantments
miracles and wonders
shades and phantoms
a garden with figs and apples
grapes and vines
whispers and cries
murmurs and sighs
nibbles and giggles
two lovers rising from their bed
a loud blast from behind
two quiet poofies
plus:
rahatlokoum
and babaghanoush
and imambaldi
and green eggs and ham
and baklava
and toasted pita
and double-cheese pizza
and a parade with drums and banners
flags and flutes
singers and dancers
and a man playing the clarinet
and a plank
and a nail
and one thousand silver coins
and the city of Kufah
and the city of Gaza
and the old children’s library behind the plaza
and it also contains
all of the land that stretches
from Cairo to Jerusalem to Damascus to the Middle
Kingdom to Isfahan
In addition to which, my bag contains:
a foolish shopkeeper
a noble Kurd
a sleepless Caliph
a brave girl
a wise granny
a silent prince
a warrior who fights without swords
plus, the sun and the moon and darkness and rain
and a human heart born crying
and seven old men
and a curious traveller
and a sick princess
and a dream-bird Colour-of-Time
and a primrose
and a green mist
and two soldiers
and a blue butterfly
and tortoises, stones and human beings
and a little boy who ponders deep riddles
and a father who loves him
and an angry king
and an anxious storyteller
and happy listeners
and the greatest fiddler in the world
and loud clapping
and more loud clapping
and also
a coffin
a shroud
and a razor for the beard of the cadi
if he does not agree the bag belongs to me!’
“The judge looked puzzled as he listened to our amazing lists. The he said, ‘Either the two of you are making fun of the law and its representative, or this bag is as deep as the Abyss and as all-encompassing as the Day of Judgement itself. I see that I shall have to open the bag and see for myself what it contains.’ And he opened the bag and looked inside.”
And the father said to his little boy, “What do you think was in the bag?”
And at that point the Storyteller fell silent. The king grew impatient. “Don’t stop there,” her said. “Go on!”
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty, that is the end of my story.”
“That is not a good place to stop your story, Storyteller! You haven’t told me what the father told the little boy Ali the Persian told the Caliph Haroun al-Rashid the judge found inside the bag! You’ve left everything in suspense.”
“I cannot tell you the rest, Your Majesty, because I do not know how this story ends. You see, I am the father in my story and my own son is the little boy. I was telling him that story of Ali the Persian tonight when your guard came to summon me to your presence. I had just asked my son the question, ‘What do you think the bag contains?’ when I was interrupted and had to leave without hearing his answer. I was going to make his answer the ending of my story. If I had known I would never see my little boy again, I would have given the story my own ending—but what person knows the hour of their own death? Not even kings, not even storytellers…”
“If you die tonight you will never hear your son’s answer.”
“Well, perhaps he will become a storyteller himself one day, and tell his answer to a new listener.”
“Storyteller… Storyteller, you will not die tonight. You will go home and hear your son’s answer. Let your return be the tenth story you promised him, and let it have a happy ending. You have shown me tonight what had been hidden from me. There is a risk in life and a risk in stories. The teller and the tale are one and cannot be separated, for each shelters the other. I see now that only Worldmaker knows the last word in our story, not kings… or storytellers.”
“You are merciful, Your Majesty.”
“By the way, what did the judge find inside the bag?”
“What do you think, O King?”
“Oh… probably just a few olive pits, a dried crust of bread, an orange rind… and a good story.”
“You are right! That’s exactly what the bag contained. And when Ali the Persian and the Kurd heard this, they both laughed and said the bag wasn’t theirs after all. And when the Caliph Haroun al-Rashid heard the story the pain was lifted from his heart, and he laughed and laughed and laughed.”
AFTERWORD
I WAS ONCE TELLING STORIES to a group of seven-year-olds, and when the program was almost over one little boy hollered exultantly, “Never finish!” Perhaps this is the whispered, peek-a-boo truth of stories: life ends and stories, too; but stories end in their own good time and with as much “working around” as the teller can fashion, and even in the silence afterwards they are able to keep speaking to us. Stories let us hear the footsteps of our own transformation coming towards us on the pathway of everyday life. We learn from our stories how to dream, tell and remember beyond our own ending, and this may be as close as we can get to never finishing.
APPENDIX: STORYTELLING RESOURCES
THIS APPENDIX is an informal tour of a storyteller’s working library rather than a comprehensive bibliography. Instead of a systematic survey, I invite you on a brief ramble through a library that is a work-in-progress, assembled with more love than scholarship.
There are gaps on the tour, and glaring ones at that. I’ve mostly left on the shelf the classic authors of storytelling literature—Perrault, the brothers Grimm, Andersen, Kipling, Joseph Jacobs. They are good and essential, but there are already many guides to lead you to them. And I won’t be walking you through the growing field of storytelling “how to” books, the psychology shelf (although I have read and enjoy Jung, Bettelheim, Bly and Pinkola Estes) or the vast number of audio recordings. As for Internet resources, aside from suggesting a few websites that connect you to storytelling in North America and around the world, I leave this kind of W
eb-based research to your own double-clicking ingenuity.
I’ll begin with some of the books I keep returning to for ideas and inspiration. Walter Benjamin, an essayist and philosopher, wrote a wonderful piece called “The Storyteller.” Using the Russian writer Leskov as his example, Benjamin explores the nature of oral storytelling, as an art and as part of everyday life. If you are interested in the relationship between orality and literacy, you will find the oldest and best evocation of this eternal puzzle in Plato’s Phaedrus. Socrates was truly a great storyteller, and in this dialogue he tells a myth that illuminates the moral consequences of telling and writing as modes of human expression. Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah offers the best example of African oratory I’ve ever read. It is thrilling to see how Achebe’s elder weaves traditional stories and proverbs into the troop-rallying speech in the middle of the book. Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities is one of my favourite books. In it, Marco Polo tells Kublai Khan a series of yarns about imaginary places. This great modern fabulist also collected and wrote Italian Folktales, one of the greatest collections of traditional oral literature compiled in the twentieth century.
I think the three books that have most influenced me are Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, and Thousand and One Nights. I am continually astonished by the way these authors and, in the case of the Thousand and One Nights, editors, drew on their lively and sophisticated oral cultures to create such literary masterpieces. I go back to these three medieval sources constantly for inspiration, story ideas and a sense of why oral stories matter.
I came to storytelling via Homer’s epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. There are many superb translations available, though the Robert Fitzgerald translations have always seemed to me to be particularly fine. Although they came from a literary more than an oral tradition, the Icelandic sagas are wonderful ways to learn about long, interwoven narratives. In these complex, moving stories, the heroes and heroines pursue their difficult destinies across a harsh northern landscape. Other classics of long narrative include the Arthurian stories of the Grail, the Mahabharata, the Welsh Mabinogion, the Nibelungen saga, and Gilgamesh, one of the oldest recorded stories in human history. Although I don’t tell stories from these cycles, I go back to them for a sense of their sheer grandeur and imaginative range. They have also proven a rich source for contemporary storytellers, and I have heard performances of all of them in concert settings. I love to listen to long stories.
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