Speak Bird Speak Again

by Folktales

  because the wife leaves her own family to live with that of her husband. The criterion of endogamy permits a male to marry his (patrilateral parallel) first cousin, while that of polygyny allows him, under certain conditions, to marry more than one wife.

  Patrilineality and patrilaterality define social identity for the patriarch's descendants, providing them with a ready-made basis for interacting with others, both inside the family and outside. The patrilineal bond is the foundation on which the whole system is built. Individuals are rarely ever referred to by their first names: married men with children are referred to as "Father of So-and-So" (Abu Flan), women as "Mother of So-and-So" (Imm i-Flan). Three of our tales have titles derived from this naming system (Tales 27, 33, 45). According to Palestinian practice, a full name need consist of no more than a person's, name followed by the first name of his or her father. The oldest son will usually name his firstborn son after his own father, thereby confirming for the grandfather the continuity of his line during his lifetime. Indeed, even before they are married or have children, Palestinian men may still be referred to as "Father of (name of his own father)" in anticipation of their having sons. From this practice we conclude that the ideological basis of the system lies in this father/son bond. With social identity being by definition masculine, the female is simply defined out of it. If "self" is ipso facto male, then the female becomes the Other - the outsider or stranger. Thus, for the female, conflict is inherent in the structure of the system. We shall explore female Otherness in relation to several aspects of the extended family, but first let us focus on conflictual situations arising out of the general characteristics given above.

  Polygyny serves as a good example of the dialogue we are establishing between the tales and the culture. It is one thing to state simply and objectively that the society is polygynous and completely different to observe how polygyny is treated in the tales, where its direct or implied occurrence (Tales 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 20, 28, 30, 35, 44) is greatly out of proportion to its incidence in the society. This frequency, we feel, serves an educational function, especially if we keep in mind that children are listening every time these tales are told. In none of the tales is polygyny presented in a good light. More than any other institution or practice, it represents the power of men over women, setting females in competition for the affections of the male. In the tales, as in life, it is disruptive of family unity and harmony; the only case of cooperation occurs when the wives unite against the introduction of yet another wife into the family (Tale 30). The institution is abhorrent to women and denigrated in the culture. A proverb says, "A household with one wife is a source of pride, one with two is a laughingstock, and one with three - uncover yourself and defecate!" (bet wahade faxra, bet tinten suxra, bet talate - sammir w-ixra). Fights between (or among) co-wives will, more often than not, spill out into the surrounding community, thereby causing shame and embarrassment and violating one of the most cherished of family values, that of keeping its secrets mastura, or to itself (literally, "hidden," "behind a screen").

  In a polygynous situation the stage is set for conflict the moment a man decides to marry his second wife (Tales 20, 30). If he has children by his first wife, they will raise strong objections out of respect for their mother and in defense of their inheritance. The struggle between the co-wives continues throughout the formation and growth of the family, down to - and sometimes as a direct cause of - the family's ultimate breakup. If the age difference between the co - wives is extreme, the older may save face and retain her self-respect by sponsoring the younger one, guiding her as a mother would. Publicly she might say she does not need sex, that she now has sons to look after her. If, however, the age gap is not so great, struggle is inevitable. As we see frequently in the tales, the women fight and conspire against one another, each trying to win the affection of her husband in different ways. They compete in all things, especially in producing male children. The one with more sons increases her prestige in the family and her husband's affection for her. (Note the title of Tale 3: "Precious One and Worn-out One.") If both have children, the conflict is transmitted to the offspring (Tales 5, 6). Each woman with her children forms a subunit within the family; the mothers socialize their children to hate the other group, and each woman uses her own children to manipulate the father and thereby gain advantage for them and for her (Tales 5, 28). The husband himself may stoke the fire of conflict between his wives and their respective offspring, too, by showing preference for one set over the other.

  Nevertheless, polygyny serves a useful function in the society. From the perspective of a social system that perpetuates itself through the patriarchal extended family (and leaving economic considerations aside), the purpose of marriage is to produce offspring, especially sons. A childless marriage, then, contradicts its very reason for being. Under these circumstances, polygyny enables a man to combine his personal desire to keep his first wife, whom he may love, with his duty to the family to produce children. It can best be understood in relation to the cultural view of marriage as sutra (protection) for the woman; it is economically and socially more advantageous for a woman to be married than divorced (though cases where divorce has been beneficial to the woman are not unknown), even if that means putting up with a co-wife. Polygyny is not practiced by Christian Palestinians, and for Muslims it is regulated entirely by Islamic law (saria), which restricts to four the number of wives a man may have and defines his duties and obligations to them, fair and equal treatment being of foremost importance.

  Also helpful to the understanding of polygyny is the feature of endogamy, another characteristic of the Palestinian extended family. A man's first duty in choosing a wife is to his patrilateral parallel first cousin (or, more accurately, it is the duty of the family to reserve their daughters for these cousins). In the majority of cases where polygyny is an issue, the man marries his cousin first, and when he has no children by her he mar-ties another woman (Tale 6). Only in one case (Tale 30) is sexual pleasure presented (and even there through symbol) as a motivation for polygyny. In all the tales where polygyny occurs, the men love their first wives and are loath to part with them, and the first wives are always vindicated against the others.

  Endogamy (Tales 6, 16, 21, 25) may be seen as a necessary adjunct of the social system defined by the patriarchal extended family because it combines the two major poles of relationship in the society - descent (hasab) and affinality (nasab) - under one roof. It serves the purposes of the family well because it guarantees husbands for the daughters and wives for the sons. Presumably, it forms the ideal marriage because it exercises a positive pull toward family harmony. When a man marries his first cousin, he is not bringing a stranger (cf. Tale 6) into the house; she will therefore, it is thought, share her husband's economic interest. Because both derive their identity from the same patrilineal source, it will not be easy for him to divorce her. Even when they are not related by blood, husbands and wives address each other as "cousin" (ibin ammi and bint ammi, or "son of my father's brother" and "daughter of my father's brother") and each other's parents as ammi (uncle) and mart ammi (uncle's wife).

  Occasionally, however, endogamy is disruptive of family unity. When, for example, one of two brothers living together in the same family has a son, and the other a daughter, these offspring are expected to marry. But if for some reason either set of parents obstructs the marriage, conflict is bound to ensue. If they do not marry, then something is considered to be wrong with one of them (Tale 21). In this respect, as with polygyny, the tales provide a critique of the culture, because they do not automatically reflect the prevailing view that first-cousin marriage is best. In Tale 21 a young man passes over seven of his first cousins, all of whom prove nasty and vindictive when he marries a "stranger." And in Tale 25 two sets of marriages are compared, one in which a maligned wife is actually faithful to her husband, the other in which three cousins in a row, though protesting their faithfulness, turn out to be licentious and unfaithful to
their shared husband.

  The two issues discussed thus far, polygyny and endogamy, are fundamentally related to the third feature of the Palestinian extended family, patrilocality. A woman may marry outside her family, but her in-laws will always consider her a stranger because she does not belong to the patrilineal network of relationships that define social identity for them: she is not one of them. Thus, given a choice, a woman will always prefer to stay as close to her paternal family as possible (we shall see why in our discussion of brother/sister relationships below). For unlike endogamy, which does not require but merely favors first-cousin marriage, patrilocality leaves the newlyweds no choice: the bride must move into the household of her husband. This requirement, as can be immediately perceived, has major implications for our understanding of women and their behavior in the tales. At no time in her life is a woman considered to live in her own space. When she is single, she lives in the household of her father; after marriage, in that of her husband. In the tales patrilocality is taken for granted and is not questioned like polygyny, although in one fantasy (Tale 44) the husband, who has just married the king's daughter, lives with her in a palace given to them by her father.

  Not only in kinship and space is the woman turned into the Other, but in other important areas of social behavior as well, such as the related subjects of family economy and the structure of family authority. Both of these spheres will be discussed in detail later; here we will focus on the woman's place in the structure of the family itself. The backbone of the family is a set of brothers who have grown up together and by adulthood have found their own places within the family. In the early stages of the family's formation, and before the brothers are married, they share a common goal - namely, the unity and solidarity of the family, which they recognize as the basis for their economic existence and social identity. As a unit, it also becomes their shelter and their source of strength (izwe) against the outside world. Wives are brought into the family as attachments to the brothers. If they are not first cousins, they come into an alien environment in which they are considered strangers. Their role is therefore assumed to be divisive, aimed at splitting the family up so they can form their own separate families. Thus a married woman, too, becomes the Other, for she pulls the man away from the orbit of the family as son and brother and into her own orbit as husband. Because she is perceived as a threat, her coming into the family is generally viewed with apprehension. We have several examples of this syndrome in the tales, the most outstanding being Tales 2 ("The Woman Who Married Her Son") and 7 ("The Orphans' Cow"). The conflict in these tales, in which a wife is victimized by her mother-in-law, is generated from the contradictory role a wife is supposed to play in the network of relationships within the family. The tales in these cases draw their material directly from life.

  Just because, by virtue of their gender, women do not form part of the kin group does not, however, mean that they have no power in Palestinian society. On the contrary, the power of the Other is at least equal to that of "self"; the difference is merely one of perspective. That power may express itself in various ways, the telling of tales being one of them. Women also have the power of their sexuality (see below), as we see in nearly all the tales (e.g., Tales 2, 5, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 21, 25, 35). Indeed, the tales themselves show us the power women have over men and each other: most of the tales have grammatically feminine titles, many of which are women's names (Tales 3, 13, 17, 18, 20, 26, 27, 31, 33, 42, 43), and even those that do not have feminine titles, such as Tales 14 and 43 ("Sackcloth" and "The Rich Man and the Poor Man"), concern women as the major characters. In many tales women instigate action, while the men are often passive (e.g., Tales 1, 15, 27, 29). Furthermore, the exigencies of the patriarchal system require people to prefer sons over daughters. Male children are valued beyond all other values, as a popular proverb confirms: "Pamper your son, and he'll benefit you; pamper your daughter, and she'll bring you shame" (dallil ibnak binfaak; dallil bintak bithinak). In the tales the mother's wish is almost always for a daughter (Tales 1, 8, 23). In short, these tales almost always concern, not heroes, but heroines: mothers, daughters, and wives.

  Are the women indulging in fantasy here, in wish fulfillment? We think not. No doubt an element of fantasy is involved, as is in all folk-tales. But if our hypothesis is correct and the tales do present a portrait of the culture, then their treatment of women must contain a large measure. of truth, as anyone familiar with Arab society would confirm. Besides, the position of Otherness in which women are cast endows them with objectivity; they observe the society and weave plots for the folktales from the materials of their daily experience. As the proverb quoted earlier says, "The household of the husband is an education." Older women, especially those past child-beating age, have been through a complete cycle of life in the midst of extended families that could have as many as thirty members ranging from infancy to old age - a very good school indeed. Although we shall return to this subject in our discussion of sexuality, it is relevant here to look at the connection between women's social position and the almost scabrous tone of the tales. When women are past childbearing age, they are considered asexual and hence beyond the operative social taboos concerning speech and other forms of outwardly acceptable politeness. Omitted from the formal kinship structure, women are left to define their roles in society themselves. They do so through the tales, and in other forms of folklore that in Palestine are traditionally their domain: embroidery, basket weaving, pot making, and verbal arts like wedding songs and laments for the dead. Women provide a large measure of the creative and artistic energy in the society, as these folktales amply demonstrate.

  We can better comprehend the social position of the tellers if we consider how authority is managed in the society. Authority devolves upon the individual on the basis of three criteria: sex, age, and position in the family. The greatest authority lies in the male head of the family, who combines all three: he has authority over every member of his family. Women, of course, do not benefit from the criterion of sex, but they do from the other two. By virtue of her position relative to her husband, the wife of the patriarch has authority over all the females in the family. Similarly, the wife of the eldest brother has authority over the wives of the younger brothers, even though some of them may be older than she is. Old age has authority because it commands respect and obedience. Frequently reiterated proverbs help instill this obedience in the minds of the young, such as "He who sees no good in the old will see none in the new" ('illi malos xer ib-atiqo, malos xer bi-jdido) and "A month older than you, a whole age wiser" ('akbar minnak ib-saher, 'axbar minnak ib-daher). Therefore, by the time they have become mature tellers, women have acquired not only wisdom and experience in life, but a certain amount of authority as well. This authority is reflected in the tales in the directness of approach, the earthiness of tone, and the concision of narration.

  Before we begin our discussion of family structure, a note of caution is perhaps in order. To the extent that the ensuing analysis deals with individuals in terms of the roles they play within the context of the family, it is inspired by the tales. Certainly, the notion of role is more helpful to the study of the folktale than is that of character, which is more appropriate to the analysis of short stories and novels. And indeed, from the perspective of the extended family - the social unit on which our analysis is based - individuals are important only insofar as they fulfill roles (father, mother, son, daughter, husband, wife) that help perpetuate the institution of the family. But because our thesis is that the structural patterns existing in the family generate the types of behavior we encounter in the tales, our approach is not governed entirely by the tales. In other words, we do not, in, our examination of family relationships, single out only those that occur in the tales. Rather, we address conflicts in the society that, when translated in terms of the tales, become the existential realities of the heroines and heroes. Furthermore, we do not concern ourselves only with situations that lead to confl
ict but consider as well those that are conducive to harmony. The reason is simple and compelling: the family occurs in all the tales without exception, either as theme or as background. And because our concern is to explore the relationship between the tales and the culture, we must examine the whole system of family relationships in order to provide the necessary cultural background to the tales. We thus avoid the pitfall of looking at the tales as mere reflectors of the culture but rather see them as esthetic transformations - miniature portraits of an existing social reality.

  Assuming for the purposes of the discussion a three-generation extended family, we will explore each set of relationships within it, both vertically (parents in relation to children, and vice versa) and horizontally (in relation to other members of the same set or other sets). In such a family there will be a patriarch (the grandfather), a matriarch (his wife), a set of brothers (their sons), a set of sisters (their daughters), and a set of grandchildren. Because the family is by definition patrilineal, the set of brothers constitutes its backbone, as we saw in our discussion of social identity. The sisters, it is presumed, will marry and move out, but some of them may remain single and live in their father's house the rest of their lives. Because the family is patrilocal, wives are introduced into it as attachments to the sons and share a special category of relationship - namely, that of husband's brother's wife (silfe ; plural, salafat). Beginning with the father/son relationship, then, we shall examine each relationship in turn, focusing first on its social content and then on its configurations in the tales.