by Folktales
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 boo
ks 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.
Ambiguity concerning the ultimate status of action is a critical feature of all folktales. On the one hand, Palestinian tellers do resort to narrative distancing devices to put the action in the realm of fiction. On the other hand, by concretizing the supernatural they manage the opposite effect, locating fictional entities in the domain of the real. The out-of-the-ordinary locations in which tellers like to place the action are, as we have pointed out, essential aspects of plot in nearly all the tales. These places cannot, of course, be reached by mere human effort: the protagonists, on their way to retrieve some magical object vital to narrative continuity, must seek assistance from supernatural beings. The ghouls and jinn who populate these tales, however, do not act merely as donor figures. They also assume fully human roles as fathers (Tale 20), husbands (Tale 16), lovers (Tale 12), daughters (Tale 8), sons (Tale 40), wives (Tales 17, 30, 32, 37), sisters (Tale 8), mothers-in-law (Tale 34), aunts (Tale 29), and mothers (Tale 18). These supernatural beings are not only creatures of the imagination but also part of people's experience in life. In presenting them, Palestinian tellers, who can rely on the audience's belief in their reality, do not have to use distancing devices to help suspend disbelief. And it is precisely this absence of distancing devices in connection with these creatures that gives the tales their special character, adding to the ambiguity in the action and thereby making the task of interpretation more difficult.
Action is of course organically connected with the hero and plot in the tales. As we have seen, the Palestinian folk do not conceive of this world in terms of unmitigated good or evil. By humanizing supernatural creatures, the tales remove them from susceptibility to facile moral judgment. In Tale 22, for example, the ghouleh is kinder to the hero than is his own mother, and in Tale 12 the magic bird is more trusting of his wife than she is of him. It is therefore more appropriately the balance of forces proper, rather than an assortment of capricious supernatural beings, that controls rewards and punishments in this world. The plot is set into motion when this balance is disturbed. The agents of this balance are the heroines and heroes, who, much like the supernatural creatures with their human dimension, themselves have a superhuman dimension. Whether in fulfillment of individual desire or in serving the community, they undertake difficult journeys and seemingly impossible tasks. Because every action in life has its consequences, the events of plot - of their journey, of their deeds - are narrative manifestations of this balance of forces. Resolution is not achieved until all the forces that have been set into motion are neutralized and a new balance is achieved. If a wish is articulated, it must be fulfilled; if a vow is made, all its conditions must be fulfilled. By thus removing an absolute scale for judging action, the tales, despite their reliance on
the paraphernalia of the supernatural, throw the onus of responsibility on human beings. In their very essence, the tales affirm a human reality.
The concept of plot in the tales is an artistic imitation of the unfolding of fate. Or, viewed the other way around, belief in predestination implies that the plot of human, and therefore individual, destiny has been planned from the very beginning. In life, human beings tread a delicate balance between the powers of good and evil. The future is predetermined, yet it is unknowable. And because fate is sealed, causality is eliminated. Chance thus becomes an essential aspect of plot in the tales precisely because this plan for the universe exists - even though human beings do not know what it is. Every event has a meaning in relation to the unfolding story of the world. Taking this thought a bit further, we can say that only chance is meaningful in the tales because, in the absence of causation, heroes and heroines have no interiority. There is no space in their world for reflection. They do not know, nor can they evaluate, the meaning of their actions. They are their actions, as the names of some of the tales make so dear (e.g., Tales 1, 2, 3, 31, 32, 42, 43).
So far in our discussion we have distinguished between the specific contribution of the culture and that of the genre itself, with its concomitant plot requirements for any particular tale type. From that perspective, we considered briefly the documentary aspect of the tales - that is, their relation to the social context. Now, as we study plot structure and the meaning of action, we observe a congruence of the traditional, predominantly Islamic Palestinian worldview and the significance of action in the tales. The equation we make between the concept of plot in art and the doctrine of predestination in life may be verified from the metaphor alluded to earlier, "It is written on the forehead," that is used to express the notion of a preexisting order. Life from birth to death is like a story authored by God, who breathes life into the soul at conception and sends the angel of death at the end. All folktale readers are familiar with the tale that begins with the prediction of how a newborn will die, a prophecy that is fulfilled regardless of the parents' efforts to frustrate the inevitable. For obvious reasons, this folktale is very popular in the Arab world, for it articulates one of the most profound and cherished attitudes the people hold about the meaning of life. Human beings are God's slaves (abid ; sing., abid), and they can no more attempt to change their fate than can folk heroes and heroines alter the laws of folk narrative (see especially the tales included here in Group V). Those individuals who succeed most fully in embracing their destiny unquestioningly are, then, the heroines and heroes of our tales.
