Eastern Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page B

and maintained by professional storytellers called in Arabic
al-hakawati
* —often known popularly as
rawi
or “reciting storytellers”—who made their living by relating stories for paying customers. Somewhat like the Book People in Ray Bradbury’s classic
Fahrenheit 451
, the
rawi
either memorized stories wholesale from other storytellers or manuscripts, or read them from bought or borrowed copies. Since tales that were actually written down were deemed superiorto simple verbal stories, it appears that many
Alf Laila wa Laila
tales were read from personal or loaned written copies, with the storyteller adding individual flourishes or alterations appropriate to the place or occasion of the recitation.
    More than simple reciters, many
rawi
were akin to theatrical performers, employing props or costumes to assist their recitations or accompanying themselves on musical instruments to create a mood and maintain their audience’s attention. Alexander Russell, a British physician working in Ottoman Syria during the mid-eighteenth century, gives a vivid description of the working methods of these entertainers:
    It is not merely a simple narrative; the story is animated by the manner, and action of the speaker. A variety of … story books … furnish material for the story teller, who by combining the incidents of different tales … gives them an air of novelty…. He recites walking to and fro, in the middle of the coffee room, stopping only now and then when the expression requires some emphatic attitude.
    Frequently, Russell tells us, the storyteller will act like Scheherazade herself, when “in the midst of some interesting adventure, when the expectation of the audience is raised to the highest pitch, he breaks abruptly, and makes his escape from the room,” leaving the tale unfinished and forcing listeners to return the next day to hear the conclusion or next instalment.
    Operating first in marketplaces, where they competed for audience attention with conjurors, jugglers, acrobats and shadow-players, most
rawi
eventually moved into the new coffee houses that began appearing in the Muslim world during the sixteenth century. On special occasions such as festivals or family celebrations, storytellers might also be invited inside palaces orprivate homes to ply their trade. But whatever the venue, for a few coins and the odd word of praise, the
rawi
enthralled listeners with all manner of stories, some taking many hours to relate. Although of low social status, over the centuries they nevertheless performed an invaluable service for the eastern community by providing not only entertainment but also moral lessons, social instruction and tutelage in Islamic beliefs for a mostly illiterate population.
    As vital components of Muslim society, the
rawi
maintained their profession unchanged up to the twentieth century, and can still be found in a few select places, such as the famous Djemmaa al-Fna Square of Marrakech, Morocco, or parts of Iran. Today the linear progression from storyteller to modern Arab literati is direct and unbreakable, symbolized by an alliance of Arab-American writers that has assumed the title RAWI (for Radius of Arab American Writers Inc.). Contemporary eastern writers continue to employ concepts of storytelling in their work. In Naguib Mahfouz’s
Arabian Nights and Days
, Scheherazade’s stories are reconfigured into a narrative involving the havoc wrought on a town where
Arabian Nights
characters live and interact. In Tahar Ben Jelloun’s
This Blinding Absence of Light
, political prisoners languishing in a Moroccan jail maintain their sanity by repeating film scripts or tales from the
Nights
to one another. In Salman Rushdie’s children’s classic
Haroun and the Sea of Stories
, the novel’s crisis is prompted by the silencing of the protagonist’s storytelling father, Rashid Khalifa, and a threat to the actual ocean of tales from which