Lebanon

Jan. 2023

Miscellaneous  5 min The Storyteller: From the Perspective of Politics, Psychology and History

Hakawaty © Canva/Sandra Wolf

In the Bible there is “in the Beginning Was the Word”. The Torah and Quran and other religious book are replete with stories. Myths and legends are common throughout the world; from African folk stories to narratives in Yemen, Egypt, the Levant, Greek stories, to the stories of India, China and the Far East. Words are a timeless force, and so is the art of a storyteller.

Words have a strong immortal power. Words sometimes grow old but they reappear in different places, in different dialects and in a new charm. So does the anecdote; it travels throughout time, history and geography across the world, shaking off some of its load and carrying something new. A tale can be found in the East and the West, in Arab, Muslim, Christian and other communities of the world in ancient and modern times. An anecdote flies and lands at various communities; in various versions but with the same roots, the names of its characters and places sometimes vary; some events also get modified, but the essence of the anecdote lives forever.

The Origin of Storytelling is Politics

The 20th March each year marks the international storytelling art day. The storyteller, as the name suggests, is the person who tells stories at a specific time and specific place and addresses a specific audience, i.e., storytelling is his profession. The linguistic root of the word ‘hadotha’ [anecdote] in Arabic is the verb ‘hadatha’ and ‘yahduth’ [happened and happening]; it is sort of a short speech. It is argued that the origin of the word ‘hadotha’ is not Arabic but Pharaonic. Also, in “toota toota khilsit al hadota” (Arabic saying said at the end of an anecdote), “toota” in Pharaonic means the end.

The Sultans have always exploited this profession as a means to promote their status. In the poetry of praise and satire, we can find a big evidence of the essence of storytelling. This is evident in the reward given to storytellers and poets when they heap praise on the sultans in their speeches, or in the punishment that poets and storytellers get when they bombard kings and sultans with accusations, epithets and attributions and criticize them in their speeches.

Socrates says, “Speak so I can see you”. As per historical and philosophical stories, Socrates didn’t leave books, but he left his verbal instructions which he used to recite to his students. He was sentenced to death and received death with the pride of a philosopher because he knew that his speeches are going to live after him. Throughout history, speech was a sword-like accusation hanging over the necks; this is evident in the case of Galileo Galilei and Giordano Bruno and in the prosecution of dramatists by the European church in the past for being spreaders of vice.

The storyteller tells his story and leaves, the listener shouldn’t put the storyteller and his story under the guillotine in a way that fits his beliefs, principles and values. That is because the folk tale is an accrued oral historical folk product, and a product of a folk, fictional and mythical imagination. This doesn’t mean that a story cannot be an individualistic expression or a non-objective storytelling individual experience. This is why the listener should feel and enjoy its pleasantness or not relish it like any other form of art.

In art, the artist should have something to tell to the world. The same applies to the storyteller who tells his story. Inside a story, there is the nucleus of an anecdote. This anecdote conveys many messages and meanings; and storytelling per se is political. This can be inferred from Kalila and Demna tales, which were written in words said by animals to evade punishment. They aimed to highlight the injustice that people suffer from, and to have a wise insight. The tales of the book lived for hundreds of years.

Anecdotes for Children

When a storyteller narrates his story, he philosophizes the whole world in his anecdote even if it was addressed to children. His anecdote carries an educational, moral, social, philosophical, or psychological meaning that the storyteller wants to tell in his own way. He may reshape the context of the story in a way that is different from that of another storyteller. Every storyteller sees the world in his own distinctive tongue.

Some people may underestimate this and say, “It is just a story no more no less with no effect whatsoever”. This is unacceptable as art, literature, carving, drawing, plastic arts, architecture, theatre, and music are all arts that spell things across the world reshaping it anew. Every time they say something new, the world is reborn. Art is like science; they are twins, and their effect on each other is inseparable.

This is why an anecdote is like practising existence; the storyteller has the conviction that his narration of the story will affect humanity and may change the course of social history. The storyteller believes that the effect of his anecdote outweighs the effects of the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima. We find that in children’s literature and specifically in the narration of the children tales, the storyteller has a special vision that forms the ideological perspective for the raising and upbringing of children in a way that he believes fits his vision of the world. For example, the repercussions of narrating a story relating to fate and destiny (Acts of God) are different from those of narrating a story stimulating freedom of choice with one’s own free will.

In this context, Palestinian storyteller, Khaled Al-Na’na’, 40, residing in Lebanon, reveals his experience of narrating to children. He says: “I feel the importance of my existence as a storyteller when I see the smile in the children’s eyes and on the children’s faces”. Since 2008, Khaled Al-Na’na’ narrates tales to children and asserts the importance of tales and their educational impact on children as “they leave an imprint on them”. He points out that a tale takes children to the world of dreams, imagination and joy. Khaled believes that “all tales contain messages but it is not my role as a storyteller, to directly show the message to the children and listeners”. He goes on to say: “my stories do not aim to change the awareness of people nor to commit them to specific views; my stories just convey a picture, no more no less”.

Storytelling and its Psychological Effects

Freud says: “Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair”. Words penetrate to the very depth of the human soul. It is enough to infer how humans attach importance to the revelation of “I love you” or the speech of a little baby when they first utter the first letters or the names of their parents. A sad person divulges his/her concerns to a friend, a lover, or a relative and when they finish they say “now I feel relieved”, or “I vented what’s inside my heart”. This is because humans need to express themselves by speaking, and need someone to listen to their speech, just as confession at the church plays its role in the purification of the believers and atonement of their sins.

My experience in storytelling moved on to hospitals and specifically to the American University of Beirut Medical Centre in the ward of elderly cancer patients, supported by TIES initiative. The project involves storytelling inside the rooms of patients. The storyteller enters rooms accompanied by a team from the society and narrates his story to the patient and their parents and moves from one room to the other allowing the patients to narrate their own stories if they want.

Some patients were touched by the stories, others smiled and laughed; some commented on the details of the story and expressed their opinion about it, while other patients shared their stories and narrated an anecdote of theirs. The story plays important and useful roles in the emotional expression of patients and leaves its effect on the consciousness of the audience. The storyteller finishes his story and leaves, but his anecdote digs deep in the psych of every individual and builds a nest in their imagination and innermost.

Yara Abu Harb, 39, founded TIES initiative in partnership with Ghida Fadlallah in 2017. The initiative aimed to provide entertainment and psychological support to patients through arts. Yara says: “we were impacted by Covid-19, so we had to decrease our programmes in order to limit contact with patients as much as possible”. She goes on to say: “the experience of presenting online artistic programmes to patients was better than stopping work and entering the state of monotony”. However, it soon became evident that patients preferred face-to-face programmes because they provide a space for interaction and exchange of ideas and feelings. The initiative programmes used to include sections of a mobile storyteller, music, drawing, handcraft, and breathing exercises. Yara points out that “artistic sections including that of the storyteller had positive effects”, especially when the objectives of the programme were related to the title of the initiative “confidence, inspiration, encouragement, and power”.

The Reality of Storytellers in Lebanon

Since 2014, active work started in Lebanon to revive the profession of storytelling, and many associations took initiatives including Al-Jana, Taawon, and Al-Sabil. A group of Lebanese, Syrian, Palestinian as well as other storytellers of other nationalities were trained. Festivals and parties in cultural coffeehouses, theatres, schools, public libraries, and refugee camps followed. A group of experienced storytellers like Jihad Darwish, Shereen Al-Ansari and others undertook the training of teams. The idea was revived and the audience in Lebanon and Beirut received it without reservation.

However, the political and economic conditions, in addition to Covid-19 pandemic, had its toll on these efforts; and momentum regressed since 2019, while some remote individual storytelling initiatives or filming stories and sharing them on social media platforms emerged. In this context, the executive co-ordinator of Al-Sabil association in Lebanon, Ali Sabbagh, 44, points out that “our work in Al-Sabil association set out in public libraries with the purpose of preserving the oral tradition by collecting and documenting folk tales, then training storytellers to relay these tales orally to the audience”.

Ali refers to performing many storytelling festivals in Lebanon as they toured the Lebanese cities in 2018, after training and building the capacity of more than 12 male and female storytellers of the new generation. They organized performances in theatres, cultural coffeehouses and public libraries. Ali goes on to say that “Arab storytellers were invited, which provided them with the opportunity to meet and coordinate together”.

He believes that the interaction of audience “was so nice and sometime seats were full”. He adds: “we believe in this project and we are considering implementing future projects when appropriate circumstances arise”. According to Ali, “the movement is promising if efforts are concerted to revive this art again”.

He asserts that the process of collecting tales from people in cities and villages is very important, especially that these tales pass on from generation to another. Also, the process of publishing and documenting these tales in books is important. However, he states: “the fact that there is a decline in reading compels us to conduct these performances and pass these tales through the tongues of storytellers”.