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| PALESTINE: Children from the nearby village are shown by vegetable crops in a field, wearing the traditional dress of the villagers at that time. In the background, the Mosque of Nebi Simwail could be seen to the west of the village. |
When
I was a small child living in our ancestral village of Beit Hanina,
Palestine, I used revel in the stories my late aunts and the elders used
to tell.
These stories could be summarized as a cross between folk
tales & what they call in the West as "fairy tales", and Greek
myths.
The tales were often handed down orally through the generations
of Palestinian fellaheen, or rural villagers, hundreds of which had
existed in Palestine for millennia, each one with it's unique traditions and culture, all bound to the land of their forefathers.
Kharareef
was the name given to these mesmerizing tales that my aunt used to tell
us.
Because our village, like many Palestinian villages in the mid
60's, had no electricity, we relied on the oral stories of our elders
for our entertainment.
We
would sit around the flickering light of a lantern and listen intently,
hanging on every word, and in the case of late aunt Zahiya (may God
bless her soul), she was a master story teller, having memorized
hundreds of ancient tales, all told in such an entertaining manner that
always left us hungry for more.
All these tales always had a happy
ending with good triumphing over evil and the hero defeating the bad,
whether people or creatures.
We would fall asleep after a night of
kharareef, comforted in the knowledge that good always triumphed over
evil, the monsters vanquished...
Which brings me back to the children of
Gaza. For over 17 months they have been living a nightmare that no story
teller could have ever dreamed of...
