Stories from Morocco

 

Arabic- and French-speaking storyteller collector Halima Hamdane gathered a couple of songs and children collection in French - with intercalated mentions in Darija, the dialect of Arabic spoken in Morocco, sharing similarities with the version spoken in Algeria, Mauritania and Tunisia. In the audio version, also read by Hamdane, the main three stories are read fully in Darija.

There is a certain cruelty in children stories, not only those ones, but in general, folktales that we read to children. One may be clearly horrified, according to current standards of humanity, anyway, by the terrific cruelty of Brother Grimm´s and this is because the primary function of those stories, at the time they entered the patrimony of humanity was not to entertain, as we do today when we read stories to our children, but to warn, educate and prepare children for life. A life that in some societies started to be real from 6-7 years old. 

Therefore, the story of the family leaving their baby in the care of a ghoula - ogre - desguised as a welcoming old lady, and the insistence of the father that the mother should not pay attention to the worrisome signs she spotted in the child upon returning home. When the father will be eaten by the ghoula, disappointed that the mother ran away with the baby is a warning of not paying attention to a woman´s wisdom.

The other story, of a mother completely out of herself with a very picky eater son, may be unacceptable by our Western standards, as the mother begs a rod to hit the son and when the rod does not comply, there is a row of other events and beings that are conjured to listen to her - after all, who will not listen to a enraged mother?. 

Last but not least, the wise Mahboul, whose successful outreach to Jamila, the most beautiful girl in the village starts with a burned almond randomly found on the street, follows a pattern one may encounter in some 1001 stories, when one situation leads to another, sometimes fully acknowledged and used in its advantage by the main hero of the story. 

This collection of stories and children songs, which I´ve read in the French version and listened to the audio in Darija, is a precious testimony of the richness of world stories. I would have been grateful for more anthropological context about the children songs which at the first and second sight do not all make too much sense. 

The illustrations of the book are inspired and colourful as well, catching up the mindset of the folktale and the local timeless ambiance.

Reading those stories to children, eventually with the additional original Darija version, may enlarge the first hand knowledge of the little ones about the diversity of cultures and languages. Hearing the intonations of a different language could be a small yet firm baby step towards acknowledging diversity and maybe killing intolerance too.

Rating: 4 stars