A KING Abdul Aziz University professor in English Literature, Dr. Lamya Baai'shin has for years now pursued her dream of unearthing the folk-tale heritage of the Hijaz. She has collected tales from female elders, stories that slipped through the gaps of the traditional “rowasheen” window gratings into the alleyways below. Her book “Al-Tabaat wa Al-Nabaat” (Happily Ever After) and her audio book whose title is taken from the name of a children's song, “Douha”, have struck a chord with many people. And all this has been her own labor of love, based solely on her personal efforts alone, while hoping to see an organized body give backing to the project and open the way for those who wish to work towards saving their cultural legacy. You study what may be called the “oral heritage” of the Hijaz. How do you approach your work in this field? The Hijaz, like many regions in the Kingdom, has a long and deep-rooted history, and its inhabitants have left the mark of their presence and their thoughts. Oral tradition is one such mark, but a somewhat intangible one since it is basically a spoken expression. But, that is not to play down its importance as a cultural legacy worth holding on to, or worth studying, theorizing about, and reviving. I take a scholarly approach to Hijazi oral culture based on field research, gathering data, study and investigation, with the goal of preserving its essential characteristics and saving it from being lost forever. We are a people who found ourselves faced with waves of change and development, and we got swept along with them, leaving in our wake our true wealth: our cultural thought which has been passed on from person to person for centuries whose worth has been proven through its very survival. I see oral heritage as a branch of native culture that respects its past and builds on it towards a future that bears its characteristics. Do you not find it strange that your field is English literature and yet you've dedicated so much of yourself to folk heritage, particularly its tales and song? How would you explain that? There's nothing strange about it whatsoever, as literature is from its inception a form of folk speech. Theatre is a tale, the novel and poetry are songs. Folk expression is a creator of myths and feeds the imagination, and in its simpler forms one finds the beginnings of metaphorical arts and artistic portrayal. To tell the truth, my literature studies informed me of the value of oral heritage, and my interest in it and my desire to prevent it from being lost forever began during my doctoral studies. That was when I realized that the lullabies my aunt used to sing to me every night were in fact the foundation blocks of the narrative and theatrical arts as we know them today. How do you view the general lack of knowledge and interest, both socially and culturally, in the artistic and academic value of folk tales? With a great deal of sadness. There are many who think I'm just trying to fulfill my nostalgia for the past and embalm something that's actually long dead. There's no need, they say, to dig up something whose time has passed. There are erroneous and unhelpful views of what I do that see oral folk tales as pleasing only to older generations who lived them and whose eyes well up when they now read “Happily Ever After” and listen to “Douha”, and so don't see the relevance of these stories to the new generations who are too “cool” and “with it” for them. Some people question how relevant these folk tales can be for today's children and are slightly fearful of the superstitions and alarmist nature of many of the tales. This degree of caution amazes me given that the same fear doesn't exist towards Disney fantasies and the like, or towards cartoons and wild adventure stories such as Harry Potter, for example. That's not to say I'm against these foreign productions, but why do we accept them without question and at the same time fight elements of our own heritage as if accusing it of being backward and of no benefit to anybody, even though the imaginative aspects are one and the same? Could it be said that we, as a society, have split, emotionally, from our cultural heritage? We are standing at a crossroads, in that we are still in the balance between the past and present, but if we continue ignoring and being ashamed of our cultural past while being fascinated by everything that that arrives from beyond our borders such that we completely abandon our heritage, then yes, we will leave it behind for good. At the moment we are in a position to make a choice. That's why we have to increase awareness of the need to look again at our cultural past, study and evaluate it while the people who still find pride in it and have a love for it are with us. We are at a critical moment of choice. If we continue as we are, it is not unlikely that we will become a grotesque imitation of others, belonging emotionally to a foreign society, while being part of neither one nor the other. What can we do to rediscover this heritage and restore its influence on our emotional life and, from another aspect, nullify the sense of superiority over folk heritage that is sometimes found particularly in cultural themes? Do you know what cultured societies do to preserve their culture and identity? Or what modern societies do that have no such culture? The question is more complicated than simply promoting enthusiasm and communicating with people through speeches and lectures. Anything that we want to lead us to a specific goal needs to be planned and organized. Give me a well-backed centre for cultural heritage with specialists in social studies and folklore and art and literature and you'll be amazed at what can be achieved! Without that, individual efforts will continue to be like clapping with one hand. If a university opened a cultural studies department and sent its students across the country to carry out serious studies, the public would begin to realize the importance of the subject and begin to do something to preserve it. It's not enough for some newspaper to occasionally give space to some aspect of folk culture or a writer concerned with such things. Nor is it enough for the radio to now and then broadcast a program with a folk art leaning. These are pale echoes of the original sources and don't give serious critical analysis to the subject. They fail to promote the need to preserve and revive, and fail to show the beneficial nature of the practice of folk heritage, and how it can be employed to become a sustainable cultural source. What are the troubles and conflicts at the essence of popular tales, and can this essence raise the tales to the level of refined artistic creation? There are many conflicts in popular Hijazi narrative but the most important are always the internal conflicts and sufferings of the individual spirit. Most tales involve a spiritual struggle against envy and disparage the character who seeks ill-gotten gains from his brother or neighbor and expends great effort in the pursuit of such goals at the expense of other people. Hijazi tales ruthlessly embody characters that can't carve out their own paths in life, but instead lie in wait for others and follow in their footsteps, imitating them in order to gain a means of living. These are important moral foundations, but the deeper message is to be different and innovative and go where no one has gone before. This, of course, is only one of many recurring themes, but perhaps the one that stands out the most. Others would include conflict with authority, getting out of tricky situations, challenging the class system and so on. These subjects can only rise to the level of artistic achievement when dealt with creatively. They simply present the raw material to work with, and as such will remain a mere possibility until someone comes along to work with them. What remains of the traditional practice of Hijazi folk tales in Jeddah, and what are its customs and fields of implementation? I am still occasionally surprised when I come across young people with tales they say they heard from their mothers or grandmothers when they were young. Narrative art may still have resonance, but with the dispersing of old extended families into smaller units, the environment for popular folk narrative has been lost. Also now each person goes to sleep alone in his own room, unlike before when groups would sleep together. There are many who say that folk stories were part of the process of preparing for sleep, and there's a lot of truth in that, that they were just for getting children to sleep, but they were also part of daily life. Women would tell each other what they'd heard on their visits, just as men would also retell stories from house to house. A tale, in the hands of a capable narrator, had the same role that a film or soap opera has today. A skillful storyteller, whether male or female, can capture the audience's attention, bring a story's characters to life and get the audience to identify with them. He can make his audience laugh and cry. He will sing and moan and mimic the characters. The storyteller was the center of attention day and night at home and in coffee houses and at women's gatherings, as well as on the roof of the house at bedtime. How can this art – this beauty – be offered to new generations now? Could it be presented in an updated version, and can that even be done? Of course cultural heritage can be modernized, and can be employed in innumerable ways, and if today we still have narrative, theatrical, and poetical arts it's because our cultural past has not been forgotten but has continued to be malleable dough in the hands of creative people who have molded it and remolded it across the ages until it changed and developed and resisted becoming set in stone due to its renewability. You would appear to be working on individual effort alone. Is this something you enjoy, or do you feel that you lack official backing? I have a project and a message, and its my love for that project and belief in the message that keeps me going. However, individual efforts, as enjoyable as they are, are not enough to achieve the wider goals. I truly hope that a government or non-government body will come forward to help me and my project, listen to our needs and open the field for others who wish to work in preserving our culture. I have been able to rely in my work on highly talented young Saudi men and women such as the amazing musician Abdul Aziz Futaihi, who has brought new life to folk song, for example. And there is Aala Madhar, who designed the cover for “Douha” with a wonderful blend of the old and the new, and Ayman Fada, who put the soundtrack to the albums “Happily Ever After”, as well as the girls who sang the old folk songs so passionately. I'm hoping to see a group dedicated to the development of our cultural past in its various forms brought under the umbrella of a single institution, one that believes in the value of the foundations of cultural heritage as a path towards the future. – Al-Watan __
