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Wealth From the Heart: Three Moroccan Fairy Tales
| Article
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20115 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1992 |
5,596 Words |
| Author
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Jan Knappert
Jan Knappert is a folklorist and specialist in African and
Oriental languages who is based in Belgium. |
Since antiquity, Morocco's coasts have been visited by all the great sailing nations of the Mediterranean. The ancient Greeks called Morocco's high mountain ranges Atlas, believing them to be the head an shoulders of the giant who carried heaven's vast dome. Atlas stood where the sky's edge reached the horizon, at the point where the sun set. For the peoples of the Mediterranean, that horizon was believed to be the end of the earth.
In A.D. 42 Morocco became a Roam province. Christianized in the fourth century, it remained part of the Christian world until it was conquered in aperies of Arab raids. By A.D. 800 Morocco was thoroughly Islamized, its churches, libraries, and monasteries having been completely destroyed. Settlers from Arabia imposed their language on the original population of North Africa, nomadic shepherds called Berbers, and the fairy tales of the East became widely known.
The Berbers comprised a number of tribes and sub tribes, many of whom survive to this day. They still live in the Atlas Mountains, much as they did in Roman days. Theirs is a colorful culture and folklore, and their ancient languages (over 300 closely related oral dialects of Afro-Asiatic origin) still retain Latin words. Like the three Moroccan folktales retold here in modern form, their tongues reveal the Berbers' pre-Islamic origins. In contrast to the history of the country (filled with an endless series of battle of Arabs against Berbers, prince against prince, or sultans against the kings of Spain and Portugal), Moroccan folktales are peaceful and beautiful.
The Haunted House
A certain man's first wife was taken into Allah's mercy, leaving him with six obedient and hardworking daughters. The man remarried, for it is not Allah's wish that a man live alone. His second wife also gave him six daughters, but they, like their mother, were lazy and complaining.
The father showed his love equally to all his girls, but the stepmother and her daughters grew jealous of the elder girls. The stepmother wanted to get rid of her stepdaughters but did not know how. Then, one day, a neighbor told her a story of great secrecy: "On yonder hill, hidden from the eye by a clump of trees, there is a house. Once it may have been well-built and beautiful, but now it is empty. No one dares go there, and hardly anyone ever talks about it. Whoever enters the house will stay there forever, or perhaps die, no one knows, because nobody has ever returned
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