Khadra and Muhammad Zawaideh, Dissa, Jordan, November 2006. Photo by Caitlin Woolsey
The Wadi Rum region of southern Jordan, home to many of the country’s traditional Bedouin, is starkly beautiful, with towering mountains of jagged rock cut harshly by wind and sand, and sloping dunes of radiant pink and orange. While Jordan’s modernization had by the 1980s increasingly altered the traditional desert life of the nomadic Bedouin tribes, their rich oral tradition of stories, poems, and songs is one method by which they preserve their historical and cultural record. Oral literature’s variation, adaptability, and improvisational nature ensure its longevity, as these forms have the capacity to incorporate modern content, ideas, and language within more traditional frameworks, for instance literary tropes that reenforce communal ties and honor. Yet this same versatility also makes oral literature susceptible. If the way people live with and among one another profoundly changes, what happens to the transmission of literature that is exclusively oral, and which therefore relies on informal networks of reception?
In the fall of 2006, following several months of living with a Palestinian-Jordanian family in Amman, Jordan’s capital, I boarded a bus wearing a black, synthetic abayah and hijab in the dry, steady heat, carrying a backpack and a large plastic tote bag filled with all the drinking water I could carry for three weeks in the desert. Several hours later, the driver let me off into the waves of peachy sand along the side of the highway to the seaside town of Aqaba, in front of the auto repair shop where I found a man who would drive me the rest of the way in exchange for a few dollars. Emboldened by Lila Abu-Lughod’s firm, sensitive, and revealing documentation of Bedouin oral traditions in Egypt, at age twenty-one and with no more than a couple months of basic Arabic knowledge, I had set myself the daunting task of seeing what I could gather of Jordanian Bedouin oral traditions, simply through being present and asking questions.
Oh my family, I miss you
If my heart were a stone it would drop down to meet you
Oh you tree on top of the mountain
The gazelle is sleeping in the hot hours of the day, the sound of the rain knocks against the tree
Oh woods on the top of the mountain
She is very beautiful, all the men track her steps like wolves following the goats*
Through a neighbor of a friend of a host family member of another American student in Amman (as these felicitous breaks often seem to come about), I had made arrangements to stay with an extended family from the Zawaideh tribe, in the village of Disah (ألوجه) in Wadi Rum, because the eldest living member of the family was said to be a poet. The weeks that followed were some of the most transformative of my life. Here you may glimpse the tender spot at the center of this story, the reason I never wrote about this experience or shared these translations: the Zawaideh welcomed me into the source of their meaning—familial, cultural, historical, literary. I was profoundly reliant on the generosity of spirit and attention of individuals like Harb, Ali, Yasra, Sulaiman, and Mohammed, who did more than just recite, perform, sing, and transcribe (often for the first time) the poems, stories, and songs that they had written, learned by heart, or heard as children, because they heard my request for examples of their oral literary traditions for what it really was, even before I myself had fully recognized it as such: an invitation to share with one another. Jacques Derrida famously diagnosed the ways in which “encounter is separation”; encounter is “welcoming the other and difference into the source of meaning.”
A young prince from Damascus, in present-day Syria, was traveling in the desert when he caught sight of a very beautiful Bedouin girl and fell in love with her. The prince asked her father for her hand in marriage, and the girl’s father agreed, so the prince took her back to Damascus with him. They lived in a magnificent palace, and he gave her fine clothing and expensive jewelry. By and by, though, he was walking outside the palace when he heard the girl singing to herself:
A house into which the winds blow
is better to me than a fancy palace
The packs of dogs barking on the road
are better to me than a sweet, tame cat
Wearing an abaya and sleeping peacefully
is better to me than wearing fine chiffon
And eating a single piece of bread
is better to me than eating an entire loaf
The prince realized that the girl was not truly happy with her life in Damascus. He loved her and wanted her to be happy, so he took her back to her father in the desert. The prince gifted her with more fine clothing, camels, and other wealth, and they parted ways peaceably. The Bedouin girl returned to her previous life in the desert and the prince to his life in the palace because he loved her enough to let her go.*
In light of the centrality of the local topography in the works’ description and narration, one must have some sense of the Bedouin’s way of life to grasp the literary allusions and context. Urban Jordanians deem the remaining Bedouin tribes of southern Jordan to be backward and underdeveloped—a holdover from an older time—but the Bedouin consider themselves to be the most authentic remnants of the original nomadic peoples of Transjordan, particularly given the high percentage of Palestinians who now live in the capital city of Amman. The Bedouin also maintain that their dialect is the purest because the vocabulary and grammar of their spoken language is much closer to classical Arabic (Fus’ha) than the spoken dialect (Amiyya) of the urban centers.
The village of Disah is over twenty minutes by car on sandy tracks from the village of Rum, and about a fifty minute drive from Aqaba, where the majority of the residents travel periodically to procure clothing and household items. Disah has a handful of small shops selling produce, chickens, the local pita bread, groceries, school supplies, odds and ends, and household necessities. Proliferating olive trees, scattered clementine bushes, and small grape arbors render the small village lush compared to the monumental surrounding landscape of dry-dirt mountains and intensely peach-pink sand. And indeed, its very existence is due principally to its location above underground water sources. The nomadic, family-centered, often harsh desert-dwelling way of life is virtually extinguished. The residents of Disah, including the Zawaideh family, have not lived nomadically for at least fifty years. Today, and in 2006 when I lived with them to document their oral literature traditions, all are settled in simple, small cement houses, although they do keep tents up year-around as open-air dwelling spaces and for gatherings.
The girls’ school run by the municipality and the government, and the boys’ school managed by the army constitute most of the employment opportunities beyond subsistence farming. There are also several small tourist “desert camps” ringing the village, and many of the residents play a part in the tourist industry, whether through offering desert camel and jeep rides, guiding tours, or producing souvenirs, such as chiseled and painted stone busts. It is clear that the traditions—including the oral literature—of the Bedouin in this area are now influenced and informed by access to international mass culture. Yet while settled Bedouin such as the Zawaideh family are receptive and eager for certain modernizations—such as the institution of required English classes beginning in grade one, the availability of television satellites and cell phones, and the proliferation of refrigerators—they are much slower to relinquish certain characteristics of their past nomadic life. Most families harvest their own olives, many keep a small herd of goats to provide fresh milk and cheese, almost all continue to sleep on mats laid out on the floor at night and folded away in teetering piles during the day, and every meal is served from communal metal bowls, around which everyone gathers, sitting cross-legged or kneeling on the floor.
Education is of the utmost importance, and most of the families send both sons and daughters to university. The younger generations have a better chance of finding decently salaried work, such as computer engineering in Aqaba or teaching in local schools, if they have a bachelor’s or master’s degree. However, beyond that, higher education does not hold much possibility for social mobility or exposure, as I observed an implicit expectation that children would return to their home village to live and work into adulthood. It seems likely that this mindset arises from the integral role of kinship, wherein family comprises almost all social relations, and everyone is bound through intense familial obligations as well as a strong sense of belonging to the Bedouin legacy of the area.
This association with the tribal, Bedouin legacy of Jordanian peoples is so pronounced that a number of people with whom I spoke expressed as much solidarity with the Bedouin people, culture, and literature of Saudi Arabia as that of Jordan. Bakar, a young man in his early twenties and cousin of my primary hosts, wanted me to document a favorite poem by a Saudi Arabian Bedouin; when I tried to explain that I was seeking poems only from the Wadi Rum region, he dismissed my protest and transcribed the poem in my notebook anyway, insisting that the border means nothing because “There’s no difference. We Bedouin are all the same.” Many cultural standards, beliefs, rituals, and customs are indeed shared among various Bedouin tribes. For example, I noted many similarities of practice between the Bedouin in Disah and those of the Awlad Ali identified by Lila Abu-Lughod in the 1980s, down to the style and method of arranging the women’s traditional black headscarves. More significantly, the themes, issues, and description of the stories, poems, and songs I collected from the Zawaideh family bore a strong resemblance to documented Bedouin oral literature in Egypt, Syria, and the Arabian Peninsula.
While the Zawaideh family was already, even in the mid-aughts, relatively modernized, they also proved to hold an impressive wealth of stories, poems, and songs among them. This one family spanned the thorough-going leap of modernization: the eldest matriarch I met had never learned to read and still bore the traditional tattoos swirling around her cheeks and chin, a practice now abandoned, whereas one of this matriarch’s great-nieces, in her early twenties, was obtaining a master’s degree in engineering, an undertaking that was clearly a source of pride across generational and gender lines.
Furthermore, the interaction and transmission of this oral literature within the family, and between generations, quickly emerged as an unexpected but particularly revealing aspect of my documentation project. I quickly realized that the Zawaideh’s sociality was limited almost exclusively to other family members. Those who work outside the home have colleagues, but the afternoons, evenings, and weekends are filled with visits from assorted aunts, uncles, and cousins. Thus this perpetuation of a more traditional, isolated, closed social framework, despite settlement in the heart of a village, provides an interesting backdrop against which these stories, poems, and songs are composed, recited, and passed on.
Moreover, the Zawaideh family welcomed me with the utmost generosity, sincerity, and interest, and their own familial intimacy allowed me to form close relationships very swiftly, heightening people’s willingness to share. One evening I visited the brother of the man with whom I was staying to ask the elderly great-aunt to share some stories with me. At first, Shanta barely glanced in my direction, and she agreed to recite only at the insistence of her two grandnieces, who had accompanied me to transcribe. Yet as the evening progressed, her attention came to focus on me, and her delight clearly grew as she quizzed me on the pronunciation of various family names, frequently clucking “Ma sha’allah” with pleasure, a favorite Arabic saying which is often crooned over children, and which translates literally as “God wills it to be this way.” It was apparent that once she and I had forged a bond, however brief and fleeting, she was much more at ease, and her enjoyment in narrating the proverbs was evident.
Many, though not all, of the works I documented were recited by elderly members of the family, both men and women, yet eighty-five-year-old Salam Sabah Zawaideh, said to have been one of the first to settle in the area and a local authority on all matters, appeared to be the stalwart authority on the family’s literary traditions. On several occasions when I asked younger relatives if they knew any stories, poems, or songs, they reassured me that I should just talk to Jed (grandfather) because he knew many. One of the middle-aged sons even told me that the only stories he knew came from Salam Sabah. This authority is due in part to age and experience, but it is also the result of Salam Sabah Zawaideh’s personal interest in poetry and stories; he recited a poem composed by an old friend of his, who has since passed away, and also provided me with one of his own poems, written when he was a young man. Now profoundly deaf, with only a few teeth remaining, and a thick Bedouin accent, Salam Sabah Zawaideh sometimes interacted with me and his family members through elaborate hand signals, many of which I could not decipher. One evening after telling a traditional story, he communicated through gestures that since his last wife died three years ago, he had not recited anything until my arrival. Now, he communicated, he is beginning to tell stories again.
The Bedouin move from place to place, following the water and the grass. At one time, there were two families who had a strong relationship. The Bedouin hold a great respect for these affiliations—especially between neighbors. One family was called al-Mahadi; the father of this family had three daughters, and his neighbor had three boys. One of the girls was very beautiful, and one of the neighbor’s boys loved her and tried to win her love. He wanted to take the chance to love her, even if it was not customary or proper. The girl told her mother of his intentions, not wanting her family to be shamed, and the mother told al-Mahadi. Al-Mahadi understood the nature of the situation, so he visited his neighbor to play the game sejah. Al-Mahadi told his neighbor, “Move, or I will move.” The neighbor understood that something bad had happened, although he didn't know what. He decided to move his tents and herds, and they left in the middle of the night. Al-Mahadi did not know that they had left until the next morning. When the neighbor reached a new settling ground, he called each of his sons to him individually, asking them, “What happened to cause a problem with my neighbor? Be honest.” The son who loved al-Mahadi’s daughter admitted his error, saying, “Oh my father, I was in love with one of the girls.” When his father heard this, he angrily declared, “I am not your father anymore; you are no longer my son. You have brought our heads down low. You may not live here anymore. Leave now.” So the son fled. Al-Mahadi heard news that the neighbor had forced his son into exile, and al-Mahadi recognized that this was a sign of respect to him. Because the neighbor valued his honor and their relationship so highly, and because the boy and girl were in love, al-Mahadi decided to give his daughter to the neighbor’s son in marriage. This gesture demonstrated even greater respect to his neighbor, who had had the honor to respect al-Mahadi first. In recognition of this noble gesture, the neighbor sang a poem praising al-Mahadi’s honor:
I have had patience, but al-Mahadi has even greater patience than I, for he saved my son from many years of guilt
When he saw that his neighbor had an improper relationship with his girls, he instructed his women not to talk about it amongst themselves
If the rain water streams down from the hills into the valley, you will have this richness, and we will not.
You have the water for you and not for us
After the rain, the flats are covered with grass, and your camels can stay and graze, no one will capture them, because you are strong as a sheikh
Everyone knows that you are like a noble sheikh, you have an excellent reputation, and our families will have many years together.*
While few Bedouin stories, poems, and songs are wholly fixed and static, there are what a theorist like Derrida would call “traces” of common themes, ideas, morals, and poetic language woven throughout the scope of the oral literature. Similarity and variation of symbols and themes is an integral component of the composition and the passing on of works from generation to generation. Perhaps the most central theme to emerge is that of honor. Sentiments of honor are consistently manifest within many other themes, such as bravery in battle, familial obligations, and romantic love. The notion of honor in Bedouin life and literature has been discussed by other researchers, but the vitality of this attribute within various oral traditions, tribes, and regions speaks to its pervasiveness and authority, not only within the rhythms of daily life, but also in the content, imagery, and creative language of the literature. Indeed, the Zawaidehs’ stories, while touching on diverse themes and issues, including courage, hospitality, morality, family, and love, are all permeated by this core sense of honor.
Repeated recitations of oral stories, poems, and songs is often part of the composition process itself, for while brief verses as well as extensive epics are sometimes memorized exactly, the definitive, unchanging, memorized work is much less common than the rich variation that typically arises over time from adaptation, improvisation, and subtle as well as dramatic changes. Alan Keohane contends that the rich depth of imaginative language in Bedouin oral literature has historically been overlooked by ethnographers and literary scholars alike, yet he also argues that poetry is highly respected in Arab culture because of the central role it plays beyond its function as merely artistic expression. Keohane maintains that these oral works are vital to the continuation of Bedouin society. Oral literature enables the Bedouin to be a culture that is aware of itself, for these oral works have historically been a mode through which the non-literate Bedouin could remember their own history.
Bedouin poems always begin by describing the beauty of camels, the desert, and nature. Yet one time, a Bedouin man dared his friend to write a poem that did not describe any of these typical topics. He challenged the poet to write a poem just about coffee. The man of the house had a beautiful sister who lived with him in his home. “If you succeed,” the man of the house announced, “I will give you my sister in marriage.” In love with the sister, the poet agreed to the challenge:
Please pour the coffee three times for each guest and be generous
When you roast the beans on the fire, do it slowly, but do not let them burn, and everyone nearby will smell this delicious scent Then you must place the beans in the nigir and grind it; all people love this sound of the pestle pounding the beans
The coffee pot is white as a mushroom, and when one pours coffee from it, the stream of liquid from the spout looks like the curve of a smile
The coffee should be a color between brown and red, like blood flowing from a wound
The man of the house realized that the poet was very clever and would surely win the bet. So he summoned his sister and asked her to dress in her most beautiful clothing and then come before them. The man of the house hoped that the poet would be so dazzled by the girl’s beauty that he would not be able to concentrate and would allow his composition to wander from the topic of coffee. When the poet saw the sister, he was filled with love for her, but he continued to recite his poem:
I miss my lover, and I wish that I could drink coffee with her at this moment
When we sit together, it is as sweet as picking a rose from the bush
The man of the house accused the poet, saying, “You are not abiding by the rules of the challenge. You are describing a lover.” Yet the man of the house recognized that the poet truly loved the girl. So in the end, he gave his sister to the poet in marriage.*
The relation between the language, imagery, and ideas shared among these stories, poems, and songs reflects not only a common Bedouin ideology, but also the close interaction of the individuals who compose and recite, the way in which an established canon of language allows individuals to invent and adapt on the spot, and aids in memorization and retelling. The stories, poems, and songs I gathered from the Zawaideh typically utilize subjects and imagery which are common within the landscape of daily life. The features of the desert, local animal life such as camels and indigenous birds, tents, herds, and coffee appear frequently. The topography of the poetic language is also clearly dictated by experience. Descriptions of the mountains, sand, and the process of crossing this terrain are frequent in the conceptual imagery of poetry and song, along with the more stringently plot-based narratives. There are also references to stars and attunement to the movement of celestial bodies: in one poem, the lover is unlike anyone else because “she is like the highest, brightest stars.” In another poem, the use of a riddle referring to the phases of the moon betrays the name of the poet’s lover: “Her name is the same as that time / which comes every month, the second day of a judgment.” This evokes the custom that when two men have a disagreement, they must summon someone to judge the conflict. This man must arrive by the first of the month, which is the crescent moon, called Hilal, but if he cannot arrive by this date, he must arrive by the second day of the month, termed Thanata; this cloaked reference thereby reveals that the poet’s lover is named Thanata.
Animals are referenced for the purposes of plot, pure description, and metaphor. The gazelle, wolves, and goats mentioned in the song of the girl longing for her family not only paint a vision of the desert scenery, but also signify the characters of the poem, wherein the girl is like a goat who is pursued by predatory men (wolves), hungry to possess her beauty. In another song, the young woman describes the surrounding mountain both literally and metaphorically, for the language also seems to articulate her own sense of loss, absence, and loneliness, particularly when she sings that “the sound of the rain knocks against the tree.” Perhaps the hollow yet gentle sound of the rain mimics her inner sadness, and the scarcity of rain in the desert might also express her sense of loss and desire. Just as there must be rain, yet it comes only seldom, so the speaker longs for her family in the face of a separation which is manifest and inescapable. In another poem, the speaker is so violently in love that his emotions are “as turbulent as the sea when it is rough.” This is a particularly powerful comparison, given the desert-dwelling Bedouins’ limited experience of any large bodies of water, beyond perhaps the Gulf of Aqaba, and speaks to Salam Sabah’s own aesthetic sensibility and imagination. In the tale of al-Mahadi, the neighbor’s song eloquently praises al-Mahadi’s strength, patience, prosperity, and honor through description of and comparisons to rain: “If the rain water streams down from the hills into the valley, you will have this richness, and we will not. / You have the water for you and not for us / After the rain, the flats are covered with grass, and your camels can stay and graze, no one will capture them, because you are strong like a sheikh.” The blessing of the rainfall and the prosperity that accompanies it suggests al-Mahadi’s great patience and the sensitivity and respect with which he treated the neighbor, while his sole possession of the water in the second line speaks to the ways in which al-Mahadi is a more honorable man than the neighbor himself.
The conventional practice of utilizing common references, description, and metaphor fixes the works within the imagination of the listeners, thereby enabling individuals to remember specific images, phrases, and even entire works, as well as facilitating improvisation and adaptation. This self-conscious use of conventional poetic idiom is evident in a love poem composed by Salam Sabah Zawaideh when he was a young man. The poetic language expresses intense emotion and affection, yet the poem could apply to any beautiful young woman and the speaker of the poem could be any young man. Yet these tropes are not utilized out of laziness or a lack of artistry and imagination. Given the integrally communal act of storytelling and recitation, as well as the range of knowledge and experience among the gathered crowd, the language of oral literature must participate in prevailing linguistic and descriptive traditions, so as to be understandable to the listeners.
Furthermore, similarities in the poetic language used in these stories, poems, and songs do not indicate that the language itself is not rich and imaginative; nor does the repetition of images, metaphors, words, and phrases within different works necessarily suggest that the oral literature is limited, repetitive, or uncreative. Salam Sabah Zawaideh’s poem (noted by the translator who assisted me for its elegant, classical language as well as a remarkably consistent and fluid rhyming pattern) employs common qualities, yet in a vivid, inspired style. “My saliva is dry and sour,” a common phrase to imply the poet’s anxiety and fear that his lover will reject him, the metaphor of the lover as a beautiful, strong, noble animal, in this case a “roan mare / who runs at the front of the herd,” and the description of the intensity of the speaker’s emotion through a comparison of the heart, “which is as turbulent as the sea when it is rough,” are all examples of moving, vivid poetic imagery which still participates in a commonly understood canon of descriptive language.
Salam speaks these words from a heart
which is as turbulent as the sea when it is rough
Because I have many things tossing inside my heart
my hair is becoming grey
I am striving to find the way to reach this girl
who bewitched me with her eyes
It’s as if she kills me with a knife
and shoots me with a gun
Shattering my bones
so that I can no longer stand
My saliva is dry and sour
and my lips are chapped
If I tell you the secrets of my heart
maybe you will see everything written on my face
I love the young girl
with small breasts
She is like a roan mare
who gallops at the front of the herd
No one is like the girl that I love
she is the highest, brightest stars*
Anecdotally, the poems shared by different members of the Zawaideh family—and particularly those by Salam Sabah, the elderly patriarch of the family who has been composing poems since his youth—tended to convey more intimate sentiments than the stories. But in general, across the genres of narrative, song, and poetry, the use of standard poetic language is linked to the expressive function of Bedouin poetry. Lila Abu-Lughod excellently articulates the tension and yet indissoluble interaction between Bedouin culture and poetry: while social customs require constantly maintained honor–which includes modesty, strength, and emotional independence– individuals give voice to their personal emotions, joys, and struggles through the canon of traditional poetic language, metaphor, and verse. Yet while some individuals, like Salam Sabah, may compose more personally resonant stories and poems, the majority of the works I collected from the Zawaideh family uses more generalized or standard descriptive language and narrative. Perhaps this lack of specificity also exists because the emotional significance of the works arises from the personal situation of the individual reciting the poem or story, for the tellers and the listeners are almost always members of the same extended family or tribe, and would therefore be aware of the exclusive context of the storyteller.
Furthermore, the reliance upon customary, prevailing characters—such as the trickster, the wise judge, the noble man of the house, and the jealous wife—also emerges as a result of the communal, shared nature of these stories, poems, and songs. Given the often adaptive variation of oral literature, it is consistent that specific references, if they were ever included, would gradually be lost in the progressive telling and retelling. I speculate that even individual poets and storytellers rarely include precise or individual description, even when speaking from personal experience. Vague, commonly recognized description and characters allow for the works to hold greater significance and applicability to more people. If the stories, poems, and songs can resonate with their listeners, yet are also open enough to allow the listeners to personally identify with the emotions, figures, or ideas, this further imbues the works with a significance beyond the basic morality and thematic premise of the tale.
Indeed, many of the repeated images, ideas, characters, and plots found within Bedouin oral traditions, and specifically among the Zawaideh family’s oral literature, are related to morality, which is inextricably linked with central notions of honor. The Bedouin conception of honor is exhibited in these texts through adherence to the moral codes of Islam, including the need for honesty and fairness. Yet honor is also expressed and symbolized in difficult social circumstances, including the importance of exercising appropriate hospitality and generosity.
Collect the crops, don’t be concerned that the stalks are tall
Thrush many bundles, remember that you are gathering these crops for the sweet girls
We are the enemy of the crops and we will conquer them
My scythe is excellent, it shines when I clean it, its name is Abu Ruza I brought it from Gaza
The stalks are very tall
We must lift up our feet and work hard
This pretty girl is for the shepherd, not for you, so just focus on your work*
While the elderly often serve as the primary authorities on oral literature, particularly given the great respect paid to them in many traditional societies with no written literature, now more than ever they appear to be the bastions of their ancient oral tradition. Vast differences in education levels and exposure to global culture contribute to the divide which now exists between the older generations, who have memorized many stories, poems, and songs, and the younger generations, who are attracted to this literature, but largely unknowledgeable. The culture of oral literature still exists within Bedouin families like the Zawaideh, but transmission seems to have faltered. The ability to read and write, the (welcomed) proliferation of higher education, greater contact with the outside world, village settlement, and a general movement away from the traditional, nomadic mode of subsistence are a few of the primary factors which contribute to the dissipation of old practices which facilitated the passing on of these stories, poems, and songs.
The daily rhythms of ancient Bedouin life provided the setting and the time for this oral literature to be told and retold—every night, with the family gathered around the fire, there is little to do in the middle of the pitch black desert besides tell stories. The oral tradition may not be as central or vibrant as it once was, yet it also has not completely dissolved. The Zawaidehs are plainly proud of this rich history of stories, poems, and songs, and they continue to perform recitations. I found that when a member of the family was telling a story or reciting a poem, the young children tumbled around the room, and often an adolescent daughter was slipping in and out with a tray of tea; for the most part, though, recitation commanded the attention of those gathered.
While Salam Sabah Zawaideh related a number of stories, poems, and proverbs, several of his sisters recited songs. Interestingly, all but two of the samples I received from women were songs, whereas the men all recited stories and poems. Many of these songs are related to women’s domestic duties, and the songs intended for celebrations, such as circumcisions and weddings, would primarily be heard by other women, given the events’ sex-segregated nature. As this illustrates, there is clearly a distinction between the nature and style of the works I received from women and those from men. This is also reflected in the reception and response of the other listeners, for in one case, a young female cousin transcribed a story from an elderly aunt, but when I took the transcription to several of the adult uncles, seeking assistance with the English translation, they had difficulty understanding the handwriting and assured me that this was an example of a colloquial story without much artistic worth. “We are trying to give you the best stories,” one of them confided, “This isn’t worth translating into English.”
This encounter reveals the primary obstacle to my collection and documentation: being forced to rely upon the accuracy and integrity of my translators. My limited Arabic comprehension and fluency inevitably made the process of dictation artificial, particularly because the natural flow of the recitation was often impinged on by the need for the translator to transcribe. While I could grasp the simple premise of many of the stories, I found the Bedouin dialect exceptionally difficult to understand, particularly on the tongue of the older generations. In one situation I discovered that I was not the only one struggling to comprehend as one of the elderly aunts rasped through her recitation, for her twenty-three-year-old grandniece finally turned to me and admitted that she couldn’t understand either.
Beyond the simple problematic of comprehension, however, is a more fundamental issue. My position as a non-fluent researcher also implicitly creates a power dynamic, which Abu-Lughod has characterized as “the language of those who seem to stand apart from and outside of what they are describing.” I have attempted not to speak on behalf of the Bedouin, but I have tried as much as possible to share their oral traditions in their own words, framed through the lens of the cultural practices and principles I observed and that they took pains to explain, contextualize, and elaborate on in conversations. It is my own unease with this lingering power dynamic, despite the welcome with which I was integrated into the Zawaideh family, that led me to hold on to these documented stories, songs, and poems for so many years. Many before me have acknowledged the deeply collaborative nature of translation, even if only between the original author/text and its translator, but I felt in my stomach, on my tongue, to the tips of my ears, the deeply humbling exchange—an act of patient welcome and hospitality—that was the only reason this documentation project was even possible.
The unnaturalness of recording these stories, poems, and songs in written form must also be interrogated. Seeking to document oral literature in written form is in one sense a rupture from the inherently spoken essence of the works. Variation, adaptability, and the communal development and exchange of these oral works are essential components of this literature. Print documentation establishes a singular version of each work, thereby threatening to overshadow the intrinsically improvisational nature of the original text. Ideally, perhaps, works would be documented with audio or video, thereby maintaining their fundamentally spoken nature, but I found that most people, especially women, resisted being recorded.
With the progressive modernization of Bedouin life and the reality that oral literature is generally not being engrained in the memories of the younger generations, it is also highly possible that these stories, poems, and songs will gradually be lost as each member of the older generation passes away. While the oral transmission of stories, poems, and songs is certainly still operating within Bedouin culture, documentation may be necessary for this literature to endure.
Epigram
Someone blind from birth
He has never seen anything
He is called Sulaiman
From Zawaideh tribe
He is a poet
And he can tell the white person from the black person
It is a gift from God
He loves beauty
And he describes his lover in this poem
Every poem I finish
I make another poem from my senses and from my heart
My camel is excellent, it is never tired
whether traversing easy or difficult terrain
I am proud to ride this strong camel
if anyone cries for help, I can be there quickly
My lover has thin arms
I hope she will be merciful to me
Hair to her shoulders, her black eyes are so beautiful
they hurt anyone who sees them
Her tattoos are like skillful writing
on white parchment
Her breasts are rounded
as cups of coffee
Her teeth are white
as the hail that falls from the clouds
I swear I have not seen anything
that I have described here
She is good, kind, and sweet
and she is intelligent
Her scent is like the air
after rainfall, it pains me to smell it
Her name is the same as that time
which comes every month, the second day of a judgment
I am not the only one who loves her
everyone is suffering from love of her, even the blind man*
In its own way, the process of documenting the Zawaidehs’ oral literature was reciprocal. The longer I stayed, mostly spending my days minding babies, processing olives for oil, washing dinner dishes, or playing with the children, the more the literature surfaced. This was not only from the elder male relatives, but also from a number of the women and several of the younger generation who recalled traditional stories or proverbs recited during their own childhoods, not that many years prior. After a couple of weeks, when I returned to one family’s home after spending the night with the brother-in-law’s family, they delightedly announced that they had stayed up retelling stories amongst themselves.
The Senegalese philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne reflects on how the act of translation is never complete, and certainly never neutral: “To create an encounter between two languages is an ethical gesture.” But for a theorist like Diagne, steeped as his perspective is in the history and rhetoric of empire and colonization, particularly within Africa, Europe, and the Americas, this character of translation as non-objective is not an obstacle or an affliction, but rather the very seed of possibility. As an encounter—an exchange of meaning and ideas rather than a unidirectional conversion—translation is “a gesture of reciprocity,” even, Diagne notes, “a gesture of hospitality.”
