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The Iraqi culture of “Thousand and one Nights”
–2
Faleh Saleh
part1
Stories and
fairytales that are used to give advise or wise saying are
usually short. They have seldom entertainment purpose, although
some of them are funny. They are used as I mentioned before
in conversations and can be, to some extend, compared with
legends from the Occident culture.
The cultural aspect of stories:
People in Iraq don’t like to be criticize.
If you criticize somebody directly you might offend him, even
if your criticizing is legitimate.
Therefore people tend to imply their criticism or advice in
the stories they tell. By doing so you get your message across
without risk of insulting somebody.
Abu Barora, an example:
I would like to give an example from this
tradition. It is a story that is (to some extend) known in
the intellectual circles of South Iraq. It is called the story
of “Abu Barora”.
Once there was a tribe leader who didn’t care
about his tribesmen. When ever a tribe elder made a suggestion
or gave an opinion that the leader didn’t want to hear, he
offended him. The elders left the tribe one after the other
and settled down in another area. 
Every time one of them decided to go the administrator came
to leader and asked him to settle the conflict :”I don’t care.
Let him go. We don’t need him” said the leader: ”exchange
him with a Barora ”. (Arabic: the dung of a goat or a sheep.)
Time passed and one day a tribe from another area threatened
the tribe of our tribe leader. He called his administrator
and told him: ”Go quickly and bring our tribe elders. I want
to discuss the situation with them and see how to defend our
tribe and our area from the imminent danger”.
The administrator went away and came back after a short while
with a scarf full of dung. He put it in front of the tribe
leader and said: “Here you have our tribe elders. You told
me to exchange them with Barora (dung)”.
Because of his ignorance and foolishness the tribe leader
was called “Abu Barora” from this day on.
The story of Abu Barora is used to criticize a leader of
a group / team / tribe / political party, who doesn’t care
about the opinions of his group. People say : “One day he
will end up as Abu Barora.”
The entertainment aspect of stories
Long stories have mainly an entertainment
purpose. Nevertheless they still have advice and words of
wisdom embedded in different parts of the story. Stories without
advice can’t be count to the “1001 Nights” fairytales. People
who tell this kind of stories are provisional storytellers,
who tell the stories in families meetings, in cafes or even
on weekly market. Until the end of the fiftieths of the past
century there were many such cafes in Baghdad. The peak season,
where one could listen to storyteller was the fasting month
Ramadan. After sundown people broke their fasting (Arabic:
futur) and came together in the evening in cafes. One of the
climax of such meeting was the telling of a story from ”1001
Nights”. You can still find storytellers doing this job in
Morocco on some of the weekly markets.
Story telling in this context is not about the words alone
as the teller involves his whole body when he imitates persons
or even creatures from the stories he tells.
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