Mansour al-Hazmi

Professor Atiq bin Ghayth al-Bilady's book, Popular Literature in Hijaz, aroused old memories in my mind and no doubt in the minds of others who experienced their childhood in the Hijaz. In spite of the fact that this book describes an era long past, it still retains value, and we cannot help but regard that era with nostalgia.

Professor al-Bilady raises many issues that were almost forgotten before he recorded them. The younger generation does not perhaps understand the value of his effort to re¬claim the past, nor are they interested in the images brought to them by the local popular literature of today. Those who have grown up in the modern era reading American stories about Mickey Mouse and Superman and watching Holly¬wood horror movies may have difficulty understanding the legends of Al-Zir Salim and Abu Zayd al-Hilaly, the legends of our own history which Professor al-Bilady narrates.

But those of us who grew up in the difficult days during World War II and the Palestinian War of 1948 are familiar with al-Bilady's description of the old popular culture. For those games, traditions, and beliefs are part of our own minds and personalities even today.

I grew up in the district of al-Dahlah, west of Mecca, in the midst of that old popular culture. Al-Dahlah owes its name to its placement in the Hijaz landscape. In classical Ara¬bic, al-Dahlah means a kind of well, which is what the place is, a hollow surrounded by mountains. It is difficult to think of something special about al-Dahlah. Like many other small districts and villages near Mecca at that time, al-Dahlah was often cited as an example of not only poverty, but ignorance. True, in those days al-Dahlah was very proud of the two residents who had finished primary school and held public jobs. It was also proud of a scholar who came originally from Morocco; he was a nice man who used to wash the dead ceremonially and was also a good cook; another was the driver for the post office, the man in charge of the mail. Because of his job, this man had to travel a lot; so he was the source of all kinds of stories and news.

The people of al-Dahlah were proud of another resident, too, a woman named Um Ali, the mother of Ali, who had not changed her way of life in many years, even though she had lived for some time in Mecca. She used to go out in public, covering her face, but wearing men's clothes. Her opinion was so important that no one in al-Dahlah made any decision without first consulting her and asking for her approval. Why this was so I do not know, but perhaps it was because she had been so long in the holy city of Mecca.

Al-Dahlah was in a good position geographically, slightly west of Mecca, which meant that many pilgrims passed through the district. This was good for business, and thus benefited everyone, including all of us children. The children in those days had specific songs that they made up and sang to ask the pilgrims for alms.

But at night, the district and the town were dark, very dark, and thus a frightening place for children. The darkness meant that jinns and ghosts might be present, wandering through the streets. There were many chil¬dren's stories about the jinns.
All people in al-Dahlah were accustomed to thinking about jinns and other spirits. The jinns were said to be particularly fond of women and chil¬dren, though I never knew why; maybe it was because the spirits preferred the meek, who were more sensitive and open to the visitation of spirits. The children, of course, had not yet achieved their full intellectual faculties, and woman, by nature, it was usually claimed, lacks reason. The belief existed that if a woman was visited by a jinn, she might lose her mind, and her fam¬ily was obligated to help her out of her difficulty. For these kinds of prob¬lems, the best remedy was considered to be the zar, which was a ceremony involving music and dance to chase away the jinn. The family of the woman in need of help would hire a group of women to play and sing certain songs and rhythms; the woman was encouraged to get up and dance with the group until she went into a kind of trance and lost consciousness. After the woman awoke, she was supposedly better. The jinn had been frightened away, or exorcised. And the zar did seem to help many women.

But the jinns who frightened women and children were supposed to make men courageous. It was considered a sin of weakness for a man to carry a light if he walked out during the night. In fact, men used to compete with each other to walk in the most scary places after dark.

Tawfiq al-Hakim argues in the introduction of his play Ya Talia al-shajarah that the drama of the absurd has its origin in Arabic popular literature. He gives the example of the traditional Egyptian song:

You, who climb the tree---
Bring me a cow
That will give milk
Which will feed me
With a Chinese spoon.

Here the cow is a metaphor for a woman, a lover. The poet is asking the woman to be generous in her love, like a cow with her milk, and feed him with an exotic "Chinese spoon." The popular poets of the Hijaz were simi¬lar. They used many different images to convey their feelings and needs. If what the poet felt was either forbidden or intolerable to describe within the society, he spoke indirectly, as in the Egyptian song.

Toward the end of the Second World War, a very important event took place in al-Dahlah. The man who was in charge of the mail brought in a ra¬dio, the first in the district. People were fascinated by this strange box and started spending all their time listening to it. They waited for the news of the war, although they knew nothing about it except that the Germans were fighting against the British. So they wanted the German Hitler to win the war over his British enemies just like the mythical Arab heroes Antar and Sayf ibn di Yazan had won over their enemies in the past.

The songs of the radio cut into the audience for the popular poets. But not all people turned away from the old poets. Why? Because the radio per¬sonnel did not know how to tell the old stories of love and life and death as the poets did so well.
After the Palestinian war, when the Arabs lost everything, life in al-Dahlah changed. Many families left when the district lost its advantageous position on the pilgrimage route to Mecca. Roads were built that did not pass through Dahlah, so business declined. Um Ali stayed, however. She refused to leave because she said she hated life in the cities and especially the food!
But on the morning of the new year 1957, the people of al-Dahlah lost their friend and neighbor, Um Ali. Even in her last hours she wanted free¬dom. She asked to die under the sky. "Take me outside," she said. "I want to see my God." And the people did so. After her death, the old al-Dahlah no longer existed.

Reproduced from Remembrances of Childhood in the Middle East, University of Texas Press, with the author's permission. Mansour al-Hazimi most recently served as Chairman of the Arabic Department at King Saud University in Riyadh.