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This and the following two chapters look at the reciters and storytellers who would frequent the coffeehouses of Cairo and other towns in the evenings, particularly during religious festivals. This chapter focuses on the poets (“shoara”) who would recite, by memory, tales of the adventures of Aboo Zeyd, a story based on events that supposedly took place in middle of third century AH, but were composed later. These tales are said to be informative on the subject Bedouin customs and traditions. The recitations were half prose and half poetry, with some music. The poet would play a few notes on a viol after every verse, and was sometimes accompanied by another instrument. This chapter includes a summary of a volume of the story, plus a translation of some of the poetry and musical notation.

The second type of reciters, along with poets described in previous chapter, are storytellers (“mohadditeen,”) of which there were around thirty in Cairo. They also did public performances, but their narration was of a work called “The Life of Ez-Zahir,” based on the history of the Sultan Baybars, who reigned in the second half of the seventh century AH. Printed copies of this tale existed in several volumes, written around one hundred years previously in Egyptian colloquial Arabic, but the original author was unknown. This chapter includes a translation of an extract from the second volume, but stresses that the entertainment in large part derived from the improvisation and wit of the storyteller.

The third type of reciters, along with the storytellers and poets of the previous two chapters, mainly told the story of ‘Antar (Seeret ‘Antar) and were therefore known as “‘Antariah.” They also told other tales, such as Seerat Delhemeh or stories from A Thousand and One Nights. There were around six of them in Cairo. They performed without music, chanting the poetry from memory and reading the prose. This chapter also includes summaries of some of the tales told and translations of some of the poetry.

Stories are the inspired fields of our brains. Elie Wiesel once commented, God made man because He loves stories. The outstanding virtue of stories is that they are archetypical in nature and inspire, when shared, a relational partnership in teaching and in learning. Relish the story! Humans have been referred to as storytelling machines. Why? Because of our profound hunger for narrative. It is instinctive. And because, even when delivered in plain language, stories are crammed full of undercurrents and subtle nuances. Our lives are filled and revealed in stories. Their allure resides in their transcendent quality transcending person, place, culture, ideologies, and academic disciplines. Although cousins of case studies, critical incidents, and role playing, stories are a fresh and unique breed. They draw us out, lead us beyond ourselves and our immediate situation in special ways. Stories rise above a totally logical and straightforward approach to learning and shuttle back and forth between facts and feelings. They echo Schons (1983) assertion that stories trigger reflection in a context that presents material differently. We think in terms of stories. New events and experiences are cast in stories that are linked to previously understood stories and experiences. Knowing them, finding them, reflecting on and reconsidering them massaging them, as it were help students to understand and operate in the world of professional practice. Students easily apprehend their meaning and adapt them to their own purposes, eventually capturing or inventing their own. Our ability to tell stories in novel ways is a hallmark of wisdom, maturity, and careful judgment. Stories from our own practice, from students, even from folklore, movies, and mythology can be usefully employed to build motivation in learning environments. Verisimilitude is the stuff of stories. They cannot be reduced to facts. Stories tell so much more. Words turn into pictures, providing a kaleidoscope of human nature the ordinary and the extraordinary about fallibility, about changing the human condition. Stories are a triumph of ordinary and extraordinary humanity and fallibility. What is a story? Bruner (1996) deems a story as a mode of thinking, a means of organizing experience and knowledge.

This chapter discusses the history of short fiction in Canada. The first decade of the twenty-first century witnessed several social changes that affected the publication of short stories in Canada. Electronic media began to impinge on print media, and bookstores, especially the small independents, were forced to shut down due to competition from big box stores, online companies, and electronic downloading practices. The chapter examines important developments that contributed to the growth of the Canadian short story, including the establishment in 1970-71 of the Montreal Storytellers Fiction Performance Group and the publication in 1985 of the first collection of contemporary Canadian speculative fiction, Tesseracts, edited by Judith Merril. It also considers works by late twentieth-century writers, who focused on post-nationalism, third-wave feminism, post-realism, and post-temporality.