36.
The Woodcutter

Once upon a time there was a poor man, a woodcutter. Every day he would bring a bundle of wood, sell it, and eat from his earnings. One day, before setting out to the woods in the morning, he roasted a handful

[20] This expression is a reformulation of a popular folk expression, 'Id-dar dar abuna, w-iju l-gurub yithuna ("The house is our father's house, and the strangers have come to kick us out").

[21] The order of the questions here is significant in terms of the Palestinian definition of self, with the king's first concern in establishing the identity of his children being not in terms of kinship or lineage but in the father's place of origin.

of fava beans to entertain himself along the way.^[1] He walked along munching on them, taking the road to Bab il-Wadi. As he approached the well belonging to the house of Yusif is-Sliman,^[2] the one in the middle of the road, he tossed a bean up in the air—but it did not land in his mouth, it fell right into the well. Driven by his poverty and his sadness over its loss, he squatted by the mouth of the well and cried out:

"Oh! My fava bean,
My protection against hunger!
Oh! My fava bean,
My protection against hunger!"

And how he cried over the loss of that bean!

Now, the well, in it they say there were (in the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful!) dwellers.^[3]

"Hey uncle, leave us alone!" they answered him^[4] "What's the matter with you? You hurt our ears with all this din?

"I want my lava bean back," he answered, crying again:

"Oh! My lava bean,
My protection against hunger!"

[1] Like the lentil (see Tale 26, n. 12), the fava bean is an important source of food for the Palestinian fellah, especially for breakfast. As the tale demonstrates, it is highly valued, and many proverbs and folk sayings attest to its importance, such as: ma? tqul ful, ger ta-ysir fi l-i'dul ("Don't call them lava beans until they're in the basket"—in other words, "Don't count on something until you have it") and b-tinballiš fi timmo fule ("A fava bean doesn't [have time to] get wet in his mouth"—said of someone who cannot keep a secret). See Tale 8, n. 4.

[2] Bab il-Wadi is the way leading out of the village of `Arrabe, upper Galilee, where the tale was collected. Yusif is-Sliman and others mentioned later on are members of the community and neighbors of the teller. Thus the narrator of this tale places the action concretely in her village (cf. Tale 30, nn. 9, 11). For other references to `Arrabe in these tales, see Tale 5, n. 14.

[3] The dwellers in the well are jinn; for more on wells, see Tale 3, n. 4. In "Haunted Springs" (p. 153), Canaan states, "It is an old and wide-spread belief in all Semitic countries, that springs, cisterns and all running waters are inhabited"—and at the end of the article he lists 120 such "inhabited" springs throughout Palestine. Jaussen ("Le cheikh Sa`ad ad-din": 150) says, "Ils [les djinn] sont très nombreux et habitent en tous lieux; mais ils fréquentent particulièrement les règions dèsertes, les puits, les sources." For Palestinian jinn tales, see al-Barghuthi, Hikayat jan ; for a comprehensive discussion of the jinn in the Arabic tradition, see al-Jawhari, `Ilm al-fulklur II:359-467; for Palestine in particular, see Canaan, "Damonenglaube": 2-28. For other references, see Tale 32, n. 2.

[4] Polite forms of address are so deeply ingrained in Palestinian (and Arab) social behavior that even the jinn are presumed to observe them correctly.

"Uncle!" they :said, "Is it worth all this din? Here! Take this wooden bowl—whatever you tell it to fill with, it will fill, and you can eat something other than these lava beans."^[5]

Taking the bowl with him, he went back home. He brought it into the hut with him, locked the door, and said, "Wooden bowl, fill up with rice and meat, topped with yogurt sauce!"^[6] And what do you think happened? Before he even had time to look, the bowl had filled with rice and meat, and with sauce covering them. And what now, you might ask? He ate until he could barely move, and every day after that—evening, morning, and noon—he would tell the bowl to fill with whatever food he wanted to eat. He then ate and threw away the rest.

One day he felt bored. "Am I just going to sit around in this shack?" he asked himself. "By Allah, I want to go out and have a good time. But what am I going to do with this bowl?" Then he said, "By Allah, I'm going to leave it with our neighbor"—you might say at the house of Im Falah. Going over to her house, he knocked and said, "Hey, Im Falah, Allah save you! Would you mind keeping this wooden bowl in your house and taking care of it? And mind, don't wreck it while I'm gone by saying to it, 'Wooden bowl, fill with rice and meat; or with cracked wheat, noodles and tomato sauce!' and then eating from it! I'll be gone for a couple of days to have a good time, then I'll be back."

No sooner had he turned his back than Im Falah said, "Wooden bowl, fill with rice and meat, topped with yogurt sauce!" And what! They had barely time to look, when it became full to the brim. The whole family ate till they were stuffed.

"Yee! By Allah, he'll never see it again. We have an old bowl just like this one, and when he comes back we'll give it to him instead. May he never eat! He's all by himself, and we're a whole family. What does he need it for?"

Coming back, the woodcutter knocked on their door, "Im Falah!"

[5] The batye is a large wooden bowl used by women to knead the dough for the family's bread. After rising, the dough was taken to the bakery in the same bowl, which the women carried on their heads. Peasant families traditionally used the batye to serve meals for the entire household. See n. 6, below.

[6] The traditional style of Palestinian cooking facilitates the use of the batye for serving food. Meat (usually lamb), when available, is stewed with a vegetable (yaxni ) and served over rice. Meat stewed in yogurt sauce (see Tale 40, n. 6) and served over rice (mansaf ) is considered a special dish, and is served to guests on formal occasions, such as wedding celebrations (jize ), baptisms (`immad ), circumcisions (thur ), and completing the roof on a house (`aqde ).

"Yes, brother. What do you want? Do come in, please!"

"For the sake of Allah," he answered, "give me back the wooden bowl. I'm dying of hunger, and I want to go home and eat."

She gave it back to him, or so he thought, and he took it home.^[7] Right away he said, "Wooden bowl, fill with rice and meat, topped with yogurt sauce? He waited and waited, but it did not fill. "Fill up with cracked wheat and noodles! Fill up with rice and lentils!^[8] Fill up with this or that!" But it did not fill. Nothing at all happened.

When he went to see Im Falah about it, she said, "I don't know what you're talking about, brother. That's the one you brought here and I gave it back to you. What can I do?"

So back to the well he went, and—splash!—dropped it in and started moaning:

"Oh! My lava bean,
My protection against hunger!"

"What's the matter with you?" asked the dwellers in the well. "Didn't we give you the wooden bowl?"

"It's ruined," he answered. "It's no good any more."

"Well, then," they said, "take this mill! If you turn the handle to the fight, it'll grind gold; and to the left, silver."

Well, he took it with him and went home. Locking the door of his hut, he sat down to grind. Every day he would grind a bit and put it in his pocket, then he would go enjoy himself in Acre, Haifa, or Nazareth. When he had done this for nearly a month, he started to worry. "What if someone should come," he thought, "tear down the door of this shack, and steal the mill?" Taking it to another neighbor, you might say to Noxa's house, he said, "O Im Yasin!^[9] For the sake of Allah, won't you keep this little mill in your house for me while I'm gone?"

"Yes, brother, you can leave it here. What's going to happen to it?"

[7] "Or so he thought" (qal )—literally, "he said," but frequently used as a transitional device (like the English "say" or "well") in a variety of contexts.

[8] The simple and inexpensive peasant meal of mjaddara consists of rice and lentils, cooked together in water with some olive oil and served with fried onions or a tomato salad, or both. We note the downward progress of the woodcutter's requests: he asks first for rice and meat, then for progressively less fancy and more easily available foods. Cf. Tale 26, n. 12.

[9] Noxa is a neighbor of the narrator; we note that she is called by her first name when referred to indirectly, but in direct address she is "Im Yasin" (cf. Tale 27, n. 1).

"Meanwhile," he said, "Allah save you! don't use it for grinding gold and silver by turning the handle to the right or to the left!"

No sooner had he turned his back than she set it down and said, "Come, let's try this mill!" And behold! what was the result? The woman went crazy with happiness.

In a day or two, he came back.

"O Im Yasin, for Allah's sake, give me back the mill!"

Taking what she gave him home, he turned the handle this way and that, but it did not grind anything. He spread his legs and sat down. Turn the handle this way, turn the handle that way, till he was exhausted, and still no result.

"Damn your owner's father!" he cursed it.^[10]

Back to the well he went, and—splash!—he dropped it down to the bottom and repeated his lament:

"Oh! My fava bean,
My protection against hunger?

"Hey, uncle!" they said. "You've destroyed our peace! Didn't we give you the wooden bowl and the little mill? What more do you want?"

"People have robbed them from me," he complained.

"Well," they responded, "in that case take this stick back to the people you left them with and say to it, 'O my stick, keep flitting, on the side of this neighbor hitting!' and it'll keep on bashing them until they return your things."

Back home he went, straight to Im Falah. "Give me back my wooden bowl!" he said.

"But we already gave it back to you," she insisted.

"All right, then," he said:

"O my stick, keep flitting,
On the sides of Im Falah hitting!"

And the stick went ahead and beat her and her family until it had softened them up.

"Please, brother," they begged. "For the sake of Allah, may He damn your father and your wooden bowl! Go, take it! It's the one over there on the shelf."^[11]

[10] On this curse, see Tale 1, n. 6.

[11] For "shelf" (sidde ), see Tale 15, n. 5.

He took it and went home. After he had tried it out and made sure that it worked, he left it there and went to Im Yasin's house, where he said:

"O my stick, keep flitting,
On the sides of Noxa hitting!"

The stick hit her over and over, until she said, "There's your mill over there! Go take it, and may Allah damn your father and your mill!"

He took it home, tried it out and found it worked, and lived in comfort from then on.

This is my tale, l've told it, and in your hands I leave it.