“On the threshold of the times, there was only the day and it was when Lilith's daughters were equal to Adam's sons. There was no night or darkness. Time never went out and the pleasure of living never slept. One day, the sons of Adam wanted to go far, to look for the unknown. They walked for days. Exhausted, they closed their eyes and met the night, with their nightmares. Since then, the sons of Adam do not have the necessary light in their eyes to see Lilith's daughters clearly. If the fatigue were not greater than the illusion for life, perhaps the nights would stop crying stars to illuminate the blindness and, perhaps, the children of Adam would know to discover the pleasure of life, accompanied with the daughters of Lilith. Hammu Mohamed, Berber anthropologist storyteller .
For centuries, Berber women often meet every moonlit night to tell stories transmitted from generations to generations and, always, secretly to men . They never start their stories without having created the right environment to start the smoothness of the emotions they are preparing to externalize. The main honor of initiating these evenings is usually given to the elderly woman and initiated the act, they enter a desired trance, in a magical world where everything is possible. Hamm Mahomed tells us.
The name of the culture is known in the West as Berber, but they do not like that term, since it was a name coined by Rome, when all those non-Roman peoples were designated as savages, b Barbarians, and that is what Berber means. But it is the town of Imazighen, and the language is Zamazight, a language so old that it cannot even be dated.
The storyteller Hamm knew that in his town his culture spread through stories told by women . The problem was to approach them with recording devices, also in a world where a man can only approach a woman who has already lost menstruation, because it is believed those women have already lost sexual appetite The old women did not want to speak in front of all these devices, because the listener must appropriate not only the stories but a certain energy, reconstruct the story, touch the hands of the storyteller and remain fixed with his look Telling stories is not anything, it is a preparation for a whole day, go unloaded from any problem that could distract them to be mired in constant listening and assimilation of something big, the Word. These stories have a therapeutic and curative property.
The day of the week in which this event occurs is a very special day . The story is always told by the oldest woman in the town, who in order to be totally empty and able to be a mediator and balm of other women, during the morning does no work, Don't even comb your hair. The other women are the ones who have to comb and wash him. After doing all the tasks, they wait for patients at the doors until sunset, which is when the hostess of the house opens the doors and gives access to the ritual.
Each time they move to a different house. The chosen house must be clean, scented, purified, and without lack of food and drink. To this space they have to enter stripped of everything that ties them or burdens them, disconnected from the outside. The first thing offered is to wash, to be clean inside and out. In the anteroom of the courtyard they shed their clothes and materials to also shed their social class and be dignified as equals. The hostess is received with a big and intimate hug and they drink sweet tea, peppermint, to erase any hint of bitterness . They all sit on the ground, none have a special tribune. They hold hands and the first story begins, closing the eyes, except for the hostess.
Women begin the story with a phrase:
"There is a story among you, whoever looks for it will find it ..."
They all have the same turn of speech. They are internalized with all the senses, there is an emotional state of tranquility, peace and harmony for the spirit.
“ Many women go into a trance when they hear these stories . They get up and start to shake, like dancing and they have to be held by the other women to avoid hitting each other, and in this way they are released as with a catharsis . Sometimes they cry excessively, and sometimes they laugh. ”Hammú says.
"The word told, when narrating it live, activates the senses and isolates the pain to give rise to the company of those present and dwarfs everyday loneliness and fears." They have many forbidden places to access . Therefore, he has kept this space clandestinely for the word told, not only to tell stories, but to heal the soul, the sorrow, the madness. Like the stories of Sherezade, they are not stories about the cult of beauty, but about survival . The purpose of these meetings is to tell something that serves to have love, to alleviate all that sadness and misery . ”
“The most valued story is not the most beautiful or long, but the deepest, the one that excites. They are stories told for millennia. Very cynical and sarcastic stories, but at the same time very subtle. They are women listed as illiterate, but they are loaded with wisdom. I can only tell the less transcendental stories, because the deepest ... society is not so evolved to hear those stories. I have tried to count them in societies listed as developed, such as Norway, and have defined them as too violent. ”
“I am very afraid of what they call“ politically correct ”in the stories, because I don't understand it. In Africa there are no ages in the stories, there are no stories for adults or children. Although small filters are made for children, the message is not betrayed at all. ”
“I felt like I wasted a lot of time. That if they had taught me that space before, it would have helped me a lot, I would have developed more easily, I would have a very different vision of humanity. I think humanity should know him. ”
"And I put on my new shoes, and I went from here to there, and it broke, "
the stories of the women of the Imazighen people end.
Source: http://www.hammutopia.com/
Source: http://unaantropologaenlaluna.blogspot.com.es
Stories that heal: Berber women.
