The Kurdish Storytelling Project began as a dream: to record and document the vanishing folkloric tales of the Kurdish people of Turkey.
Beginning in 1999, I’ve traveled to the Kurdish region of Turkey in search of storytellers – collecting tales and documenting this beautiful but endangered culture. What an amazing and eye opening journey it has been. I knew that the storytelling tradition was in peril, but it was shocking to see how quickly it was disappearing. The young people, forbidden by law to study their language, are not learning and passing along the tales, nor are the legends being written down. Most Kurds have been kept illiterate in their native Kurdish tongue due to government policies forbidding reading or writing in Kurdish. (Laws not lifted until 1992)
Sometimes, after arriving at a village and being introduced to the storyteller, the teller would say these words: “Ne zanim” or “I don’t remember.” Several of the storytellers had recently had strokes that left them without the words and the memory to tell the ancient tales. All those who remembered stories said, “No one has asked me to tell a story for twenty years.” These were heartbreaking moments made less painful by the many times I was able to successfully document the stories of the last one to remember the tales in their village.
Kurdish storytellers see themselves on camera for the first time.
Although I’ve recorded many storytellers, and written A Fire in My Heart, the first book of Kurdish folktales to be published in English, the work is not done. I desperately need funds to digitize my vast collection over 100 video and audio cassettes of Kurdish storytellers before the quality of the tape degrades to a point where it is not retrievable. In addition to the creation of this digital archive I want to return once more to record a few amazing tellers I could not document completely in my other journeys. I plan on pursuing this once my current archive is complete. Your contribution will help me to travel safely, to hire a translator/guide, rent a car and pay for food, airfare and for the many smaller expenses that occur. The legends and heritage of a culture are part of the riches of mankind and we will all be the poorer for losing them.
