Storytelling In Crescent

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Storytelling in Crescent In Arabian culture, storytelling plays an important role in the preservation of the culture’s beliefs and values. The adventure and magic of classics such as One Thousand and One Nights left an impressionable world fascinated with the mysticism and morals this type of Arabian folklore offered. In Abu-Jaber’s Crescent, Sirine’s uncle fancies himself a sort of Scheherazade as he begins the narration of the novel with the story of his long-lost cousin, Abdelrahman Salahadin. This longwinded fable does more than just tell a story, however. The story of the adventures of Abdelrahman Salahadin parallel Sirine’s story and reveal larger themes that are important to the novel as a whole. With each chapter, Sirine’s uncle begins with a new phase of the tale of Abdelrahman Salahadin. The reader must be able to distinguish between the two stories in order to make sense of it all. At times, Sirine’s uncle narrates the story in a rather cryptic way. For example, he refers to it as a “moralless story” as well as the “story of how to love”(Abu-Jaber 18). There is a certain contradiction in the story the puzzles both Sirine and the reader. This contradiction, however, speaks to the larger messages of the book: the uncertainty of life and the importance of the unknown. As Sirine’s uncle notes, “A moralless story is deep yet takes no longer to tell than it takes to steep a cup of mint tea” (88). In this way, there is a lesson to be learned from the things left unsaid. In the novel, there is evidence that leads one to believe that Abdelrahman is a parallel character to Han. Abdelrahman evaded captors many a time by faking his own drowning while at sea; much like how Han had to escape Iraq at the time Saddam Hussein came to power. Abdelrahman Salahadin found success in the United States by becoming famous Hollywood actor Omar Sharif. Han found success in the
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