The Power of Storytelling

Rana Al-Mahameed has written about Aseel Obeidi, a man who owned a beautiful garden in all corners of the country.
The man was known for his grandiosity and owned a magnificent garden.
One evening, the man returned home to find a large group of children playing in his garden. He became angry and built a high wall around it to keep the children away.
Oscar Wilde wrote a story titled "The Selfish Giant" in 1888.
For over a hundred years, the man from Obeidi's childhood in Brooklyn lived in the same house and never left it. He grew up in a religious family and read both the Bible and the Quran.
The hours he spent reading, whether religious or for entertainment, led him to spend many hours watching TV instead.
In any given day, one could find him and his brothers huddled together, reading in one of the windows, observing the joy of their neighbors playing in the water during the summer in New York City, feeling their excitement seep in through the open windows.
However, the more he delved into his books, the more he felt isolated from the world, and he longed for human connection.
The Selfish Giant told the story of how the man, filled with regret over keeping children away from his garden, changed his ways and allowed them in, leading to a deeper understanding and connection with the world.
Centuries before the advent of technology, people shared ideas and memories through stories.
The Nile River story brought Egyptians together, and the story of preserving the dead took the Pharaoh's mummies into the 21st century.
People have shared stories in words, pictures, or music since ancient times, and these stories have been passed down through generations.
As technology advances, the way we consume stories changes, but the importance of connecting with the stories and the people they bring to life remains the same.
Reading, listening, or watching stories can help us understand the past, connect with the present, and imagine the future.
Before moving to Brooklyn, Aseel Obeidi's family lived in Greenfield, Carolina, in one of the secluded areas known as Nicotown.
They were a community of children who, despite their circumstances, held on to stories and the power they held.
Even in a dangerous situation, people cling to stories as a source of hope and connection.
Throughout history, stories have been layered upon each other, with stories within stories and stories within those stories.
Since we began communicating, we have used stories to connect with each other and make sense of the world around us.- The story began with the speaker reflecting on her ability to write and read, which she discovered made her stories larger, older, and deeper. This theme would continue.
Among those who were almost silent, there were people who had not learned to read at all. Their descendants, some of whom seemed to have been born to read, studied in universities and higher education levels.
Some, like the speaker and her siblings, read as if they had been created to do so, as if history itself were their teacher. Some, like their grandmothers, had accepted "The Great Migration" without it being a train, and welcomed the South before it was a refuge.
The story within the story was about those who left and those who stayed, all carrying their history with them. They learned that their stories were not the only means of preserving them, and they could sit at the end of a long day on their thrones or doorsteps and tell engaging stories to their children.
They could also tell stories to calm their children during the scorching heat of harvesting cotton or tobacco, or use their stories as a sermon in the church, weaving them together with the embroidery they were creating. They transformed many sad stories into humorous ones, revealing the history of their people, who again and again sought to claim their bodies, minds, and stories.
As a child, the speaker learned to imagine a hand guiding her from word to word, from sentence to sentence, from ignorance to understanding. Due to the rapid advancement of technology, she continued to read slowly, respecting the work of the author and the enduring power of the continuous story.
She read slowly to filter out the surrounding noise and to remember those who came before her, who may have been the first people to master controlling fire and gathered around this new power of fire, smoke, and light.
She also remembered the wealthy landowners who shattered that wall in the end and left the children to play freely in their gardens.
Every time we read a story, write a story, or hear a story, we join this gathering around the fire, which remains constant. The power of the story endures.
Thank you. (Applause)