The tales in this book, I heard from my mother. My mother heard them from a storyteller nearly sixty years ago. It seems my grandfather never thought twice about hiring a storyteller to warm the cockles of his little girl’s heart. She listened to many stories, though she couldn’t always recall them, she passed many along to me, as well, though I couldn’t recall them all either, TO tell the truth, I had long since forgotten even the stories in this book. Years later, I returned to my father’s house in Antep and my mother just so, happened to tell them again to me. I was captivated by the beauty of the stories laid before me. TO her credit, my mother was a superb storyteller, but it wasn’t just my mother’s eloquence that affected me. The secret to the beauty of these stories lays hidden in their striking literary form and the