It is the classic expat in the United Arab Emirates story: One Polish woman, living in Abu Dhabi, decides to retell classic Emirati fairy tales. Add in a Turkish-Dutch illustrator, the goal of bringing the tales to a new generation of reader and it is easy to see why everyone at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair was fawning over "Tales of the United Arab Emirates."
Originally from Poland, Iwona Taida Drózd first heard her Emirati friends share the fairy tales, called "kharareef," when she realized how similar they were to the fairy tales she knew as a child. The familiarity intrigued Drózd and inspired her to recreate kharareef into Tales of the United Arab Emirate.
Illustrated by Turkish-Dutch artist Ufuk Kobas Smink, the three-part series of vividly illustrated storybooks was first introduced Wednesday at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.
“Many stories we know in Western culture came from the East,” says Drózd, who is 56 years old. “People came from India, Persia, and through the Gulf countries with their caravans, and went on to the Mediterranean and Europe. So, often, the roots of these stories go back to other places.”
Ranging between stories about sly foxes in the first part “How the Fox Got a Bad Reputation," hunchbacks in the second part “Ugly Saber," and even tales that target adults in the third part “Fatherly Advice," the collection puts many in touch with stories that were once passed on by the older generations.
“When I was researching, I met lots of local people through Abu Dhabi’s Cultural Foundation whose doors were always open for me,” Drózd says. “Many became my friends. They recounted to me wonderful stories they’d been told as children. The young people translated what their grandparents were saying into English, and I made notes — they were chaotic, but I got the idea. At home, I wrote my own interpretations of the stories.'”
Since 1989 when Drózd first came to the UAE, and during the time when she served as chancellery executive for the Polish Embassy, she has been involved in various Emirati cultural projects.
Among the projects she worked on was a six-part documentary on the UAE’s culture for Polish TV, her 2004 book “Everyday Life in Abu-Dhabi” and her 2009 children’s book “A Key to Another World” which was her first take on children’s books.
“These stories, some of which are hundreds of years old, were faithfully passed down to younger generations,” Drózd says. “And while the current generation is not passing them down so much, I do think there’s now a renewed interest in collecting traces of the past.”