Is time our children heard about "Sirat Banu Hilal"

Is time for Arabic Heritage Children to find out about Sirat Banu Hilal ?
Mona Anis wrote in Ahram –Weekly 14-118 December,2008 celebrating 70s birthday of the unique poet Abdel Rahman EL- Abnoudi a man of letters. He grew up as a poor peasant himself, tending sheep, drawing water, fishing in the Nile and tilling the land, while all the time listening to the songs people chant while working. He knows how to give voice to their sorrows and their joys in a way that goes straight to their hearts.
Somehow, El-Abnoudi has managed to transcend the confines of his profession and become a kind of envoy of the poor; especially for upper Egyptians"I have elevated the status of poetry and poets among the poor and among the fellaheen who wear galabiyyas,"
El-Abnoudi born in the Upper Egyptian village of Abnoud in Qena, in 1938 spent 30 years collecting and raising awareness of " epics", a work that has been recited for centuries during moulids and at popular cafes and other gathering places all year round before the advent of radio and TV, is another source of great pride to him. It all started by his mother who loved singing and telling folk tales. Every year ,he would eagerly await the moulid of Sidi Abdel-Rehim in Qena, an event which used to last for 15 days. El Abnoudi would sit mesmerized at the feet of storytellers reciting the adventures of the Banu Hilal." "Years later in Cairo he began to be worried that this epic would disappear as a result of the spread of television and other forms of mass entertainment. A decision came up to work with the remaining great storytellers of the adventures of Banu Hilal, such as Jabir Abu-Hussein and Haj Dawi, to record all their stories to ensure that the Sira did not disappear when they died."
I am wondering is it not time for our children to start to be aware of their culture and heritage. Little do they know about our epic heroes, or how did he deserve to be called a hero. How many mothers are prepared to



Switch TV off and explore with her Arabic Heritage Learners (AHL) Sirat Banu Hilal. eritage Children the bed time story tell HeriheeeeSiratt
The Sirat Bani Hilal tells the adventures of the Bedouin tribe the Banu Hilal and its migration from Arabia in the second half of the 10th century, first to Egypt and then to Tunisia by order of the then Egyptian rulers. The Tunisian ruler at the time, Ibn Badis, had declared his independence from the Fatimid dynasty that then ruled Egypt, and the Banu Hilal were sent to bring him into line. In his famous Muqaddima, the mediaeval Arab historian Ibn Khaldun says that the Hilali tribes fell on Tunisia like "swarms of locusts."
EL Abnoudi adds "You may have noticed that I don't call the story of the Banu Hilal 'Sira,'" El-Abnoudi says. "Instead, I call it an epic. It's an epic in every sense of the word, since it embodies the conscience of the Arab people and their dreams of a leader who will unite them and lead them through their many heroic battles for survival."
El-Abnoudi started to collect and record the Sira from 1967 onwards. "I used the first professional tape recorder I owned, later ,it was it was destined for him to go to Tunisia in search of the story, and he stayed there for half a year at a time, comparing the differences between the epic as told in the Mashriq (Egypt, Syria and Lebanon) and in Maghreb countries such as Tunisia."
We as Egyptians we are aware that El- Abnoudi will be better remembered as an Egyptian poet . More important, we will never forget that he saved this brilliant epic from being lost to future generations.