Storytelling was my Saviour

On the white sand of an abandoned coast where the noise of silence and echos of memories fill the head, I found myself, injured and tired, very close to the wrecks of many dreams and so far away from normal life. The waves came to rub salt in the wound and made the dose of pain unbearable beyond my ability to deal with it.

This is how I felt in my first days and months in the Netherlands after fleeing the Syrian civil war in 2013. I was a survivor of the war who, while being in his new harbor of safety, endured new challenges of homesickness, and pain of what was happening back home, finding the way in the new land to continue surviving and building new dreams and letting them flourish. “ Did Noah feel the same after the end of the Great Flood and the water vanished??” I thought. When all these feelings mingle inside you, then without knowing, you are developing a time bomb that could destroy everything including the seeds of hope you kept for a rainy day. Suppressing those feelings is the easiest recipe to let the bomb explode.

Out of a sudden, I heard about an event of storytelling. I was naturally interested. My grandma was an innate storyteller. I learned an endless number of stories from her and also I learned the art of putting the seeds of curiosity and interest in the ears and hearts of audiences. After that, I did many public speaking courses and many business presentations but standing up surrounded by strangers` eyes to tell a story was a new arena for me.

I found myself organizing my table. Nothing was left on it except a piece of paper and a pencil. In a small room in a small city in Western Europe, a stranger ( me) started to write a story. The quote of Doris Lessing ” It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, ‘Oh, yes. That’s an interesting question.” really talks about me in those moments.

After an hour of writing, my first draft was ready. I felt so good after that and I felt that I could even breathe better. Writing the story helped me seemingly to organize some ideas and put them on paper. Apparently when the thoughts become words and we can see them written on paper some magic happens deep inside the heart.

In the following days, I kept sharpening the story and rehearsing and transmitting it to the audience. This exercise was so magical. I felt the noises inside me fading away. My tired heart beat terribly with fear and anxiety for a long time under the sounds of mortar and war started to beat differently with new rhythms of excitement and joy. I remembered what Sue Monk Kidd said once “Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.” I believe that reality is even more critical. When the stories are not told, they die and parts of us wither as thirsty flowers and die as well. With time the corpses of those withered flowers fill the space between oblivion and pain and trigger the hunger of that evil flame that could explode that hidden time bomb inside you.

On a small stage, I delivered my first story to 50 people. While moving on the stage, I felt the power of a phoenix rising up from its ashes. My heart was a seagull that found a balance between the crazy sea and the busy harbors. I felt the heart of Noah beating inside my chest after the flood and the end of stormy days when he returned to his life with stories of the angry seas, terrified animals, and shaking ark. Noah at that moment was safe. I was also to a great extent thanks to the storytelling.

Subhi Najar is an Alchemist of words, Little Prince, Public Speaker, storyteller, content Creator, and war survivor.

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