'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

R.R.: So, by telling your story, you take control of it, and you integrate it into yourself. Is
that sort of along the lines of what you are saying? By telling about trauma and fear, you
take control of that story because you are integrating it. You are the writer, you are the
teller.
H.S.-B.: Yes, I‟m the writer, I‟m the teller, because I am the one who knows the story. In
a way it‟s my story.
R.R.: So, in a way, traditionally, women have been storytellers.
H.S.-B.: Yes. The saint of my life is Scheherazade because when she starts to tell her
tales, before she started to tell her tales, it was said that she was one of the most widely-
read women of her time. She had knowledge of all the astrologers of her time, the
historians, and the philosophers. And she lives in a time where the ruling king is a
terrible butcher. Every night he murders a woman. You know that story?
R.R.: Yes.
H.S.-B.: He marries a woman, he sleeps with her, and then he kills her. And the
wonderful line Scheherazade says in the Arabian Nights is the line of my life, “Let‟s put
an end to this barbarism.” She goes into the very bed of the butcher and starts telling
tales. And as her tales are so interesting, he doesn‟t kill her. And so she goes on and on
and on. And she replaces murder by culture, she replaces murder by storytelling, she
156