It’s nice to know that a festival like this exists. Earlier this month I was reminded of my own family when I learned that Trump administration had cancelled TPS status for 7,000 Syrian refugees (putting them at risk for deportation). I’m the child of an American man and a woman of Syrian-Palestinian descent and I happen to have spent the first few years of my life (and many summer’s since) living in the Middle East. Stories have always been a big part of my life and I was frequently exposed to two varieties in those early days. The first were folk lore from the region - usually fantastical tales often involving invisible entities. The other type of story I heard was more grim; first-hand accounts from my Mother and extended family detailing their experience during multiple wars, often fleeing their homes and finding themselves forced to start over and rebuild their lives. Both varieties of story were "real" to me, though I must confess I preferred the tales of magic to those of hardship.