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World Tale: The Old Woman and the Fox (Bengali) (World Tale)
Two women use their wits to outsmart those who would do harm. The stories: Rescue; Man in a Wheelchair; and Uninvited Visitors; reveal responses to desperate situations.
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 There was once an old woman who lived quietly with her two dogs. One day she decided to visit her only relative, a great-granddaughter. Just before she left, she told her dogs to stay close to home and not wander.
She’d been walking for a while when she met a fox. “Hey old woman, I’m going to eat you.”  In 1989, a Swedish couple who’d been hosting me while I taught seminars in drama and language acquisition in Stockholm, invited me to go with them to Russia for a ten-day visit. We picked a bad day to arrive. A young man landed a plane in Red Square, in spite of heavy security. At the same time, two Russian pilots flew to a town in eastern Sweden asking for asylum.
 I was invited to participate in a conference: Teaching African Literature. The convenor who invited me was a Nigerian writer who’d spoken to my class as part of our discussion of Anthills of the Savanna by Chinua Achebe, also a writer from Nigeria. My paper described the innovative approach I’d used to teach his novel.
I felt a bit daunted as I entered the room to register. Most of the participants were tall, dark, men wearing African garb. I was one of the few white people and almost the only woman. The man who invited me walked over, welcomed me, and introduced me to some of his friends. Laughing, he told them, “She told the class, before my arrival, they had to ask challenging questions or risk getting an F.” He shook his head. “It worked. I was impressed by their questions and had to really think about the answers.”  About midnight one evening I was woken up by the sound of pounding on my front door. At first I thought it was drunk kids having fun. Then I heard footsteps running up the back stairs to the deck. I got out of bed, turned on the lights, and ran upstairs.
As I was looking out to see who was there, I heard the sound of glass shattering. I ran downstairs and into my bedroom. A man was standing by the shattered glass patio door. In my bedroom. Good thing I wasn’t wearing a see-through nightgown. |
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July 2025
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Nancy King is a widely published author and a professor emerita at the University of Delaware, where she has taught theater, drama, playwriting, creative writing, and multidisciplinary studies with an emphasis on world literature. She has published seven previous works of nonfiction and five novels. Her new memoir, Breaking the Silence, explores the power of stories in healing from trauma and abuse. Her career has emphasized the use of her own experience in being silenced to encourage students to find their voices and to express their thoughts, feelings, and experiences with authenticity, as a way to add meaning to their lives.
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