In the 1940s, Lawrence Elwell-Sutton collected and transcribed the stories of Mashdī Galīn Khānum, a storyteller who had memorized “an inexhaustible fund of folktales to suit every mood and occasion” (Mashdī Galīn Khānum 1950, Elwell-Sutton 1982, 102). Impressive feats of memory have traditionally been among the skills developed by some illiterate women, and like Mashdī Galīn Khānum, skilled storytellers today know the appropriate stories, know when to tell them, and know how to tell them in com…