Hana Dagher, telling a story from Lebanon told to her by her grandmother’s sister:
Superstition, like curly hair and
an affinity for ka’ak cookies with labneh spread on top, runs through my blood.
From my mother’s habit of refusing to leave the house without consulting her
trusty pocket Quran, to my father refusing to leave my freshman dorm room on my
first day of college without pasting protective duas above the door, to my
sisters and I never removing to take off the Nazar necklaces gifted to us on
our first trip to Lebanon, superstition is practically embedded in my genome.
But no one, and I mean no one,
wholly believes in the supernatural as much as my grandmother’s sister. The
moment that you stepped into her ornately decorated home, you were immediately
greeted by the flowing script of Ayat-ul-Kursi, the verse in the quran meant to
ward off against evil and protect one from evil spirits, mounted within a
large, gilded frame. Evenings spent at my aunt’s house were not without at
least a handful of Jinn stories. My sisters and cousins would sit around her,
enraptured as this wizened old woman would weave tales of evil Jinns that
tricked or confused unknowing men and women, and the few that outsmarted them.
This is one of them:
“ Now,
this one is from back before my husband and I immigrated here to America, back
from when I was still in school. I wanted to be an archeologist, you know. To
go to Egypt and walk through the Valley of Kings, to study the pyramids of the
Pharaohs, to imagine what it must have been like back in those days – Ah! But
that is another story. ”
She paused, taking a sip of ceylon
tea in a crystal glass, resting the cup between her gnarled fingers.
“ There
was a girl in my class, Samira was her name. Her father sold spices in the Souk
– the market – anyways, Samira had told me this story of a friend of a friend
of her mother’s. Now this woman, Aisha, had once poured hot water down the
drain without saying Bismillah. We all know why this is incorrect, right
children? ”
Our heads bobbed in agreement. One
was to never pour hot water down the drain without giving the Jinn a warning.
This was a code of ethics, a mutual respect humans were to have for the Jinn.
“
So – Aisha’s mother had walked into her daughter once she was done pouring the
water. And Aisha’s mother was a smart woman and a good mother, and she was
alarmed that the Jinn had already begun to take root in her. And because she
was such a good mother, she immediately took her daughter to see the local
Hafiz – a man who was learned in the Quran. And so they went. The holy man had
examined Aisha and told her that the Jinn had, indeed, already possessed her
daughter. ”
This last bit was emphasized with
dramatic pause, a tactic which had accomplished its purpose – several “oh’s!” rang through the room. My
aunt, pleased with the reaction, took another sip of her tea, satisfaction
playing on her lips as she set the cup down and continued her tale.
“ So
– the Hafiz went into his room and came back with a familiar blue charm – the
nazar – on a silver necklace. He blessed this charm and prayed over it, before
pressing it into Aisha’s hands. He told
her – As long as you wear this charm, you shall remain forever protected from
bad luck. Aisha wore that necklace every single day after that. But – something
curious occured. The Hafiz was correct, while bad luck never befell Aisha’s
life – it almost would. And more than once, mind you. A missed taxi cab that
would crash on the highway hours later, an engagement that would fall through –
only for the knowledge of his infidelity to come to light after the rings had
been returned, a rejection for a visa that would allow her to stay with her
sick grandmother before her death. ”
Our parents were standing to leave,
beginning the lengthy ritual of good-byes. Coats were sneakily put on, then
taken off at the bequest of my Great-Aunt’s daughter’s, who took great offense
at this perceived slight. Coats went on, then off. Our parents called to us,
but we paid them no mind. Our Great Aunt waved a hand, shushing our parents in
their attempt to steal us away before the end of the story.
“ Now
– Aisha had continued her life. She had married, had children, had a beautiful
home near the coast. Her children would stretch tales like palm sap, whispering
stories to the neighborhood children about the Jinn that lived in her home – a
dark shadow that would stand in the doorway as you washed your face in the
morning, a dirty kitchen that would
magically become clean when you woke up in the morning, a cold hand gripping
your shoulder as you reached for the book at the top shelf. And while these
stories were mostly fibs related by Aisha’s children to gain an ounce of
notoriety amoung the other children – they did not come from nothing. Aisha’s
home held a feeling of dread – a cold air, a presence that was not of this
world. Friends commented on it, but Aisha waved it off to external sources –
her husband had kept the fans on too long, her mother in law had come to visit,
the winds from the sea had blown too fiercely the night before. Still, she wore
the necklace and bad things had almost occurred to her – her children, missing
days of school only to not catch whatever miasma had been crawling around the playground,
a late trip to the market meant she would miss the fresh cherry tomatoes, but
did not catch the rotten eggplants that filled the air with their stench, a
power outage meant her maddening sisters-in-law cancelled their visit. This
continued, on and on, throughout Aisha’s life. She had grown to be an old, old,
woman, outliving her husband and her two eldest children. Her bones had grown
weary, her eyesight poor. Her life had been full, long and happy, her home
filled with children, with generations who had grown up within the four walls
of the house she had helped to build. So – one day, before she had gone to bed,
she took off the necklace. The next morning she was discovered, hands folded
neatly across her chest, lying in an eternal sleep. The local doctor had said
she had died of pneumonia. Some say that she had a great conversation with the
Jinn, but – ”
My Great-Aunt stood up suddenly,
resting her weight on her cane.
“That is just a story.”
The Jinn Archive 