Ramadaniyat (X)

When I was a little girl of about ten, one night I woke up after midnight suffocating. There was a dim light coming through the large window, in my bedroom, facing the street. And I was struck to see a hand stuck to the window as if someone was trying to get in from outside. On the other side of the light a tall black figure stood and was pointing his hand to my direction with a hissing sound. I remember that night I got so frightened that my scream gathered even the cats in my bedroom.
It tuned out that the weather got really dusty that night right after my retirement to bed, and there was a previous scratch at the window, of which some dust seeped in and polluted the air in the room, and others formed what shaped like a hand on the window (on a closer look; it did not look like a hand at all), the huge figure turned out to be an Abbaya (Arabic women head cover costume) that my mom hung on a stand hanger, beside the cupboards, right in front of the window, and the movement was caused by the air-conditioning in the room.
I remember before going to sleep that night, my cousin and me were at her place listening to baba 3od’s (her grandpa) tales of 3athab elqabr (grave torture). I also remember that on that night I was terrified to go to sleep that I tossed and turned for hours before turning in.

At another incident; at about the age of fifteen, the same cousin was spending the night over at my place, and between cigarette brakes in the bathroom using her grandpa’s stolen cigarettes, we talked about Eljin, and the haunted houses. My cousin and me were so alike except for the fact that she lived on superstition and I totally denied them. We spent almost till dawn with her convincing me, or me convincing her (doesn’t matter since we were both hard headed), none of us got convinced, so we both went to sleep.
Less than a half an hour later, while I was trying to sleep on my back, I felt my chest getting so heavy that I almost lost breath, there was this huge thing over me squashing me underneath, and paralyzing my movements. I could not make out his face but I heard voices in unionism like a chorus, repeating over and over again something like ” you have to believe in us, you have to, say it”, I finally said it, not because I resisted to say it in the beginning, but because my tongue was too numb to say it. Right after that I felt as if I woke up from a nightmare with sweated body. Yet it did not seem like a dream because everything in the room including my cousin who was in the next bed was so vivid in the dream, the only difference was the existence of that creepy thing. Next morning I told my cousin what happened and she told me of yathoom that is caused by demons.
When my son was two, we discovered by accident that he had G6PD deficiency, he had something in breakfast that we didn’t know that he shouldn’t have had, and the result was constant loss of his blood through urine. I spent three nights and days praying by his hospital bed. His body turned to almost white, his eyes white, his lips blue. The doctors were trying hard to save him, blood bags were emptied into his veins and right after drained through his urine, his body was poisoning the fresh blood he was receiving. I hardly had few naps on the sofa beside him throughout those days, only left the hospital to take a shower.
I remember I got so desperate that after one of my prayers I got so angry at God and asked him to either bring him to life or take him, I kept crying in my prayers “ don’t torture him and me more than this, I can’t bare to see my baby suffering”, I also told Him that I wasn’t going to pray for him again if He was so helpless. And after that I took the little carpet away and sat beside my baby’s bed watching the blood bag slowly trickling blood in the tubes leading to his veins. After sitting in this solitude for about half an hour, I noticed the name Allah in Arabic (with elshadah) forming in the remains of the blood in the bag, at that instant my husband came in and he saw my big smile amidst joyous tears looking up, he asked what I was doing and I pointed out to the bag saying ”read this”, he said” sub7an allah”.

Now what do these stories have in common? FEAR
Fear of the horror fictions that molded our pure childish brains, mostly by people we love and trust. Fear for the lives and well being of our loved ones. Fear of being an outcast if we didn’t follow the majority. In a nutshell; fear from the unknown.
Fear is so strong that it could easily induce imagination. People who swore that they have seen Virgin Mary are no liars, and those who saw ghosts are also no liars, they wanted to see a sign as I wanted to see it, and persuaded my husband to see it, and we both did.
Imagination can do wonders, and fear can give way to imagination; Don Quixote de la Mancha fought the windmills as he saw them giants. He was not a madman; he was just too much into the chivalry books he read. And his fear for the maidens and the poor, made him behave oddly. Just like my widowed cousin, who lost her husband more than ten years ago, and who did not remarry because her late husband still visits her almost everyday. And if baba 3od was alive today, he would’ve probably seen him as well.
Faith is one way of protection against fear, and religion enforces fear to strengthen faith. So it is no surprise to see educated people believe in fairytales. And see them as well.