Close
encounters
with exorcism
The
colors of pain darkened the girl’s face. Sorrow turned to amazement in
her eyes. She had even forgotten to blink her eyes. Her lips trembled. She
bit her lips again and again. Despair was writ large on her face. She must
have been between twenty-five and thirty. She was stepping out of the
Jinnati Baba’s room along with her mother. She met us on the threshold
of the room. Mariam Palejo greeted her and put her hand affectionately
over her head and asked her mother, what had happened to her. The mother
replied that “it was a khabees jinn, but we have a great hope in the
Jinnati Baba.” The girl looked at us and took a deep breath. “By
Allah’s will the jinn will go away. The Jinnati Baba works miracles,”
the girl told us. A ray of hope appeared in her eyes and then promptly
disappeared. Mariam beckoned to us that the Jinnati Baba was calling us.
The mother and daughter said goodbye to us and went on their way as we
went inside. My eyes were still with the girl and her sorrowful face, my
eyes had still not come back to me. But Nafisa Shah had started asking
questions from the Jinnati Baba. I try and pull myself together. Nafisa
and I had decided that when we go to the Jinnati Baba, we will introduce
ourselves as journalists but we will tell him that we believed in him so
that he does not become over-conscious and is able to talk to us in a
relaxed mood.
He
was a well-proportioned hale and hearty young man. His bare feet were
covered with dust and so was his dress. His face was partially covered
with a thick, bushy beard. His cheeks glowed with his health. Ii could not
but help think of the pale and colorless cheeks of the young girl I had
just seen. The Jinnati Baba looked like a leech to me who had sucked the
blood of helpless human beings and had become rose-pink himself. His face
betrayed no trace of the sorrow that he had come in contact with.
His
looks were trying to fathom us, trying to guess which class of society we
belonged to and how much he could earn from us. We were in the room.
Marium said that we were “sawalis,” we had come with a question. He
welcomed us and asked which one of us will go in first. He took out a
bunch of keys from his shirt-pockets and opened a room for us. There was
smaller room inside the room that we were sitting in and he opened the
lock of the smaller room within room. I followed him. I entered the room.
He closed the door. The room was pitch dark. There was not even enough
light for me to see the inside of the room and he was in so much hurry. He
probably did not want to give me time to observe things. He pointed to a
corner of the room. “Say your question!” he commanded. I had no
question and I had not come prepared with anything. I mumble “My
children should get admissions into good schools!” Pat comes a reply,
“Something interferes with this woman’s needs, somebody has applied
the black arts to her.” Jinnati Baba pleads my case, “Do something for
her!”
Jjinnati
Baba asks me to lift one finger from my left hand and bow my head. I am
desperate to turn my face and take a look all around. Jinnati Bbaba is
issuing instructions quickly, as if he wants to confuse me. I cannot make
up my mind that in the short time given to me whether I should look at the
floor, turn to the ceiling or face the wall. The Jinn addresses me,
speaking in Sindhi with the Thatta accent. Jinnati Baba commands me to put
my finger in my mouth. I do as he says and confirm that it tastes sweet.
“Your task has been accomplished!” he gives me the good news. He bends
down and scoops up a handful of dust and wrapping it in a piece of
paper, hands it to me. I had seen him bend down to pick up the dust
from a heap on the floor. Behind him was box and on it the battery of a
car. I could only take a fleeting glimpse.
I was ushered out of the room. It was Nafisa Shah’s turn next and
I saw her going in. I could hear her questions and Jinnati Baba’s
responses. Her questions and
the jinn’s response are no different. Her finger also turns sweet and
she too is given a handful of dust. She gets seven days and I five days to
sprinkle this dust mixed with water in the courtyard of our house. I have
no courtyard in my home so I threw it in the dustbin after I reached home.
I then turned towards the Jinnati Baba and asked him why should
anyone apply the black arts against me since I had no enemies that I knew
of. He tells me that it is not only humans who turn against humans but
jinns and other creatures. We give him a hundred rupees each. He accepted
the money reciting bismillah, but he also peeped in to see how much we had
given him. In a flash I saw his relationship with the money he immediately
put into his pocket.
A
new car stood outside. We also saw the “hospital”. Some pills were
lying in open boxes. But none of them was a life-saving drug. I saw
nothing to address the asthma which I am afflicted with. In another room
were a dilapidated desk and a dusty stethoscope. We went to his home. In
one room, there was large fridge, double bed, showcase, chairs and much
furniture. Jinnati Baba’s schooling is till class five in the Sindhi
medium. He does not have to use his hands and feet to earn his living. He
uses his intelligence, the same intelligence which is called research and
science when used in the positive sense and termed black magic when it
weaves an intriguing net of suspicion and doubt over vulnerable minds. But
the most shocking thing I was told was that the Jinnati Baba had employed
a qualified lady doctor, who had done her MBBS from the Liaquat Medical
College. She was getting Rs 2500 per month. The lady doctor asked us,
which of us was afflicted with the jinn since we had come all the way from
Karachi. Nafisa laughed and asked her to guess it herself. She pointed
towards me and said that she suffers from the jinn. Why do you say so? I
asked her. “Because her face bears traces of sorrow!” I turned to her
and told that being a doctor she should understand that this could be due
to medical or psychological reasons. She appeared confused but then she
said, “But jinns do exist! They are mentioned in the Holy Quran!” I
have more questions for her. “There are so many mental patients or
psycholgical cases and that being a doctor she must be able to give the
treatment they needed. She tells me that Baba asks them to go to the city
and seek proper treatment. He only deals with those people who are really
and truly afflicted with jinns. She then told me that she lived in Karachi
but came here only to help people. I began to doubt her credentials. She
could not have been a doctor, could not have even completed the nursing
diploma. She did not appear to be experienced or qualified.
We
met the Jinanti Baba’s wife, a simple woman who could not have been more
than 20 or 25. She told me that she had not seen her husband before her
marriage. Her relatives were “mureeds” of the Baba and had arranged
her marriage. I asked her if she felt afraid being married to the Jinnati
Baba. She very calmly replied, “No!”
I asked her if she had seen any jinns herself. She said that she
had never seen the jinns but she knew that they went about the house. They
talk to my husband but they never talk to me.” I ask her if she had ever
asked the jinns to do anything for her “since she was such a husband’s
wife and the jinns would do whatever she asked them.” She smiles and her
smile says more than her words.
We
were told by our hosts that on the fourteenth night of every month
afflicted men and women gather in Makli. I had seen such cases in my childhood and
I recalled that once my family had gone to spend the night at the
tomb of Noorani Noor at Lahoot Lamakan and I had seen men and women
swaying and screaming. I also recalled a night at Bhit
Shah. When the faqirs started playing the raag on the tamboora,
people sitting in separate groups came together and started swaying to the
music. The majority of those present were women. Nafisa Shah, who had also
accompanied me there, talked to these women’s families. There was
beautiful young woman with hair open and flying about wildly, swaying to
the music. Her mother told us that she is “normal” most of the time
and then she suddenly stops talking.
She appears withdrawn and we have even to force her to eat. We then
understand that her jinn wants her to go to Bhittai’s tomb. Sometimes
the jinn tells us that it ants to come here and if we delay this journey
then the jinn is very angry and this girl starts yelling and screaming,
breaking things in the home. We then bring her here, she stays here for
two or three nights, swaying and moving (leher) and she feels lighter. We
then take her home. We asked her mother if the girl was married. The
mother pointed to the two year old sitting in her sister-in-law’s lap
and said that the girl is engaged to him.
Next to her another woman was moving her body had her aged husband
coughed and spluttered. We watched these women. They sat in a
certain style with their legs crossed and the upper part of the body moved
in a certain rhythm, the neck and hair also moving with it.
Just as there are dances to express joys, sorrows, hope and
ecstasy, this movement expresses frustration.
Condemned
to life-imprisonment in their homes, these women get a taste of freedom
when they come to these places and they experience a change. The women who
accompany them here also appear to be relaxed and satisfied.
The men in the family also do not have any objection to their
coming here.
There
is a well-known Baba in a busy locality of Hyderabad.
He has reputation for being able to draw out jinns and break the
spell of black magic. I went there accompanied with a friend who had made
a love marriage to an already married man, the man leaving his first wife
and children for her sake, but had now become involved with a third woman.
Here too we saw women in the courtyard, swaying and moving in the set
rhythm. One woman’s mother-in-law told us that the woman’s husband
earned a lot of money in Dubai, sent gold and cash, had even a house built
for the family, but the poor woman was being visited by a jinn. A girl was
banging her head on the floor. I could not take that any longer. I went
and sat next to her. The other women told me not to do that but I held her
in my arms as she started to bang her head down. I could see that she was
fellow-sufferer having an attack of asthma. I immediately gave her the
inhaler which I keep in my purse. She became calm and put her head on my
shoulder. I got a glass of
water and gave her a tablet of ventolin which also I keep in my purse. She
fell asleep. But her relatives came to me and became angry. The Baba was
also angry. He said that he had done his MA English from Sindh University
and started speaking in English. He said that this woman is possessed by a
“khabees jinn” and the recitation of holy words drives away the jinn.
I
have seen such cases and heard of jinns right from my childhood. I come
from the family of a moulvi My family earned their living from settling
religious disputes and giving advise to the village in religious matters.
My father had rebelled against this, getting a proper education and
working as a school teacher. When he retired, he went back to his
family’s profession.
My
father said that he possessed three female jinns, or jinnris. He said that
their names were Roohi, Rahat and Soohi. He told us that he had not
captured them but they had come to live in the upstairs room of their own
accord and as long as we left them alone, they would not bother us. Before
going upstairs we were supposed to recite the “three quls”. I was
fascinated and wanted desperately to see them. I would deliberately
disobey my father and stopped reciting the three quls. I would go there on
the very times I was forbidden to do so and call them out by their names.
I never saw anything except my father’s fantasies.
My father told us that because of these three jinns, we had certain privileges over other jinns also. No other family could fetch wood from the graveyard except our family. Once my mother’s cousin went and chopped wood from the graveyard. The same night, his mother came to our home, banging the door loudly. She left all the wood at our home, saying that we can see flashes of light and hear the sound of laughter. Once my father got some wood from the neighbouring villages’s graveyard. He got up in the middle of the night and said loudly that please forgive me, I shall never do such a thing again. My mother asked him what happened. He told her that the jinns were angry and they had said that we gave you the permission for one graveyard only. I would also go the graveyard and fetch wood. The other children asked me if I felt afraid. But I told them that I recited the three quls and a special prayer my father had taught me. Much later I stopped reciting the three quls but still nothing happened.
I saw my father taking the jinn out of a person. The jinn possessed an older cousin of ours. As a nine year old girl, she had been sold by her relatives for seven hundred rupees to a poor and drug addict husband. My father beat her while taking out the jinn. But he never became excessively violent. Perhaps because he was old and weak at the time. My mother never made us afraid of the jinns. She belived in them but was not afraid of them. When Ii looked around myself I made the discovery that jinns are seen only by those people who believe in them and those who are not afraid, never see any jinns. For jinns, believing is seeing.
Published in DAWN, THE REVIEW, Translated by Asif Farrukhi
