THE SHAYṬĀN BRIDE
SUMAIYA MATIN
THE SHAYṬĀN BRIDE
A Bangladeshi Canadian Memoir of Desire and Faith
Copyright © Sumaiya Matin, 2021
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Publisher: Scott Fraser | Acquiring editor: Julie Mannell
Cover designer: Laura Boyle
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: The shayṭān bride : a Bangladeshi Canadian memoir of desire and faith / Sumaiya Matin.
Names: Matin, Sumaiya, author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210167971 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210171065 | ISBN 9781459747678 (softcover) | ISBN 9781459747685 (PDF) | ISBN 9781459747692 (EPUB) Subjects: LCSH: Matin, Sumaiya. | LCSH: Muslim women—Canada—Biography. | LCSH: Muslim women—Canada—Social life and customs. | LCSH: Muslim women—Canada—Social conditions. | LCGFT: Autobiographies.
Classification: LCC HQ1170 .M38 2021 | DDC 305.48/697092—dc23
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Ontario, through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and Ontario Creates, and the Government of Canada.
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For Ammu (Mother)
The whole of my life summed up in three phases:
I was raw
then
I was burnt
now,
I am on fire
— Rumi
Contents
Tarid al’Arwah Alsharira / The Exorcist
The Shayṭān Bride
Ṭiẏā pākhi / Parakeet
Conversations with Trees
Jungle
Amaranthine
Bhrura Madhye / Between the Eyebrows
Ridoyer Porda / Veils of the Heart
Atyanta Cene Aparicita Byakti / Familiar Stranger
Sayatanera Badhu / The Shayṭān Bride (Part Two)
Obhishonkot / Fork in the Road
Bibaher Din / Wedding Day
Quatervois
Duniya Ke Kone / Corners of the World
Revolving Doors
Jajabor / Nomad
Conversations with Trees (Part Two)
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Tarid al’Arwah Alsharira / The Exorcist
I didn’t see the exorcist, but I heard he’d dropped by and brought with him a ta’wiz, a silver locket containing a small scroll with verses of Ayatul Kursi to ward off evil. The locket with the surah was attached to a black thread. The ta’wiz was supposed to be wrapped around my arm or worn around my neck.
It must have been early in the morning or late in the night when he left it for me. I must have been sleeping. I wondered if he had entered the bedroom and watched as I lay there on one of the two beds, the one by the large window next to the veranda. That window was usually open at all hours, the thin linen curtains blowing occasionally when the breeze could eke its way through the humid Dhaka streets.
I must have been on my back, legs spread apart, each breast sliding away from the centre of my chest, open and unguarded. Or maybe I had been on my right side, in the fetal position with my knees up to my chest, head over my bent arm, as if I was back in the womb again. It must have been then when he hovered over me, holding his palms open to the sky, reciting prayers, then gently placing his clammy hand on my forehead. Whiff of sandalwood incense. Performing ruqyah, reciting the words of the Quran to confront the jinns with bad dispositions and the jinns sent by everyday sorcerers to afflict humans.
I heard the lilting Arabic verses that were so distinct and familiar to me. A tonic of solace, trust, and mystery soaking into my ears, soaking into the saliva filling my gaping mouth as I half slept. These words were a remedy, despite any incoherence from the flawed delivery of the reciter. My heart was either conditioned or naturally inclined to find the breaths between them, a space to rest, like the pulpy pillow I laid my head on.
Or maybe I had heard nothing but the rattle of the rotating blades of the fan overhead.
The haze and my disorientation were much less bothersome to me than the sharp flicker of light between my eyelids. I twitched awake, only to hear fading footsteps.
Had it all been a dream? I wondered.
What I knew was that in the morning, when I got off the stiff bed, drowsy and suffering some sort of memory distortion, I found Sweety Khala standing there in her floral salwar kameez, wavy black hair in a bun. She turned her body to the mattress and, suddenly and hastily, pulled it up with all the strength she had, revealing the black string attached to a silver locket. She carefully moved one of her hands toward the amulet and snatched it from where it lay, releasing her other hand from the mattress. She let the mattress tumble like a falling skyscraper while keeping her eyes fixed on me, almost unblinking. She opened her right palm slowly to reveal the ta’wiz she was now holding.
“Put this around your arm,” she said. “It will protect you from what you’ve been stricken with.”
“No,” I said in a sharp tone. I turned away from her. We stood there under the rotating fan blades for a few more minutes.
“From what do I need protection? I’m fine,” I said.
“You claim you’re in love,” she replied, widening her eyes, and with all her weight on one hip, which indicated she had diagnosed me with some certainty, but that there was more she was probably trying to figure out. “It’s not wise, to be so eccentric. It’s not normal, however you’re behaving.”
I pushed her hand away with my own — what felt to me like moving boulders but was really a slight tap. I hadn’t eaten for days. I was really weak. She held onto the ta’wiz tighter, as if her life depended on it.
“All the men we’ve suggested, you’ve rejected. You just lay there, and don’t consider anything we say. Sometimes you’re a monster, yelling loudly and pushing us away.”
She explained that these were all the symptoms of sihr, someone else’s ill intentions sent my way, or perhaps the interest of a jinni who wanted to make a home of my body, or who had fallen in love with me.
As she explained, I thought, I believe in jinns, too, made of smokeless fire, living alongside humans in an unseen world. I did believe that certain powers could be sent to influence a person to behave in ways that were not aligned with their true, deepest nature, that would make their battle within themselves to manage their misguided yearnings even harder. However, the agony I felt came not from jinns, but from one source and one source alone: being coerced to do something I did not want to do.
As my thoughts unravelled, intertwined, and spun like thread, a young girl stumbled in. She was a maid, and her name was Bilkis. She was wearing a pair of brown capris with holes in them and a pink shirt with a rainbow printed on it. She had dark-brown tumblew
eed hair. Her front tooth was crooked, and her skin seemed brittle. Bilkis kept her eyes on me as she shuffled in my direction holding a glass of water, which she presented to me without comment.
I peered over the rim of the glass. I was parched and could already feel the slimy water in my mouth. Amid the miasma of secrets, fading sounds albeit moving mouths, and the furtive glances, I wondered if someone had put something in this water.
“At least drink this,” Sweety Khala said, pointing to the water. “It’s Zam Zam water from Mecca, brought back from Hajj.”
The Zam Zam water came from a well in Mecca, east of the Kaaba, the holy building toward which Muslims around the world pray five times a day. Prophet Ibrahim’s wife Hajar had found it in the hot, dry desert, where no one thought water existed, and used it to feed their son Ismail.
It was holy water that I, too, revered, yet when I extended my hand toward the glass, I retracted. Such were the times, where my trust was always wavering, where I couldn’t believe what people were telling me — not completely.
What did I think and how did I feel about being told that I was possibly possessed by a jinni? As Sweety Khala had pointed out, it was true that I presented with quite a few symptoms of a person possessed: aches in my heart and my head that were constant and far-reaching; my occasional dreams of falling off buildings, which lingered like an unattended urge; trailing whispers, sometimes in the distance and sometimes close.
It was, at first, all too ridiculous. A diagnosis based on an observation, so sudden, and imposed by everyone. But as they increasingly exposed me to their hopes and the concerns of their own agenda, I realized that perhaps all these years I had not known them as well as I thought I did, and there was a larger world about which I had not been very aware.
The time was strange, but all I knew and wanted was for it all to be over.
When Bilkis handed the glass of water to me, I thought for a moment, What would happen if I knocked the glass out of her hand? Perhaps it would have looked like I was exactly what they thought I was: crazy. During this time, I had become particularly aware of and attuned to how I was being perceived and the multiple ways my actions and words could be used to suggest a truth about me that I wouldn’t be able to erase. What was this truth? It was fleeting and defined by the perception of groups of people. So, given the intangibility and conditionality, I decided then, despite my every urge, to grab the glass and take a sip.
I thought to myself, Allah knows my heart. Whatever is right, whatever is real, will ultimately surface.
“Fine, put the ta’wiz on me,” I said in a kind of rebellion, or maybe acceptance. For, somewhere within me, I knew it didn’t matter, anyway. No talisman or amulet could shape what would happen; only Allah’s will.
At the time I was perceived as going astray from Allah, but it was then that my faith had deepened the most.
Disclaimer:
This is not a rescue story.
The Shayṭān Bride
When I was a young girl living in Dhaka, Bangladesh, I heard about eccentric women who were possessed by jinns. These jinns had very fine and thin bodies, and were often hard to trace. There were good ones and bad ones. The bad ones were akin to the devil, the Shayṭān.
How I understood Shayṭān in Islam was that he was once Iblis. Iblis was created by Allah, or God. He was regarded as an angel by some and a jinni by others. When Allah asked Iblis to bow down to Adam, Iblis didn’t obey. Some believe this was because of arrogance and envy, as he felt he was superior to Adam, who was made of mere clay. Others believe his refusal was because he believed in bowing down to one God only, no one else, and especially not another one of God’s creations. Iblis was then banned from Paradise. Instead of repenting, Iblis decided to take vengeance by making it his mission to lure humans into their lower instincts, into doing evil. Some Sufis think Iblis represents unrequited love, as his love for monotheism was misunderstood by Allah and he was cast away. Other Sufis believe his behaviour only demonstrated what happens when one does not look at the inner qualities of another, and judges them only from the outside, deducing their own self as greater. Some also see Iblis’s dark light as the beacon to follow, to transcend superficial worship.
In all of these interpretations, it seemed Iblis eventually became Shayṭān. Shayṭān’s heart is inflamed with an anger so reckless that it creates discord and inevitable corruption. He is the master then of all the ill-dispositioned jinns, whom he commands to afflict humans in different ways.
The eccentric women that were talked about displayed all the signs of Shayṭān’s meddling and were therefore considered possessed. Like Shayṭān, they were thought to be nefarious. What were the markers of their rebellion? In their mannerisms, they were highly lethargic, solitary, or disinterested. They were often forgetful or appeared ill. They turned down their men for sex or didn’t love them anymore. Their hearts were filled with disgust and hate. They heard or saw things others didn’t. They dreamt often of being summoned or of other peculiar things. Their bodies often ached, or had involuntary movement. They rejected all their suitors, saying they were too ugly or had some other defect.
There was also the kind of eccentric woman thought to be infected with ishq, a reckless passion, an undying desire to obtain one’s beloved. They fell in love with men or other women with no regard for whether their desires would be socially acceptable. They ignored the consequences their desires would have on their bodies, their families, and their religion. This audacity or carelessness was so preposterous that the only explanation was meddling from an outside force that had somehow found its way in. Those they loved were considered shapeshifters, sometimes in the form of humans, animals, or even an untraceable shadow. These jinns preyed on women whose hearts were pure, naive, and easily able to feel what others felt. They sometimes seduced women who were meant to be the brides of other men, good men.
One specific story I heard was that of a jinni who stole a woman on her wedding night. He picked her up from where she lay, sleeping next to her new husband, and put her in a treasure chest that he had brought with him. The bride was never found.
I always heard stories of women both in the city and nearby villages who weren’t married despite being of marriageable age, or who had run away because of a jinni. The stories of their possession by jinns, or their love affairs with them, were passed through whispers.
Who are these women? I wondered. The ones who are always named alongside the Shayṭān?
There were many incarnations of this same story, and sometimes the women were considered victims — thought foolish, naive, not prudent enough, and therefore vulnerable — and other times simply deserving of whatever ill fate. About those latter ones, I heard plenty of people say, “Well, you know, she was just asking for it.”
At the end of the stories, the moral or warning was always the same: never end up like these women, stay vigilant, and do simply what you’re supposed to. Always.
When Ammu warned me that I should be good and maintain my honour, I wasn’t sure if her purpose was to console or warn me. I also didn’t know that in other lands outside of Bangladesh there were women with similar stories, with details that were different. I decided to name all these women as one woman. An essence. I called her the Shayṭān Bride.
I imagined the Shayṭān Bride burning like the flames of the Darvaza crater in Turkmenistan, the one that people call the gates to hell. Her fire wasn’t the substance of what was in Iblis’s heart — vengeance — after he became Shayṭān. It came from a longing that could never be put out, for both love and life, one and the same. I imagined her walking the earth as if she didn’t have to anticipate any turn or fall, as if there were no limits or bounds as to where she could go. She didn’t accept everything she was told. She asked questions. Did her assuredness lack remembrance of God? Was it driven by an image she had of herself, a type of self-aggrandizement or entitlement? No. It was possible that through her choices, she found herself often in the depths of
sin, but her falling is what grew her faith. She trusted herself, even if she made mistakes.
Yes, I imagined the Shayṭān Bride as forewarning, but not as terrorized by the bad jinns, the sorcerers, her human or non-human lovers, or even the Shayṭān, like they said. She moved freely and in ways most others didn’t because they weren’t sure how, or they were afraid, or such freedom of movement existed entirely outside the spectrum of their imaginations.
Ṭiẏā pākhi / Parakeet
It started over twenty years ago, with a vague conversation in the living room of a spacious house on Lalmatia Street in Dhaka. I had a parakeet at the time, South Asian rose-ringed with vivid green plumage and a striking red beak.
Parakeet seemed perceptive, bobbing its head here and there as if to agree — or disagree — with the shared thoughts of comers and goers, its beady yellowish-white eyes bouncing across the room. Most of the time, however, it sat quietly, watching me as I swam through the air on the indoor swing Abbu had built me.
I remember swinging amid the murmurs of Ammu, Abbu, and my maternal uncle, who I called Boro Mama; they went back and forth like a fencing duel on the potential gains and losses of moving to a new country: Canada.
At the time, Abbu didn’t really want to go. He had a stable life in Dhaka, solid employment, a home, and the warm quilt of family, including his eleven siblings, wrapped around him.
“The people there may be too different,” Abbu said. “We’re content where we are.”
Abbu, like his father, my Dada, was a man of faith, thinking often about the afterlife and how to prepare for it. Although Abbu was an electrical engineer by trade, he spent most of his youth under betel trees in the fields of Rajshahi University studying philosophy, psychology, theology, and literature, jotting down key insights into a small brown leather notebook. One of his favourite reads was Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, through which he learned to articulate integrity as well as sabr, which means spiritual steadfastness, a particular patience in Islamic philosophy.
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