A few days later Sweety Khala dragged me to meet one of her relatives. Everyone else was out, and so she was given the duty of supervising me. We were in the middle of Dhanmondi, on the rooftop of a building, in the middle of which Sweety Khala and another lady were having tea. I shifted away from them, my pale legs and arms swinging, moving, stretching farther, instead of sitting. The experience of sitting. The joy of sitting. The terrible act of sitting. In the storage closet. Now I was moving as if my body didn’t belong to me. I looked back over my shoulder to catch Sweety’s harsh glare, as if she was warning me, “Don’t you try anything!”
I walked away from her as she continued to chat with the lady about the latest anarkali dress she had purchased for Maryam to attend some other woman’s wedding.
Underneath the fossil-grey cement of the rooftop were the faint sounds of muffled voices. Above me, the late-afternoon sun hid behind a cloud in a smoky grey sky, as if it was too embarrassed to see me this way.
I wobbled over to the edge of the roof, which was without fencing. When I got to it, I looked straight down to see cars squeezing through narrow tube-like streets. There were a few men just standing around chatting and smoking, some in striped or checkered lungis, others in trousers. From the roof, their faces appeared as circular brown smudges.
I saw the circles of smoke from their cigarettes, heard their hoots. Their heads bobbed up and down. Some periodically re-tied their lungis. Scratching their heads. Patting each other on the back. Whatever they were doing, they were free.
I wondered how my death would look to them, if I stepped onto the air beyond the edge of the roof. I imagined myself then like Parakeet, with my shamrock wings spread, my striking red beak. I brought my arms from my side up to my shoulders, my neck pulled back to take in the light, my eyes closed, my one leg forward, just slightly over the edge. If I jumped, would I fly or would I splatter? All my organs released from the structure within which they were contained. I wondered how it would feel to be free from systems all together. To not worry about identity or school or books or friends or love or marriage or money. To never have to answer to anyone again.
Would the men down on the ground gasp and stare? Maybe run for help?
Would the gruesomeness of it impact the rest of their lives? What would the local headline be?
Bideshi Girl Falls to Her Death After Committing Grave Sin
Girl Dies to Save Family Name
Girl Dies for Lover and Disgraces Family
Possessed Girl Breaks Her Bones
Girl Kills Herself After Demonstrating a Pattern of Behaviour that Includes Making Questionable Choices: Lying, Promiscuity and Betraying Her Family, Her Culture, Her Homeland, Her God
Girl’s Death Due to Mysterious Circumstances
The horn of an oncoming scooter. I opened my eyes. The tips of my toes curling over the edge of roof. I stepped back and away. Sweety Khala was behind me with her arms crossed over her chest.
“What are you doing? Come, let’s go.” She grabbed my arm and pulled me toward her, ushered me down the stairs.
On the ride back to Boro Mama’s home, the buildings beyond the car window blurred into vapour. “It’s too foggy,” I mumbled. “People’s messy minds.”
“What are you saying?” Sweety Khala asked, unfolding a jamdani sari the lady had gifted her to investigate the designs in its interior.
I stayed quiet. Later she informed the others that it was indeed quite possible that my mind had been overcome by some malignant force, given the way I was behaving, which was disturbed.
Sayatanera Badhu / The Shayṭān Bride (Part Two)
I heard them speaking about a woman in the city who was tampered with by a jinni and now remained in a state of paralysis. Like me, this woman often sat in an unhinged marble state, staring at the walls counting one, two, three, four o’clock. Numb, pale, and unmoving, often silent, was how she passed the day.
It was during one of these days, while sitting in the storage closet eavesdropping on a conversation between Ammu and Sweety Khala, that I learned about this woman. I listened through the open crack of the closet door, which I had left ajar. They were sitting on the bed.
Ammu and Sweety Khala discussed the many hypotheses of how she ended up where she was, unmarried beyond marriageable age. A family falderal and disgrace. Nani and Bilkis joined later, listening in.
They discussed that her paralysis came about the morning after an evening when she had gone out for a stroll. During this evening, she looked particularly beautiful. Her black waist-length hair was down, fluttering over her breasts, resting in her curves, grazing her bottom. The full moon above her head followed her as she drifted by mango and boroi trees, rusty red-bricked buildings, gandharaj bushes, and a stray Labrador retriever of hickory shade barking incessantly, as if to warn her. There was a palpable pulse through the veins of the earth as she made her way over upturned roots, ancient moss, and thick mud.
“It was deep into the evening, around sunset during maghrib prayer. There were no human witnesses to bear sight of what really happened. Most people were indoors praying, preparing for dinner, or spending time with their families,” Sweety Khala said. “This is when the jinni saw her.”
She went on to explain that the jinni was hiding behind a stout tree, the bark covered in moist sapwood that smelled of jasmine and lemon blossoms.
Yes, only during maghrib, I thought, because like fajr, maghrib is a threshold between night and day, when the pathway between the observable human world and invisible world of jinns and angels opens and the unseen can appear more easily to the human eye.
“The jinni saw her and raped her. She couldn’t say no. It was a jinni after all,” Sweety Khala continued. “A jinni’s lust would overpower any twitch of resistance.”
Yes, that was probably true, for I thought Shayṭān could roll the world between his hands like a rubber ball; why wouldn’t he be able to touch this woman the same way?
“Well, I think she agreed to the jinni’s advances. Some people say he came in the form of a beautiful man,” Ammu added.
“That’s possible,” Sweety Khala replied.
Apparently, the man was smooth-skinned, broad-built, tall, with eyes the shade of a smoky quartz, calling to her and her lust.
In that moment, the woman had been compelled away from her faith, as if she dissolved her family and her God and was drawn into a place within her own body where the Shayṭān was waiting for her.
“You see, it would be different if they were married. Marriage happens between jinns and humans. But some jinns, they consummate with you then go away, and you’re left longing for them forever. Making love to a jinni is dangerous,” Nani shared. “Ekdom shorbonash!”
“Or maybe the jinni is in her,” Sweety Khala chimed in again. “The jinni could have just made a home for himself in her body.”
Whether or not the woman was raped by the jinni, or fell in love with him in human form, or was simply possessed, it intrigued me that this woman was now in such a state, where she just stared at walls for days. Hardly moving or speaking. I considered that it could have just been a mental health issue. However, I also believed in jinns, so I parked my thoughts and I listened.
“If there isn’t a jinni involved, then it’s probably because of the evil eye. Nazar, ovishap,” Ammu said. “The woman is beautiful, how she looks and her heart. Maybe this made lots of people jealous.”
According to the concept of nazar, a person could give another a quick glare — unintentional or intentional — during a moment when his or her heart espoused so much jealousy that ill-wishing was inevitable. This would leave the person receiving the glare cursed, unable to flourish in specific areas of their lives.
A person who had the intention to harm another could blow ill wishes onto a strand of hair or piece of food before consumption. The target would then be cursed, trapped within an inescapable metaphysical knot that would manifest either in an emotional or physical circumstance in the human w
orld. Although these theories sounded metaphorical or otherworldly, the impacts on the afflicted person’s life were real. At least, this is what I had heard.
“Actually, she’s a petni. Yes, she must be that,” Nani deduced.
A petni is a female ghost from the Hindu world, who had died unmarried and haunted people on earth to seek revenge.
“No, no, not possible. Listen, I know the real truth.” Sweety Khala’s voice increased in both tone and pitch. “We all know she met some human man and they had intercourse. It was zina.”
Sweety Khala was never shy to utter words considered provocative. Ammu, on the other hand, covered her mouth, and Nani just smiled.
“I still think she’s possessed by a jinni because she doesn’t move on. The jinni made her do it; otherwise, who would be so stupid?” Sweety Khala asked.
I listened carefully. I gathered that someone or something had blocked her desire for marriage and so she was now destined to be a spinster, losing the opportunity to fulfill a role within a family and a broader community. A social recluse.
“What about the suitors they brought in?” Bilkis asked, then lowered her chin.
“They come and go. She says no to everyone,” Nani explained.
“Did they try to fix her?” Ammu asked.
“Yes, Zam Zam water, the ta’wiz, even the Huzoor came in. They also beat her, left her alone for months, but nothing,” Sweety Khala explained.
I heard that the woman’s parents had also cleansed the home where their daughter stayed, removed the photographs and any kind of decoration, then burned incense. Everyone in the home tried to ensure purity of their body and environment. When the exorcist arrived, he asked some questions to the dormant jinni. “What kind of being are you? What is your intention?”
Apparently, he had asked her to lie down. He then put his hand on her head, preparing to cure her inflicted heart or qalb. “Bismillah,” he began.
When the exorcist, who they referred to as Huzoor, started reciting the Quran, his voice was low at first, and then it rose, the strings of sounds. While the rest of the city slept, the melodic sounds floated against the harsh snores.
I wondered if she had been awake or sleeping like me.
“She still hasn’t been cured,” Sweety Khala said.
“What did her mother and father do?” Bilkis asked, also deeply intrigued.
“Well, what can they do? The mother is still seeking a cure, but the father, well, he has withdrawn. It makes no sense. Why would she not want to be a wife or a mother? The way she stares — you should see her face — definitely the possession of a jinni that led her to fall for the mysterious man. And now he is gone!” Sweety Khala explained.
As I followed the discussion, I thought it all sounded so familiar to the description of the women whom I had heard about when I was younger. When my Khalas, cousins, neighbours, and domestic help had brought them up in the past, it seemed their distinguishable trait was their audacity, which landed them in trouble. They could not find a way out of it afterward. This left the people saying, “Well, she is at fault. She deserved it. She did not know her place. It’s how the world and God takes justice.”
These women were spoken about matter-of-factly, as if their pain couldn’t be identified with, was not relatable in any way. Those who told the story always seemed so proud of themselves for having avoided a similar fate. I questioned if they would ever consider that perhaps these women were just living their lives, and that even if they were troubled or conflicted, they needed to fight their own inner jihad in order to decide for themselves. Or perhaps there were other circumstances of which we were not aware. How could anyone know what was really in her heart or mind if they just judged based on what they heard? People were not asking the right questions, but they were quick to shame.
I sat quietly with my thoughts. I did believe there could have been tampering of jinns, because in Islam they did exist, but nothing excused force, slander, or physical torture by the hands of humans, before, after, during, or without a jinni involvement.
So, as I heard this story about this particular woman, I deduced that she could be one of them; she could be a Shayṭān Bride.
Footsteps grew louder. Ammu and Sweety Khala were on the other side of the storage closet. The door swung fully open.
“Come, we are going to visit someone and you can come,” Ammu said.
I wondered for a moment if she could have been talking about the tall man whom I had met in the restaurant. Since that day, he had sneaked into my mind, making a couple of appearances. In my recollections, he’d sporadically give me a sideways glance, with the grace of a feather quill caressing textured scroll paper. He’d have broad shoulders and a thick neck, which I assumed would smell of vanilla and a little bit of musk. I pondered what types of books he read, what kinds of thoughts he had.
Would I mind seeing him again? No, I didn’t think that I would. But I did have bigger things to worry about, like getting out of the country somehow.
Whoever it was that we were going to see, this time I nodded to the idea of visiting them. I was desperate for another chance to see the sun.
Outside, we walked down the gravel roads to a destination that still remained unknown. It had been days since I last left Boro Mama’s home. The route was rather circuitous, and I, with wobbly legs that compelled me to sit, was also constricted in the chest. I navigated the twists and turns with no regard for the rickshaws that darted past me with ringing bells, or cars that sideswiped my starved body.
As I struggled to keep to Ammu and Sweety Khala’s trail, I was startled by the mumbles under their breaths about the flat in Dhanmondi that was apparently haunted. I heard them say something like “Whoever visits there hears strange sounds and feels a strange presence.”
Soon we were in front of a gated, brown-brick building. Its guard snored soundly on a white plastic chair.
“Hey!” Sweety Khala yelled. “Open the gate!”
The gate guard jerked awake and let us in. We climbed up cement stairs until we reached the third floor. Sweety Khala knocked on 3A, and a short woman in a fern-green cotton sari opened the door with a limp smile. She recognized Sweety Khala, who introduced Ammu and I.
A couple of seconds later, we were seated on a taupe sofa, being served coffee and samosas that I refused. My appetite had been gone for a while.
I scanned the room: one wooden almari, white lace curtains, a lonely tabla tucked away in a corner, and Bollywood tunes on a loop on a television set in the adjacent room.
The door of the room in front of me had been left ajar. A crack. I squinted. Through the crack I saw a bed, blue-and-white checkered print bedding, and the slender figure of a woman. She was sitting. I could only make out her back. Two pale arms, motionless, dangling from her body.
I thought, Could this be the woman Ammu and Sweety Khala had been talking about? Could she be a Shayṭān Bride?
I longed to see the young woman’s face, read her eyes for something like sisterhood or kindredness, but she was turned away from me.
I hadn’t been paying attention to what Ammu and Sweety Khala had been saying. I had just been staring. So, when they abruptly stood up and walked over to the open door, the one I had been peering into, my pulse quickened. They told me to stay put on the sofa with the aunty, who was now offering me samosa again. I pushed away the plate and kept my eyes ahead.
Ammu and Sweety Khala entered the room where the woman was. They closed the door behind them.
The lady with the fern-green cotton sari remained sitting with me. She must have been the mother of the young woman in the room.
“So, how old are you again?” she asked me.
I told her nineteen.
“How do you like it here in Dhaka?” she asked.
“It’s fine,” I answered. Phlegm foamed somewhere at the base of my throat and my chest tightened a little.
She nodded, her eyes down at her feet. “My daughter is very sick,” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” she answered.
“Has she seen a doctor?” I inquired.
“She doesn’t want to get married,” the lady said, ignoring my question.
“Her sickness has to do with marriage?” I asked.
She looked up at me, silent for a couple of minutes.
“Maybe she likes to be alone. Or maybe she loves someone else,” I said. “Has she ever been in love before? She might be longing for her lover.”
“She has only been sick. It’s a sickness,” the lady said, her tone rising and nose scrunching a little bit.
I remembered then the story of Zulaykha, the beautiful married woman who tried to seduce Prophet Yusuf. He resisted her advances, but she persisted. When her husband caught her he said inna kaydakunna, meaning a type of female cunning or temptation. The words soon began to travel through the lands as if they were handed down from God Himself. Many even claimed that kayd was worse than the con of the Shayṭān. However, the way Zulaykha’s love for Prophet Yusuf had pierced through the veil of her heart was not something she was judged for by Allah, just the people who spoke ill of her and through rumours. So later, when she invited other women over for a feast and Prophet Yusuf walked in to introduce himself, all the women could not take their eyes off him. They cut themselves unintentionally with the knives they were using to cut the fruit in their hands, as they themselves were so mesmerized by Prophet Yusuf’s face.
It is okay for women to long for a man or whomever she desires, I thought. How can desire be a sickness? Is it only supposed to belong to men? God made Adam in His image, did he not? Al-husn. So, all people must be desirable in some way.
“Tell me something; how is it like in Canada? Do women get married often and early?” The lady interrupted my thoughts.
“Well, it depends on the person,” I told her. “People are generally free to marry who they choose.”
As soon as I said it, I felt my words as a partial truth; evangelicals with supervised courtships, women in Yorkville fulfilling the obligations of their aristocracy, women alone in kitchens secretly eating chocolate, drinking beer, popping Xanax because they don’t want to have sex with the man they settled for. In the context of Islamic marriages, practising Muslim women unable to find practising Muslim men, so they remained single despite wanting to be married, or Muslim women who lived secret lives with lovers whom their families would never accept. All the ways marriage is legislated by circumstance and issues that arise across faiths.
The Shaytan Bride Page 17