The mountain nymphs made a mistake. They miscalculated the consistency of the barrier by a few millimeters, which was impactful enough to leave a hole. The moon was concluding her yearly harvest yesterday. Usually, the festivals of the other world happen secretly behind closed doors. Samar heard stories about them. Her grandfather once walked back from the olive fields in the late evening during the harvest season, never making his way there alone ever since. At dusk, his limps ached from the olive plucking and bag carrying, and he stumbled on the arid rocky path back home, at least an hour’s walk away. On the way back, he accidentally passed the Mukin area and witnessed the Jinn’s marriage party. Everybody knew that Jinn existed, but it was frightening for him to cross paths with them. God created their worlds to be parallel to ours, but something in the natural order was shifting due to the nymphs’ miscalculations.Â
Samar was familiar with these tales. Her grandmother always blamed the Jinn for the misplacement of her jewelry and household items. What she didn’t expect, however, was that she herself would coincidentally cross to the other side one day. She thought that she was dreaming. The veil between reality and dreams has always been too thin for her, but it never occurred to her that she could traverse it. Usually, she could see through it, but this time, it was different. It was Ramadan, so Leilat El-kader – the night of the decree could happen any time. There is no set day for the night of the decree, but on that night, the world can show its true colors, like a carnival show whose performers are animals and trees, which only the faithful can bear witness to. Seeing that was God’s little gift to the ones who loved him well. Uncle Sami, who joined the faithful, told Samar that he saw bent-down trees, like hunched praying old men kissing the earth. He touched wells of gold, and the water became a shiny metallic liquid he collected during the night without vanishing once the sunlight caressed it. “It was not like the letter which I never managed to decipher,” Samar told herself, referring back to a vivid dreamy train she hopped onto a few weeks back when her grandfather had just passed away and wanted to tell her something.
It wasn’t the crossing that mattered but what her body carried after that trip. Her left leg had a huge red rash that wouldn’t disappear for weeks, and her mother inevitably noticed. She wasn’t allowed to leave the house because she was a girl, but she didn’t need to go anywhere physically to cross to the other side. When she did, it was almost like she got transported, carried away in spirit while her body remained in her two-room house, which used to be a cow’s stable a few years before her dad married her mother and refashioned the thing. They were very poor. They were destitute; that was the accurate way to describe it. She always had an affinity with the spirit realm. When her grandfather passed away, she turned into air, and she filled the room. She left from the window and gazed at everyone with a fly’s eyesight, but her body remained there, although she had no grasp over it. When her mother, Diana, asked her about the rash and how she got it, she was dumbfounded. “No, I didn’t. How can I if I am…
© Christin Alhalabi 2024-08-21