The following excerpt is taken from the chapter, “In Village Kharjal”

One winter night I was sleeping with Father in his charpoy. I woke up in the middle of the night and not finding him by my side I called out to Mother and asked her where he was. ‘A (female) jinn has got into your uncle, Mosa. Your father has gone there to exorcise her’. Mosa was my mother’s cousin and since his house was next to ours I could hear his screams and the weeping and wailing of his mother and sisters. Trembling with fear I went into my mother’s bed and fell asleep with my arms around her.

A small ‘chimney’ was burning in our room. This consisted of a bottle into which some kerosene was poured. A hole was made in the lid of the bottle and a wick was introduced through it, and lighted. This contraption was known as a ‘chimney’ in our village. It was a kind of a lamp, but it was used in our house only when my two brothers came from the city to visit us. I was afraid of the weak, wobbly glow of the chimney. Its tremulous light threw ghastly shadows on the walls.

That night when Father had gone to my uncle’s house, it seemed to me that the light from the chimney was even more horrible than usual, and I told my mother to put it out. My elder sister Bilquis who was lying close by screamed, ‘Don’t dare put it out. It will get even darker without the light’. Mother added, ‘When your father comes back leaning on his stick he will fall if there is no light. Let the chimney be’. I accepted this reasoning, and asked her, ‘Mother what is a jinn?’ My sister who was eight years older than I, screamed again, ‘Be quite! I am afraid’.

Then Mother explained that a male jinn always enters a woman and a female jinn enters a man; that is, male and female jinns enter the opposite sex in humans. When Mother saw that my sister and I were both frightened, she began to soothe us, ‘You need not be afraid. For years and years your father has been praying, and the result is that he can control the jinns. He has memorised the Quran and he recites Quranic verses all the time, so the jinns cannot harm his family. And then the three female jinns who live in our house protect us from harm.

Mother was still speaking when a relative who lived close by, came in. She too had woken up with the noise and been frightened, so when she heard our voices she came, and joined in the conversation.

She told us a tale about our family. ‘The daughter of your father’s brother was very beautiful in her youth. And she had very long hair. When the date of her marriage with my father was fixed …’

‘But she was younger than you’ I said, interrupting her.

‘Yes she was younger than I, but she married my father. She had been sent into the customary prenuptial confinement, and she should not have ventured out alone but she was thirsty and seeing that several people were sleeping near the water pitcher, she went out all alone to the well outside. As she was about to draw water from the well, a jinn who happened to be passing by saw her reflection in the water and fell passionately in love with her. Your father was away from the village those days so Jinnati Baba, the exorcist, had to be called in; but he said that the jinn was too stubborn for him to control, and gave up. Just before the wedding, the jinn called the girl outside and persuaded her to jump into the well. She jumped, and the next day her body was found’. Hearing this story we were paralysed with fear.

The sound of Father’s stick on the ground came closer, and soon he arrived. He told us, ‘Mosa’s jinn is very stubborn. I will have to work very hard to get rid of her. She has gone for now but as she was leaving she said she would return’. Father was speaking gravely. Our visiting relative asked him, ‘Why don’t you hit her? Jinnati Baba does a lot of that’.

‘No, that would be cruel’, replied Father. Jinns too are God’s creatures. We should be kind to them. I am incanting a special prayer and am still discussing the matter with her’.

‘What does she say?’ Mother wanted to know.

‘She says “The day my babies were born this man came into the garden and under the tree he crushed one of my babies with his foot”.’

The next morning a mute, partly crazy village boy came to our house. Trembling with fear he explained to us with signs that he had seen a strange light in the garden, under that very tree. Father placed a hand on his head and blew a prayer over him, and he was soothed.

The jinn who had entered my uncle, Mosa, released him after some days at Father’s behest, but as she was leaving she told Father in no uncertain terms that Mosa’s family had better look after him, because he was very dear to her. Mosa was the fifth child in a family of twelve children. His family pampered the eldest brother because he was earning.

Excerpted with permission from Images In My Mirror: Autobiography of a Sindhi Poet (AUTOBIOGRAPHY) By Attiya Dawood Oxford University Press, Karachi ISBN 978-0-199063369 232pp. Rs895