Dying was a matter of darkness. Death is all of darkness, just like sleeping. When we sleep, we close our eyes and slip into darkness and unconsciousness sets in. Such was dying. Darkness was like a tunnel, like being caught in the body of a huge cannon.
My body floated towards higher ground like a speeding rocket coming out of the dark tunnel. I had a feeling similar to skateboarding and of being carried in a Ferris Wheel, lifting my entire soul into a maze and into a circle. At the end of the tunnel, I appeared so suddenly into the open air that made my skin tremble a bit. And lo and behold, I found everything to be brighter than any sunlight that I have experienced before. Above me was pale blue sky, a kind of hue that was so sweet to my eyes and below me were clouds thick as foam. I felt a sudden gush of joy that my heart flew and skipped a bit.
In the air was the spine-tingling sound of strings possibly that of a clarion or a banjo guitar and my eyes swelled with tears as I felt an overpowering out pour of divine happiness. I floated and floated, letting the wind control my body, leading me towards the thicker clouds that lies ahead. Within the clouds appeared angels with curly blond hairs and faces that one imagines the biblical David have. So handsome and so pure in white raiment and wings so white as they flutter through the clouds. They seemed to be full of jest, disappearing suddenly and appearing at the other ends of the walls of clouds. As I hovered through the clouds, I could see a figure that took to be the shape of a white castle, as I go nearer, I affirmed that they were really castles afloat the clouds, my first sight of a castle with high turrets and towers; years before I saw an illustration of such in children’s books. Before I could reach the castle, I suddenly woke up and found myself atop the table in the living room of my Uncle Mameng’s apartment, the eldest child of my grandfather who we were living with, and I could see my bloated stomach as I regained vision slowly and slowly.
Initially, my vision was dull and could only appreciate the sight immediately in front of me until I regained full view. I could see my father worriedly scurrying near me but with a great sigh of relief in his face while the others smiled. I heard the man whose name I could not really remember now, living next door, saying to my grandfather, “See, I told you he would be alright”. And then I still remembered my grandfather’s face with tears on his face. That was the only time that I saw him cried and never ever again.
It was a fever so high that almost took my life in my infancy. I had frequent fever attacks then that often, my grandfather would perform a sort of ritual with a blade in one hand and a candle on the other, reciting Arabic prayers in order to cure me of my fever. Of the many times that I remember him doing such ceremony is how I reckoned how in my early years, I was often afflicted with high fever.
I felt so harassed by the heat every time during those bouts that my head was aflame and my skin was torching. In such infantile consciousness, I always remembered how my body was burning with extreme temperature that my consciousness would somehow separate from my own body. When my body became numb and isolated, the burning sensations were not as disturbing anymore.
My grandfather was a busy man that he had to be concerned with my frequent fever attacks while at the same time lulling my grandmother away from her recurrent malady.
Once I had asked my grandfather about my grandmother’s weakness and general immobility. He told me that it was indeed because of a disease that afflicted her and that she would not be able to speak so well anymore. What I really wanted to asked him was why she would scream at times into the midnight that everyone in the house would be awaken. What kind of disease would let one scream into the night was the thing I wanted to inquire upon. But as a toddler, I bet there are things that we do not even know how to ask, when vocabulary would not be enough to elucidate our inquiry. Everytime she was attacked by such “disease”, Uncle Mameng and the servants would come and help my grandfather calmed her down, to reassure her that everything was all right. She was always murmuring about some person she was afraid of; a one she calls “the jinn”.
“There are no jinns. You are just imagining” my grandpa always assured her while she would lay there wide-eyed and trembling. From the looked on her eyes, pity was the natural thing I could feel for her. She was like a child afraid of something.
“I have checked the whole house and there was no Jinn around” my uncle would add to further reassure her.
At times the attacked on her nocturnal sleep would be so serious enough that in the stillness of the dawn, we would packed the necessities and head for the hospital, staying there for nearly a week every time.
At such a young age, my grandmother’s predicament affected me so much that I had always hoped then that I was already grown up and be able to help her, wishing earnestly to appease her. Those dreams of flying had made me somehow distant from her, a little bit wary of her and somewhat disturbed that the winged old woman in my dreams somehow looked like her. And yet, I felt so much for her. Besides those were merely dreams.
Once I decided to investigate the cause or causes of the “weakness” of my grandmother. I was relatively confident that I would find some answers however tender my mind at that time. It was in the apartment’s bathroom with its yellow darkened light and perpetual wet floor that she had pointed to be the place where she had seen the “jinn”. The bathroom had malfunctioning equipment that always had that pungent smell typical of aging lavatories, full of slime and fungi stuck to walls and corners giving it a dark green shadow all over, from the floor to the ceiling. What augments the general dimness was the decision of the household to put a bulb of the weakest power that even at daytime, I would always feel like it was already midnight whenever I enter it. There was desperation written all over it that anyone who went into the toilet would realize immediately that it was a place where the smell would remain even if best efforts to clean it up would be undertaken.
As I relieved myself, I tried to stay longer when the apartment was quiet and everyone was either asleep in the afternoon or were out for work. I examined the ceilings for some clue and stared at the walls for holes and cavities to where the jinn might be hiding. When I convinced myself at that time that there would be no such signs of the unknown being, I stepped back and headed for the door. As I turned my head, suddenly I saw in the corner of my left eye a huge shadow of a man that goes from the floor towards the ceiling, the shape of its head folding into the surface of the ceiling. The hairs at the back of my head stood up and I felt my skin trembled. Despite such apparent terror however, I gathered all of my strength to focus my stare into the wall but the shadow was not there anymore. I went quickly outside and found the afternoon very still as usual.
I went to the garden in the front yard where I usually enjoyed my solitariness when the sun was readying to fall towards sunset and played in the gardens, picking some leaves and mangling some stems. My cousins would be asleep in that hour of the afternoon while I did not developed such habit, allowing me so much time alone to play with whatever my mind could think of. As I put some stones into holes that I have previously dug in the ground, I pondered upon the shadow in the toilet. Was it the shadow of the “jinn”? It was a huge being I thought and the image of the shadow was vivid enough that I was able to surmise that it wore a g-string garment on its body and had a strip of clothe wrapped around its head while its hair was shoulder length, like an ancient warrior. He must have held spears and knives but such things did not appear to me.
I kept on digging holes and putting stones and coins into them and then covering back the holes, ironing out the surface to look as if the soil were never disturbed. Such was the kind of solitary games I played. I have reckoned then so early in my life, when I dug up the stones and coins the day after, that plants and trees could grow from the ground and flowers multiply too; but stones and money would not.
I had perhaps had a very strong desire to tell my grandfather about the shadow but somehow I did not had enough inclination to put them into words while my grandmother kept wailing in the middle of the night every now and then. Then after a while, her predicament eased towards serenity that she just stared and sat in her rocking chair until she died in the hospital one day while I was looking after her. My Aunt Julpa cried first and asked me what have I done that she died. Of course, I did not know what to say but her asking was etched so much into my mind that every now and then I would ask myself if indeed I had done something to hasten her death. But as I child that I was then, the disturbance of Aunt Julpa’s inquiry just faded into memory till now that I earnestly attempt to recollect those events so far into my childhood.
( This an excerpt from my unfinished semi-autobiography “A PROPHET’S LIFE” )
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