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JINN story

Hello. I have many stories to share. This is only one of them.

I'm a Middle Eastern woman residing in one of the Arab Gulf States. Though considered Muslim, my family has never observed religious commandments. The only time I saw my father pray was once in the month of Ramadan, about 20 years ago, when I was six years old. Me and my younger brother were so fascinated by this strange ritual we were seeing our father perform that our absorbed staring made my father burst into laughter and order us out of the room so he could pray in peace.

Though we were not religious, I remember my mother introducing us to some topics related to religion. One was the stories of the different prophets. I remember liking the prophet Yusuf because I was fascinated by the idea of someone so beautiful you'd accidentally cut your hands as you peeled fruit in your awe of their beauty (also because my kid mind concluded that the palm lines on our hands were a result of those spellbound women cutting up the palms of their hands. I don't know why I thought that).

My mother also taught us about the different creatures god created. The angels- from light, humans—from dirt, and Iblis, arch nemesis of humanity—from fire.

She never mentioned anything about the Jinn.

I don't remember who warned me first. Perhaps no one did. When I started first grade, all of us students somehow knew not to use the washroom designated for us first graders.

The school I went to from first to fourth grade was a small one. We had one social worker for all of school population. I can't remember for sure, but I think there were only three classes for each level. The first grade level was situated 'outside', as in, when you went outside the classroom the sky was your ceiling. The second, third and fourth grades on the other hand were situated inside the school building. The shared washroom of the first grade level was in a separate small building behind the small building that contained our classrooms.

Early on in the school year, I remember sitting in a circle at recess, with a bunch of my classmates, as one girl told us the score.

"The jinn, you can't see them, but they live in bathrooms. In cupboards, too, but mainly in bathrooms. Don't stay long in any bathroom when you use it, don't sing in it, and don't make loud noises or stare at yourself in the mirror for too long. Be careful not to slip and fall, if you do you might accidentally fall on a jinn they will be mad. Do your business and leave—quickly. Don't bring toys or stuffed animals into the bathroom. Make sure not to let the door to the bathroom open. If you follow these rules you will be fine. We have a lot of jinn in our house, that's how I know these things"

She went on: "If you leave them alone and don't offend them, then they will leave you alone and won't hurt you. But the washroom here—It's no good. The jinn there are already angry with us. Never go to our washroom. Hold it in till you get home, that's safer for you".

For the life of me I can't remember the name of that girl. I ended up visiting her once—the first of two times my mother allowed me to visit a friend in the course of my childhood (but that's a story for another day), and yet her name escapes me. All I remember is me staring into her face as she spoke, and being transfixed by the weight of her words and the color of her eyes. She was the only girl in our class with light eyes—they were a mesmerizing mixture of hazel and green.

None of us talked about the angry jinn in the first graders' washroom for the most part, but when we did it was in whispers. Don't talk about it out loud, and don't talk about it for long, if you do they will come for you, maybe even at your own home, in your own bed, in the middle of the night.

After one too many incidents of students wetting themselves or sneaking into the bathrooms designated for the older kids, our class teacher, in the presence of the school principle and the social worker, tried to reassure us—first with words. The Jinn, like Iblis, are created from fire, she told us. They, just like humans, have the capacity to choose to do good or evil. They lived in an invisible world of their own. They only appear to prophets and holy men, though. So no, they don't live in the school washroom.