The Exorcisms
We were greeted at the door by the imam who told us that
there were two different kinds of illness, one which can be cured by doctors
and medicine and one which is caused by the jinns inside of you which can be
treated by the effect of the words of the Koran.
We sat in rows across the floor, with an aisle in the middle
and people sitting facing each other on either side. I got separated from Kay
and Anrie and joined a group of women on the left aisle of people facing each
other.
The Imam began to chant the words, the sound amplified by a
mike connected with long wires which had to be held up by assistants when later
he walked around through the aisles touching each of the people on the
forehead.
Slowly, one by one, the screaming started. A woman at the
far side, near the door, begun to scream and convulse. It spread, not to
everybody- but to many people in the aisles. Soon the people infected with
jinns were being held down in the middle of the inside aisle, between the
groups of people who were facing each other until the layout was groups of
people each assisting with their one respective convulsing woman in the middle.
Near to me, a woman grabbed her young children and took them to the far side by
the wall. Some women watched. Everyone did her own thing. One granny sat with
her hands cupped together staring at the floor whilst next to her, her
granddaughter punched the floor again and again and again. The granny put her
hands on her granddaughters to try to stop her, but the granddaughter, perhaps
infected by the jinn or at least by the words of the Koran, pushed her away,
again and again until eventually with brutal force she pushed her granny’s arms
back, twisted them, away. I could see the dialogue; the pain of the teenager,
the granny trying to stop her, the pushing away- let me be with my moment and
my pain and my life choices that you have forced on me, and my marriage and my
cage and tears that you have caused me, stop trying to save me from myself.
I began to bum-shuffle closer the screaming woman in my
group, on the floor in front of me. She was crying convulsing eyes fluttering
head spasming. I could see her pent up pain and anguish being let free. Each of
the excorsis-ing women got the incredible opportunity, infected by the jinn, to
scream and push and squirm against all the bad things that they’d kept inside
of them. The same way that when you watch a sad movie which makes you cry some,
you could end up crying and shaking more than the sad closing scene gave way
for, because it ends up being the chance of a bottled-up-sadness-detox and your
body takes advantage.
Village woman deal with so, so much pain. They leave school
in Grade 5, and are housebound until they are married. Then the go to their
husband’s house. From then on, they can leave home with their husbands at their
side, or go next door with their babies. Their dreams of going to another
country, or to a waterfall in the region, are soon put away, something not to
think about. I see the joy they get from their babies but I also see the things
they wish they had, and have no chance of getting. They are strong, and they
store their sadness under their heavy cloaks and scarfs. Maybe this is the
Jinn. Perhaps the human body is a truly amazing thing, perhaps it reacts to
pain that’s past its expiry date through eye flutters head twitches and body
spasms.
The women held down the ones who were screaming. First I
thought it was forceful, they are being held to the ground, sometimes tackled
down to the ground as in the case of the one woman who started the wailing, who
had tried to escape in her manic fit, and had been tackled down by a man who
looked like a bar- bouncer. These older women who take each and arm, a leg, the
head and press it to the floor may be saying ‘stay- this is your burden, you
cannot leave’.
But still, there was much to envy in them. A beautiful woman
ran towards us and grabbed my hand. She was pushed to the floor and I was
rushed away from her, to the corner. But I watched her as another woman in a
black burkah came and held her against her, on the floor, scarfs skew, sweat
against their foreheads and wet-patched from the bottles of ice water that the
older women splashed against the foreheads of the screaming jinn-infected
bodies. To be given the opportunity, to have a tantrum so extreme that you
convulse and push and kick and bang your head, and to be held so securely, kept
safe from hurting yourself by all the women you love. They were practically on
top of one another, giving back as much pressure as she was exerting. Holding
her firm.
There was something in the air and it wasn’t evil spirits.
It was closeness, and love, and understanding between all the women on the
carpets in the dark room. It was in their grabbing for each other, in their
pushing away from each other, in their wanting to escape, their wanting to be
held, their tears, their force, their hands on top of one another, hands
everywhere. There was nothing soft about it, nothing gentle, and nothing
sterile or dainty. It was the sheer force of human being, these women were like
a heard of oxen; muscular, powerful; strain and strength.
The priest came around through our aisle. We adjusted the
scarf on the squirming woman in front of us, he put his hands to the forehead
of each of the woman he past. Many fell back after he had come, their eyes
fluttered. Some dropped their heads and some shook and yelped. He pressed his
fingers to my forehead. He pressed hard, his thumb in the middle of my head,
where I have a small scar from when I fell of the change-table as a baby, and
his index and middle finger against the top of my head. He shouted into the
mike and stared into my face. I didn’t know whether to look at him, so I did-
which is how I know he was staring. I dropped my eyes. When he let me go, my
head dropped down towards my chest, as he was no longer holding it up. And
that’s when I thought about these things, and these women, and these jinns. He
went along the line, the woman next to me shivered and shook, and he took his
time with Kay, longer than most others, perhaps because she had told him the
day before that she was all for homosexuality. Anrie next, he pulled her
eyelids up which is why she looked like she was tripping, eyes white and
fluttering. The woman summoned me to rush to my friends, and we sat holding
each other, a family.
Soon it was over. And people started to leave. I wanted to
watch what happens to the woman who had been shaking on the floor one minute
before. The one who grabbed my hand smiled at us, adjusted her vail and stood
up to leave, kissing her friends on the cheek and greeting them. The one I was
helping attend to, in my group needed to lean on someone to hobble out, I
wonder when she’ll recover, or if she tells her family that she has been
cleansed form the jinns inside her. It is Wednesday morning, and the rest of
the day will be weirdly normal. These woman will go back home to cook lunch for
their families, and then tea, and then supper. And tomorrow they will wake up
and cook breakfast, and clean wheat, and do laundry, and scrub carpets, and
visit their grandchildren and buy groceries and bake bread and watch some TV.
And that’s just the older ones. I have no idea what the younger ones will do,
but their husbands will be home in the evening and the exorcism this morning
will seem far away.
Everyone keeps asking me how I feel. I’ve never seen an
exorcism before.
And I wonder where the Jinns have gone?
