Written by: Ibrahim Salem
My name is Jalal, and this is my story about a world I never thought I would come close to, the world of jinn, and the strange story of the fairy who crossed my path by chance but then dragged me into
Things I never imagined I would experience. I won't pretend that I was one of those who denied the existence of jinn or rejected the supernatural; on the contrary, I believed in them wholeheartedly. I heard many stories from friends and relatives, stories about shadows that appear at night, about voices that fade away and disappear, and about houses abandoned by their owners for fear of something unseen. I would listen to them and nod my head with interest, but I never expected for a moment that I would have a share in these worlds or that a door to them would be opened for me unintentionally.
My life was quiet and normal to the point of boredom. I was just over thirty years old and married in a traditional marriage to one of my relatives. We lived together on the outskirts of the city in a simple house surrounded by fig and olive trees.
I earn my living from a small shop selling incense, herbs and spices, a business I inherited from my father and which has become part of my daily life. I was known among the people for my love of work and honesty in selling. I leave my house at the first light of dawn, driving my old car along the quiet, empty road to my shop before my neighbours open their doors. I don't close the shop door until the sun has completely set, then I return home exhausted, eat my dinner in silence and go to sleep. And so my days repeat themselves without change, without any event to awaken the heart or stir the soul.
But on that day, he broke the routine in a way I did not expect, one day.
It just turned my life upside down more than I could have imagined, throwing me onto a path whose end I could no longer see. As always happens in such matters, it came suddenly, in a fleeting moment that no one could have predicted. It had been a perfectly ordinary day. I finished work and closed the shop after sunset as usual, then set off in my car.
Heading home. As usual, I was driving slowly because the condition of the road did not allow for anything else. It was an old country road, worn down by time and covered with potholes. With darkness swallowing up everything in front of me, driving on it became an adventure in itself, so I had no choice but to drive very carefully, my eyes darting between the road and the mirrors, afraid of missing any danger ahead.
Everything was calm and peaceful, and I was approaching my home when something caught my eye and startled me before I knew what it was. Standing on the side of the road was a girl herding a flock of goats. At that time of night, the scene captivated me so much that I slammed on the brakes without thinking, and the car stopped suddenly. I stared through the windscreen to make sure I was seeing correctly: a girl standing there in the middle of the darkness, alone and strange. But what struck me even more was her appearance; she was wearing very light clothes that were completely unsuitable for this time of year. It was the middle of a harsh winter, and the cold was bone-chilling, yet she seemed completely unaffected. Then the pale moonlight illuminated her face, revealing a beauty that was heartbreaking.
Her striking beauty made my heart beat again. Her thick black hair flowed down her shoulders, and her features were so delicate that she seemed to have been created from the light of the night itself. I couldn't take my eyes off her, staring without being able to look away, until she lifted her head towards me, gazing at me with strange amazement, then took a few steps towards me, light steps as if she were not touching the ground.
At that moment, something appeared that made my heart sink into my chest like a rock on her head. Two black horns appeared, shining under the moonlight like two knife blades. I froze for a second, feeling as if time had stopped. My mind tried to comprehend what I was seeing. Was it an illusion? Was it the darkness playing tricks on me? Was I tired? But before I could finish thinking, my body moved on its own. I pressed down on the accelerator with all my strength, and my car sped off as fast as it could. Something was chasing me from behind. I returned home safely. Nothing happened after I escaped, but my heart did not calm down. I remained
It was as if I was running even though I was in bed. I couldn't get her image out of my head, that girl, or rather that fairy, if what I saw was real and not an illusion. Her face haunted me all night long, and the few seconds I saw her stretched into hours inside me. It wasn't just her beauty that attracted me, but the situation itself, that moment when I felt something open the door between my quiet world and another world unlike anything I had ever known before.
My life was ruled by routine: nothing new, no surprises, no excitement. But her appearance broke something deep inside me. I felt as if the chains that had bound me for so many years had suddenly been broken, and that for a moment I had experienced something like freedom, or danger, or both. I even began to blame myself: why did I run away? Why didn't I stand up? Why didn't I talk to her? Would I have heard her voice? Would she have come closer? Would I ever have another chance to touch that mysterious world I had always heard about? But I never tried to get close to it. I tossed and turned until dawn, and when I heard the call to prayer echoing in the distance, I got up to go to work, but for the first time in many years, I felt no desire to
The shop opened. I closed my eyes again and gave in to sleep, not waking up until the afternoon. It was a strange day for everyone. People saw the shop closed until midday, something that had never happened since they had known me. Most of them thought I was ill or that something bad had happened to me, but I paid no attention to anyone, and I didn't care what they said. I was waiting for only one thing: sunset. I waited impatiently to close the shop and return to the same road, hoping to see her again, hoping that fairy would cross my path once more. As soon as the sun disappeared behind the distant houses, I felt my heart racing ahead of my steps.
I closed my shop with a haste I had never felt before, as if I were a man fleeing towards his destiny rather than away from it. I grabbed my keys and set off in my car along the same country road, a road that now held something like a promise or an obsession. I drove, my eyes darting to every corner, every shadow, every gap between the trees, watching the fields, the edges of the road, the scattered bushes, searching for her like a drowning man searches for another breath, but there was no trace, no movement, no sound, nothing. My anxiety continued to mount as the sun receded further and further and the sky grew darker.
When I reached the same spot where I had appeared the night before, I stopped, slowing the car down as if afraid of waking something sleeping beneath the dirt. I sat there for a few seconds, breathing deeply, watching the empty road ahead of me, then I reached for the door handle and opened it. I got out, and a wave of cold air hit me, shaking my whole body. The wind was blowing through the dry trees, making sounds like whispers, strange whispers as if the wind were erasing the words. Before I could understand it, I wrapped my coat around me and stepped off the road, moving step by step towards the spot where I had seen it yesterday.
The ground there was wetter, and the smell of clay mingled with the winter breeze, which is why I felt that the place still bore some trace of her, an unfounded suspicion, but it haunted me. I stood at the same spot and stared long and hard at the ground, at the small bushes, at the shadows dancing in the wind, but there was no trace of her, no illusion, no herd, no movement. A vague disappointment and a slight fear mingled within me, and I began to feel that perhaps I was chasing an illusion or a fairy that did not want to be seen twice.
English 
Arabic