Between Darkness and Magic: The Story of the Cornfield

From cornfields to the shadows of a dark past
In the remote corners of the village of Kafr al-Sanabsa, where cornfields meet the long shadows of night, secrets lie hidden that no one dares to approach. There, amid the echoes of the wind and the whispers of the past, live worlds of the supernatural, where magic lurks in every corner and fate weaves its threads between human hearts.

Every abandoned house hides a story, and every step in the dark may reveal forces that only those who have faced them can see. This is Mansour's world, where the past meets mystery, and where magic reveals itself in unexpected ways, uncovering family secrets, betrayals, and curses that have remained silent for many years.

Mansour says he is a resident of the village of Kafr al-Snabsa in the governorate of Menoufia. He was a farmer in 2021, married with three children. At the age of 26, he inherited a cornfield from his father, a simple farmer who left him a late inheritance after his death.

To clarify, the man Mansour called "his father" was actually his grandfather Mahmoud. His real father was a farmer who helped his grandfather grow corn. He was an only child with no brothers or sisters, and many years passed without him having any children. His real father decided to remarry in order to have children, which was his right, but the news of his intention provoked a hurtful reaction from his first wife (Mansour's grandmother).

When the villagers heard the news of his father's engagement to another woman, his grandmother began to speak ill of her daughter (Mansour's mother), saying hurtful things about how her daughter had brought shame upon the family. This psychological pressure drove the mother to attempt to end her life, but his father saved her and she survived, by the grace of God. The surprise was the news of her pregnancy, so the engagement to the other woman was broken off, life returned to normal, and the family rejoiced at their new baby.

About a year after Mansour's birth, hatred and conflict arose between his parents for reasons unknown. His grandfather Mahmoud intervened, suspecting that witchcraft was behind it, so he brought in a sheikh who revealed that witchcraft was present in the place but refused to say who had done it. His grandfather insisted until the sheikh was forced to leave the matter without disclosure, so his grandfather searched for a way to find out who was responsible.

His grandfather learned from one of his acquaintances that placing magic inside animal skin and burning it would cause the name of the person who performed the magic to appear on the skin. His grandfather carried out this method in the same room where the magic was contained, and wrote the name on the animal skin with fire. However, the method of breaking the spell turned into a disaster; instead of ending the disputes, a fire broke out in Mansour's parents' room, and the villagers were shocked by the screams of his parents, who burned to death inside the room without anyone understanding the reason.

After the incident, his grandfather Mahmoud took care of Mansour, and he grew up with him, always saying that he was the reason because he expelled the sheikh and broke the spell in the wrong way. His grandfather also mentioned that the person who cast the spell was his father's former fiancée, that her name was written on the animal's skin, and that she died before his grandfather passed away.

Mansour inherited all the property and farms from his grandfather, as well as his father's abandoned house where the disaster had occurred many years ago. The house was located near one of the corn farms. In 2021, Mansour decided to visit the farmland after dawn prayers. He remembered the story of his father and the abandoned house, so he decided to visit it before heading to the field.

He walked along a dirt road that passed through cornfields and orchards in the darkness of dawn. When he reached the farmland and stood in front of the abandoned family home, he felt a strange darkness within the darkness itself; a darkness greater than the darkness of a normal night. The closer he got to the house, the darker it became, until he could hardly see the ground beneath his feet. He remembered the story of magic and wanted to reach the door of the house and then return, so he took out his phone to light his way.

Suddenly, he felt a strong blow to his hand holding the phone. The phone flew out of his hand and fell to the ground, and he felt intense pain. He froze in fear and began to hear dozens of dogs barking violently from the direction of the house, as if they were attacking him. Then he heard a man's voice ordering him: "Go away, back off, don't come any closer, Mansour." He slowly backed away until he reached the entrance to the farm, and the barking of the dogs disappeared. He noticed the mark left by the blow and the bleeding on his hand, and found his phone broken a few metres away, but still working.

A few days later, he discovered that one of his fingers was broken and that the blow had damaged the bones in his hand, so he stayed at home for several days to recover. A month later, he returned to the farm during the day and entered through a side road. He did not hear any barking or see anything strange; the house was just an abandoned house as it was. He thought that what had happened was a hallucination or a psychological effect, so he left to check the field.

When he returned at sunset along the same path to check, he saw an elderly woman sitting in front of the house burying something and then scattering dirt on the path leading to the house. He recognised her as a villager, so he took the risk of bringing a sheikh to verify what she was doing. In the morning, the sheikh arrived and it turned out that the woman was indeed burying magic.

The sheikh went to the woman's house and found her living alone, cared for by the villagers. Mansour asked her why she buried magic in front of his family's house, and she calmly replied that the reason for her action was due to an engagement that took place years ago between Mansour's father and this woman, and that the engagement was broken off, which destroyed her reputation and her life. The woman said that the villagers spoke ill of her and treated her unjustly, and that she had not forgotten that.

The woman considered that placing the spell on Mansour's house was revenge against his grandfather Mahmoud, who had caused her to lose her fiancé and her reputation. She claimed that the witch she had sought help from was the same one that Mansour's mother had gone to in order to help her conceive, and that this witch had given her things that led to the presence of a jinn lover who clung to the mother and contributed to the breakdown of the family. This story completes the picture of revenge, witchcraft and loss that ravaged Mansour's family.

That it separates the wife from her husband because it is a jinn in love, but the herbs were, by the permission of Allah, the reason for the wife's pregnancy. When your grandfather Mahmoud burned the magic, it was the wrong decision, because there is a specific way to break magic, and it is not by burning it. Nevertheless, he accused me of witchcraft even though I was innocent and wronged.

Until the day I cast a spell at your father's door, my only goal was to prevent your grandfather from approaching him, and I did not know that he had died until after you told me. God is my witness that I am innocent of everything else and that I have been wronged.

Mansour said: I was shocked, so I asked the woman for proof to back up her story. She took me to the witch who had testified in favour of this wronged woman. But since I don't believe what witches say, I started looking for other evidence. I did indeed find evidence to prove her words, and it turned out that she had been wronged, and that my grandfather Mahmoud was the one who had unjustly accused her, nothing more and nothing less.

The greatest tragedy was that my grandfather Mahmoud regretted his actions, but unfortunately he only expressed his regret in writing on a piece of paper or in notes found inside my father's house, in which he admitted that he was the main reason for their deaths. If he had not burned the spell in the wrong way, what happened would not have happened.

To clear himself of suspicion, he unjustly accused that poor woman. All of this was written in those memoirs. Thus, it became clear that the woman was innocent, and that my grandfather Mahmoud was the reason for my father and mother's death.

The one who put the spell in the room was my mother! It was very shocking, because all I knew was an illusion I had heard from my grandfather.

I said to that wronged woman, "All I can do is compensate you for the harm my father and grandfather caused you," and I offered to give her a share of the money I inherited from them. But she refused because she was a woman of dignity, truly wronged. She said, "Since your grandfather is dead, there is nothing left between us. Your father died and your grandfather died, and they are the cause of my misery. My life has been destroyed and I have nothing left."

However, after my persistent insistence, she finally agreed, and I transferred to her a share of the property equivalent to what she would have received had she been my father's wife. I considered her to be my father's wife and my second mother, given her age and my desire to restore justice and end injustice.

One Friday, while the villagers were gathered, I stood in the middle of the neighbourhood and began to tell them briefly what had happened: that a woman had been wronged by my father and grandfather all those years, that she was innocent of witchcraft and everything that had been said about her, and I showed them the memoirs my grandfather had written as proof of her innocence.

People were surprised by my words, and over the following days their view of her changed completely. They still talk about that incident to this day.