One of the Delightful Stories of the Arabs in Marriage

I’ve been reading a really good book of short stories about marriage. One story was particularly funny in Arabic, it is called زواج فتاة غير باكر it is a great story that I wanted to share with you. It’s not for the feint of heart, there’s jinn, madness, and the uncomfortable predicament of one young bride. I’m only providing a rough translation, since translation isn’t my strong suit. But I think you’ll enjoy the story anyways.

Uqbah al-Azmi was famous for dealing with jinn and for his incantations and spells. One day he passed by his neighbor who went crazy during her wedding night. So he made an incantation on her to see if she had fallen under a jinn’s spell. He told her family, “Leave me alone with her.” So they left them alone. When he was alone with the young woman he said to her, “Tell me the truth about yourself!” She said, “I am in my family’s home and they want me to go to my husband’s house and I’m not a virgin. So I feared that my fault would be revealed. So do you have a trick for my issue?” ‘Uqbah told her, “Yes.”

Then he went to her family and said, “Indeed a Jinn entered her body and asked me to leave from her. So you pick where you want the jinn to leave. But take heed, whatever part that the jinn leaves from, it will perish and rot. So if it leaves from her eyes, she will go blind. If it leaves from her ears, she will go deaf. If it leaves from her mouth, she will go mute. It it leaves from her hand, it will whither. If it leaves from her leg, it will cripple. If it leaves from her opening down there, her virginity goes. It is your decision.”

So after her family consulted each other for a long time they said to him, “We haven’t found an easier way to escape disgrace. So force the Shaitan out, and for you whatever you want. So he made them believe that he did exactly that. So the woman went to her husband.

الدكتور محمد التونجي اروع ما حكي من قسس العرب في الزوج Beirut, Lebanon: Dar al Marefah, 2005