Why does black magic have us all under its spell?

As strange as it may seem, many people in the MIddle East believe in black magic

'Rym, my fiancé is acting weird, I think someone put a spell on him," my friend said over the phone. Usually I would just have laughed at such a statement; but then again, after a few strange incidents here and there and after one particular trip to Morocco that left one of my hands "cursed" into a frozen fist until a religious Lebanese sheikha broke the spell? well, I hesitated.

"Seriously, Rym, he is acting so strange, and he tells me he gets a heavy feeling in his chest whenever he is near me, and he always feels sleepy," she said. I know what you're thinking: you're thinking that maybe the guy is changing his mind about the relationship and that's why he's acting the way he is. Maybe, maybe not. Anything is possible, especially in cultures that believe in black magic, where there are even legal cases against witches and sorcerers. People have been arrested in the UAE as "sorcerers": just this week two footballers were arrested on charges of using black magic to "cast spells" against other players. In certain countries anyone found guilty of practising black magic is subject to a death sentence.

This is a serious matter, and extends even as far as horoscopes: a Saudi cleric declared recently that people who spread horoscopes on Arab TV stations should face the death penalty - by the sword. But then, I recall one of my Islamic teachers in Saudi Arabia telling us that it was haram to read horoscopes, as only Allah knows the future and anyone claiming to do so is committing blasphemy. That was years ago, so forbidding horoscopes is nothing new.

I remember one of my friends smuggled in a ouija board from the US; it was such a big deal, and only members of our little cult called "secret" (which was really lame, as it was just a group of friends who played basketball and wanted to create a mysterious aura around ourselves) knew about it. We would meet in secret and try out the board at her house. I never fell for it. But for some people, magic - black, white or whatever - is real, and they fear it.

"What should I do? I'm scared," my friend said, close to tears about her fiancé. I thought about what I should say. I reiterated to her what my scholar friend had told me: read the protective verses in the Quran, depend on Allah and don't worry too much. The next time I saw my friend, she had persuaded her fiancé to go with her to a "witch doctor": a good witch who could break spells. Apparently everything is now back to normal after the visit to the good witch. My friend and her fiancé both had hijab - a protective spell to counter any future spells. They are also wearing the blue stone to ward off the evil eye. "I think his ex was behind the spell," my friend says.

Her case wasn't as severe as some of my other friends' cases. One of my schoolmates in an all-girls high school in Jeddah had beautiful blonde hair. Everyone in the school, even the dean, used to admire her hair, especially since we all had dark hair. One day a clump of her hair, a handful, just fell out. It looked so unnatural and it freaked me out. Every day she lost more of her silky mane, and every day she was getting more and more sick.

This lasted for a week or so until one day my friend and I spotted a paper bearing certain words and glued to the heel of her shoes. We didn't see our friend for a few days. When she came back, she told us she had been taken to a sheikh who recited the Quran over her and burned her shoes. Whether you believe it or not, she became better, and slowly her hair regained its lustre. I understand that when bad things happen it is sometimes easier to believe that it had something to do with black magic and the evil eye. But I have witnessed three exorcisms, involving Jinns, and I have been at two "spell-breaking" sessions, and I can't help but admit that there is a whole different world out there that many of us don't know about, and perhaps don't want to know about.

I remember, at one of the exorcisms, how I wanted to get out of there when the young woman being exorcised started screaming like a maniac and clawing at her mother. Some of the all-women beaches in Lebanon are littered with taped-up spell scriptures that have been thrown into the sea, but washed back to the shore with the waves. There are hundreds of them. While I cannot speak for the rest of the world, here in the Middle East, black magic is a reality: and it is feared and avoided by many.

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