Najar!

By: Bint Khalid

For Fatima-Fazeena

 

“Najar!” She shrieked at me, “Hada najar!”.

“What is ‘najar’?” I naively asked our house keeper.

“Enti mafi ma’loom najar?!!”, she said again in her broken Arabic, with her head to one side, lifting her left eyebrow and glaring at me through her left eye. I was unsettled. “What drama is this now?” I wondered?

“I bring the chili”, she fumed as she stomped away. A few minutes later she was back, clutching wrinkled Kleenex in her right hand. Her face told me she was still infuriated with me, shaking her head as if to say ‘no’, but I wasn’t sure to what exactly.

I was lounging in the living room, under a throw and with a book in my lap. I wasn’t really reading because my head felt heavy and there was a stinging at the back of my eyes. The book was only a prop, more for myself than anyone else, just to make me feel like I was doing something. I was too exhausted to flip the pages. I hate feeling lazy, purposeless, and bored with nothing to do, but at that moment I needed to be those things.

She stood over me, as I sat there looking up into her eyes, unbothered to inquire what exactly had gotten into her. She decidedly began to move her right arm, bent at the elbow, and in a circular motion above my head, murmuring something; I could not tell what it was, her eyes were far away. Interesting…. she has officially lost it, was what I thought, but I kept looking at her casually, unmoving, and a little impressed with how fast she could move her arm in a circle. She then began to ‘wipe’ the squished tissue on my arms, chest, and legs, then more of the circular motion, and some more murmuring.

The pattern was repeated another two times and was concluded with her blowing on me four times.

“What was that?” I asked from my nest.

 “enti fe najar!! Mafi zain!”, she was a bit calmer now after the (incident?).

“I don’t know what that means.”

She looked at me as if I was lying to her, and then attempted to explain something that, in her opinion, I was supposed to know, something about people talking, looking and bad energy. She showed me the crumpled tissue and inside it were three innocent green bird-eye chilies. I was not sure what to make of the chilies. She trudged away, to who knows where, and I decided it was best to ignore what had just happened, after all, I reasoned, she comes from a far-flung village and this was probably some ritual they do to cure headaches.

Just when my mind was back to its off mode, she rushed back to tell me “There was no scent!!” with a staggered looked on her face.  “What is she babbling about now?” I thought with some irritation. Today is not a good day for me to decipher codes; it was a bad idea to sit in this ‘public’ space, I probably should have stayed in my own room until this ‘headache’ passed. But I was here and I couldn’t move and she was standing too close and talking a bit too loudly with facial expressions and hand gestures I was trying to translate but failing completely. Eventually I understood what she was trying to tell me, apparently the three green chilies she had used in her (experiment?) were fated to burn in the flames of the stove, and while incinerating, they did not emit a burnt odor, which according to her, meant that I have ‘najar’.  If a burnt odor was emitted then it would have meant that all was well, and that I don’t have ‘najar’.

 I told her that did not make sense, and a burning chili will burn with or without a scent, whether you do the whispering, swabbing and arm (exercise?). She looked at me as if I was thick in the head and possibly stupid. “My grandmother taught me this”, she said sternly and very confidently.

In actuality, I was not surprised by her diagnosis of my health. After all, ‘najar’ (as it turned out to be ‘nazar’ in Turkish or ‘nathar’ in a Khaleeji accent) is basically the evil eye. Something very much believed in by Middle Easterners, Asians, Africans, and possibly in other parts of the world, and each culture has their own (methods?) to ward off the evil eye. I am certain you have seen the evil eye beads at someplace and at sometime, whether you are residing in this region or not.

In Islam, it is believed that the evil eye, may not necessarily come from an ‘evil’ person per se, instead anyone may cause this ‘invisible’ harm, even unintentionally, through envy or when giving compliments, which is why you will always hear people exclaiming “Say Masha’Allah!”, regardless of who the person is, even if it were their own parents. And the (practice?) here is using the simpler method of reciting certain Suras from the Quran and saying a few prayers on a daily basis, that’s it. No fancy talismans or special stones, no holding your earlobes and imitating a clucking chicken.

So, I do believe in this, as do most of my fellow Third Worlders, and I know that this simpler (way?) is in the Sunna, so I try to practice it as often as I can, but maybe some people’s eyes are on another level of evil? hmmm…

Today, feeling inquisitive, I wanted to ‘test’ her (thing?) to prove to her that burning an unfortunate chili is not the way to find out whether you have been inflicted by an evil eye. So I sat our lovely house keeper and explained to her the logic of the Scientific Method.

“Each of us has a hypothesis, and in your case, your hypothesis statement will claim that “if we burn a chili after being subjected to your (application?), then it will not emit a burnt scent, as opposed to any other burnt chili under normal circumstances”, whereas, my hypothesis statement is an opposing one claiming that “if we burn a chili whether it has been subjected to your (drill?) or not, then the chili will emit the same scent and react in the same manner as that of any other burnt chili under normal circumstances”. And so the aim of this experiment is to disprove your hypothesis”. I said with a smug.  

The challenge interested her. That we both believe in this ‘truth’, albeit in different deflecting (techniques?), and attempting to test it with a scientific method, is an irony which did not escape me, and which I chose to ignore.

I asked her to perform the whole (ceremony?) all over again, with chilies resting in some tissue, and a little while later, after some spinning, whispering and blowing, we then marched to the kitchen to cremate the unlucky chilies. Sniff sniff sniff. OK, I am positive that there was zero burnt scent. We stood there watching the tissue die and waited for it to completely disintegrate. I have never in my life intentionally plunked a chili onto a burning flame before. Maybe chilies do not give off a scorched scent by nature? A few minutes later, we scooped out the ashes and dragged another unwilling chili to be thrown into the fire for the sake of ‘research’ and testimony. The blameless chili began to blacken and smolder, and leaning closer with my nose creeping near the top of the flame……. Sniff. AHA!

Ok, I could say that I was justified, that here is proof, scientifically and objectively extracted evidence, following specific steps in testing this prehistoric theory of hers that was on the verge of witchery! Say I was right and that I was the smug one with the smug look on my face.

But I was wrong, my powerful sense of smell (fellow house tenants can attest to this – and say Masha’Allah!), picked up a burning spicy scent that immediately made me pull away for fear of my humble sinuses malfunctioning. It was her turn to be smug.  

I lost the challenge, and my hypothesis was proven flase, and I have no logical explanation to what had happened or what it meant. Despite my refuted hypothesis, we both walked away with the conclusion that, yes it was probably ‘najar’. We shook hands and we both agreed that I need to work on my (shields?).

 ………………………………..

After some quick research here are a few different (approaches?) to ward off the evil eye in various cultures:   

• The Greeks spit three times and say “Ptumashala!”
• Latin Americans tie red ribbons to their children’s wrists and ankles.
• Jews will exclaim “Kein ayin hara!”
• In Turkey the evil eye stones are worn on bracelets, necklaces and anklets, and will be commonly hung on everything.
• In Bangladesh children will be marked with a black dot drawn on one side of the forehead to counter the evil eye.
• In Tibet Dzi beads are used.
• In ancient Egypt it was the eye of Horus, and in modern Egypt it’s the khamsa amulets and charms (khamsa means five illustrating the five fingers of the hand)