Sumaiya Matin - The Shaytan Bride: A Bangladeshi Canadian Memoir of Desire and Faith

SUMAIYA MATIN

A Bangladeshi Canadian Memoir of Desire and Faith

Copyright Sumaiya Matin, 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purpose of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Publisher: Scott Fraser | Acquiring editor: Julie Mannell

Cover designer: Laura Boyle

Cover image: arcangel.com/Rebecca Massey

Printer: Marquis Book Printing Inc.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: The shayn bride : a Bangladeshi Canadian memoir of desire and faith / Sumaiya Matin.

Names: Matin, Sumaiya, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210167971 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210171065 | ISBN 9781459747678 (softcover) | ISBN 9781459747685 (PDF) | ISBN 9781459747692 (EPUB) Subjects: LCSH: Matin, Sumaiya. | LCSH: Muslim womenCanadaBiography. | LCSH: Muslim womenCanadaSocial life and customs. | LCSH: Muslim womenCanadaSocial conditions. | LCGFT: Autobiographies.

Classification: LCC HQ1170 .M38 2021 | DDC 305.48/697092dc23

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Ontario, through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and Ontario Creates, and the Government of Canada.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

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For Ammu (Mother)

The whole of my life summed up in three phases:

I was raw

then

I was burnt

now,

I am on fire

Rumi

I didnt see the exorcist, but I heard hed dropped by and brought with him a tawiz, a silver locket containing a small scroll with verses of Ayatul Kursi to ward off evil. The locket with the surah was attached to a black thread. The tawiz was supposed to be wrapped around my arm or worn around my neck.

It must have been early in the morning or late in the night when he left it for me. I must have been sleeping. I wondered if he had entered the bedroom and watched as I lay there on one of the two beds, the one by the large window next to the veranda. That window was usually open at all hours, the thin linen curtains blowing occasionally when the breeze could eke its way through the humid Dhaka streets.

I must have been on my back, legs spread apart, each breast sliding away from the centre of my chest, open and unguarded. Or maybe I had been on my right side, in the fetal position with my knees up to my chest, head over my bent arm, as if I was back in the womb again. It must have been then when he hovered over me, holding his palms open to the sky, reciting prayers, then gently placing his clammy hand on my forehead. Whiff of sandalwood incense. Performing ruqyah, reciting the words of the Quran to confront the jinns with bad dispositions and the jinns sent by everyday sorcerers to afflict humans.

I heard the lilting Arabic verses that were so distinct and familiar to me. A tonic of solace, trust, and mystery soaking into my ears, soaking into the saliva filling my gaping mouth as I half slept. These words were a remedy, despite any incoherence from the flawed delivery of the reciter. My heart was either conditioned or naturally inclined to find the breaths between them, a space to rest, like the pulpy pillow I laid my head on.

Or maybe I had heard nothing but the rattle of the rotating blades of the fan overhead.

The haze and my disorientation were much less bothersome to me than the sharp flicker of light between my eyelids. I twitched awake, only to hear fading footsteps.

Had it all been a dream? I wondered.

What I knew was that in the morning, when I got off the stiff bed, drowsy and suffering some sort of memory distortion, I found Sweety Khala standing there in her floral salwar kameez, wavy black hair in a bun. She turned her body to the mattress and, suddenly and hastily, pulled it up with all the strength she had, revealing the black string attached to a silver locket. She carefully moved one of her hands toward the amulet and snatched it from where it lay, releasing her other hand from the mattress. She let the mattress tumble like a falling skyscraper while keeping her eyes fixed on me, almost unblinking. She opened her right palm slowly to reveal the tawiz she was now holding.

Put this around your arm, she said. It will protect you from what youve been stricken with.

No, I said in a sharp tone. I turned away from her. We stood there under the rotating fan blades for a few more minutes.

From what do I need protection? Im fine, I said.

You claim youre in love, she replied, widening her eyes, and with all her weight on one hip, which indicated she had diagnosed me with some certainty, but that there was more she was probably trying to figure out. Its not wise, to be so eccentric. Its not normal, however youre behaving.

I pushed her hand away with my own what felt to me like moving boulders but was really a slight tap. I hadnt eaten for days. I was really weak. She held onto the tawiz tighter, as if her life depended on it.

All the men weve suggested, youve rejected. You just lay there, and dont consider anything we say. Sometimes youre a monster, yelling loudly and pushing us away.

She explained that these were all the symptoms of sihr, someone elses ill intentions sent my way, or perhaps the interest of a jinni who wanted to make a home of my body, or who had fallen in love with me.

As she explained, I thought, I believe in jinns, too, made of smokeless fire, living alongside humans in an unseen world. I did believe that certain powers could be sent to influence a person to behave in ways that were not aligned with their true, deepest nature, that would make their battle within themselves to manage their misguided yearnings even harder. However, the agony I felt came not from jinns, but from one source and one source alone: being coerced to do something I did not want to do.

As my thoughts unravelled, intertwined, and spun like thread, a young girl stumbled in. She was a maid, and her name was Bilkis. She was wearing a pair of brown capris with holes in them and a pink shirt with a rainbow printed on it. She had dark-brown tumbleweed hair. Her front tooth was crooked, and her skin seemed brittle. Bilkis kept her eyes on me as she shuffled in my direction holding a glass of water, which she presented to me without comment.