Are You Afraid?

A.03 - Are You Afraid? - Be Very Much...Afraid!

Short Takes Book Article.

Have you had this great fear and premonition that something very bad is going to happen soon – and sometimes it does? Sometimes time passes, or you go to bed and nothing has happened – only to find with great dread, palpitations and trepidations that something did actually happen during the night – and if you are lucky you find it next morning. Otherwise, you leave others to say, “actually he or she had said about something bad was going to happen, poor person let him (or her) rest in peace! In a worst-case scenario!

A friend of mine had this premonition that his death would be caused by a burst tire (he had dreamt that his late grandfather had told him ‘to check the car tires’, and his premonition came true!

My mother-in-law (the great good lady – let her soul rest in eternal peace) had this knack. She will feel very much perturbed, disturbed and in great unease and discomfort. She will even say it – ‘I think it is x, something is happening to x, I know I can feel it’ Her family were used to her whims and fancies, used to let it go in stride that is all due to her old age and being over worry - but many times the good lady was proved to be correct. Only her family did not want to tell her the truth all the time, lest she became more disturbed, agitated and desolate!

One of my favourite readings was (still is) about ‘Stranger Than Fiction’ series by many writers (but mainly by one John Macklin). I have his full Encyclopaedia on his works. It is one work that I had really enjoyed to read. These series are full of paranormal and supernatural stories titles like ‘The strange curse of shadow of death’, “He knew how he was going to die’, or ‘The loud noises from underneath’ etc. They are sure to scare you out of your wits, yet the good self keep reading them on. Even the good wife thinks I am ‘one of those ‘not normal type’ (cranks and weirdoes!) to read such stories (she is scared, never read one!).

When I was a young boy in this island I grew up in East Africa (Mafia - not the Italian one) but the Arabic one for the place (island) without (she without) there were a lot of scare and weird stories there. These are not tales that I was told, but had actually experienced myself or by my close friends – like for example: -

 Cars cutting off engines whenever they reached one special baobab tree, especially after evening prayers (Magharib) and for no reason. It never happened when our late father (pbuh) was there!

 This beautiful damsel wandering in the night (very tall fair Arab lady). They said she was a ‘Jinn’ (ghost, fairy) trying to trap gullible (and usually drunk) men. It was said she actually walks through walls. If that will not scare you to run (and forget all others ideas you had in your head) what else will?
 One old Bedouin (Omani) telling my father one day early morning ‘that our grandmother had died in Hail Al-Ghaaf (Quriyaat)’. In those days mails took a month, when the letter was received, it was the exact date (the man had insisted to my disbelieving late father to write down the date!).
 It was said this man travelled at night (how – do not ask me! I never asked him, nor did I want to find out!) to and back to Oman. To prove his point, he had fresh ripening dates in his house (guess nobody ate them except himself, who else in his right mind would want to try?)
 Stories of people changing into ‘cats and monkeys’ and coming to people’s houses (we used to think our poor dad (pbuh) had lost it, when he used to shout at them in Arabic to go away, and they actually did!).
 How my late elder brother (pbuh) beat a cat badly because it ate his food. Next day he was seriously sick, everybody said he was a goner. They had to go to apologise to an old African man who looked like he was just beaten up! Only then my brother recovered.
 When we moved to Hamriya in 1970s, a friend of mine narrates his story. He was feeling sick and he could not to the office. So he told his wife, I am calling in sick and going back to bed. Imagine his surprise when his wife told him ‘you are confusing me, I just saw you in the kitchen going to work, and now you are back in bed’? At the time the man used to think he did the biggest mistake to marry someone he hardly knew, but repeated examples finally convinced him ‘there was a presence’ - especially when he too experienced ‘two wives in different scenarios’ (how enchanting, fantasy time?)
 Have you had this experience of going to a place for the first time (dejavu?) and realising that you have been in that place before? Has not happened to you, I hear you say? Well, I shall scare you – it happened to me. I saw a family holiday film. The setting is in Cyprus. Can you imagine? I thought I recognized the places and could even recognize the Greek language - as if it is something I had spoken before!
 Then have you heard of NDEs? (Near Death Experiences?). Lots of lights, and travelling through air and seeing dead relatives who tell you ‘to go back, your time is not ready yet! (They need a column of their own, not for now!).

The question I keep asking myself is if we had all these ‘crafts and witchery’, how come the peoples who possesses them are still poor and destitute? Or would not help us fight our enemies too? Does this not scare you? It should really!

Guess some of you may be saying – this guy has just started the column and has already run out of stories to write. Perhaps scared you in the process, eh? Nothing wrong to admit it – we all get scared and frightened sometimes. Perfectly normal human trait and behaviour, nothing illogical, alien, or strange! Or inconclusive either!

JUST TO SCARE YOU!!!