When I was a child back in the 1980s, I lived in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia as my father worked for Saudi Aramco and Saudia Airlines as a financial consultant. Over the course of living there, my family made good friends with the locals, including several bedouin. On a couple of occasions, my father went into the Arabian desert with our bedouin friends for several days for vacation. While I was invited to attend, my mother asked that I stay, thus I did.
My father tells his account of getting to know several of the bedouin and their tales of "the unspoken ones." Just last week during the holidays, as my father and I like to jog together, the topic of the bedouin came up. Somehow the conversation segued into my memories of having dinner in the desert on the dunes under a star-filled sky, sitting on very plush carpets laid on the sand; roasting goat over an open flame pit and remembering how good it tasted (trust me). From there, dad mentioned that Mohammed, a friend of his from work, described being in the desert in a similar situation, falling asleep in his car with his brother (as he was a child) while the adults slept outside on the carpets. Mohammed said that one night, he was wakened by a very bright light. He looked out the window and saw a bright light peering into the window of the car. Mohammed told my dad that the light had a face and it looked like a demon. (Granted, I've never seen demons nor know what they look like other than the stereotypical label.) The light circled the car, shaking it violently. It then came inside and pressed him into the bench seat of the car. Then, it moved outside the car and circled around the other sleeping people, including his father. Finally, it moved off into the desert, crossing the dunes in the moonlight. Mohammed said the next day he started to tell his father what had happened the previous night, and his father immediately silenced him and said never to repeat it. He later learned that what he'd experienced was what the Saudis call, "the Djinn."
I kid you not, this is exactly what was told to me by my father, and he doesn't joke about things like this.
Anyway, I was curious about the Djinn, so I went on Google and Yahoo and did some searching around about it. I found this website, which reads to be fairly recent. It sounds a bit exaggerated, but could have some validity.
http://www.clydelewis.com/dis/djinn/djinn.htm
Anyone heard of the Djinn?
My father tells his account of getting to know several of the bedouin and their tales of "the unspoken ones." Just last week during the holidays, as my father and I like to jog together, the topic of the bedouin came up. Somehow the conversation segued into my memories of having dinner in the desert on the dunes under a star-filled sky, sitting on very plush carpets laid on the sand; roasting goat over an open flame pit and remembering how good it tasted (trust me). From there, dad mentioned that Mohammed, a friend of his from work, described being in the desert in a similar situation, falling asleep in his car with his brother (as he was a child) while the adults slept outside on the carpets. Mohammed said that one night, he was wakened by a very bright light. He looked out the window and saw a bright light peering into the window of the car. Mohammed told my dad that the light had a face and it looked like a demon. (Granted, I've never seen demons nor know what they look like other than the stereotypical label.) The light circled the car, shaking it violently. It then came inside and pressed him into the bench seat of the car. Then, it moved outside the car and circled around the other sleeping people, including his father. Finally, it moved off into the desert, crossing the dunes in the moonlight. Mohammed said the next day he started to tell his father what had happened the previous night, and his father immediately silenced him and said never to repeat it. He later learned that what he'd experienced was what the Saudis call, "the Djinn."
I kid you not, this is exactly what was told to me by my father, and he doesn't joke about things like this.
Anyway, I was curious about the Djinn, so I went on Google and Yahoo and did some searching around about it. I found this website, which reads to be fairly recent. It sounds a bit exaggerated, but could have some validity.
http://www.clydelewis.com/dis/djinn/djinn.htm
Anyone heard of the Djinn?
