The Djinn in the Tree

Djinn or Genie, are supernatural beings that are neither angles nor the traditional ‘fallen angel’ demon. There are good and bad djinn, male and female, and some are said to grant wishes or make deals with us mere mortals but woe betide the man (or woman) who breaks a deal with them.

The mythology has Islamic root and some believe that they were created by Allah while others believe they came before humans. Of course, if you’ve read 1001 Arabian Nights, many of the stories in there features Djinni, the most familiar story being, Aladdin’s Magical Lamp.

My story is not nearly as fantastic, but interesting nonetheless.

I was 13 years old and we had move into a rundown duplex that we rented for cheap if my dad would do repairs on the place. Whoever had lived in the place before us had done a serious number on the place. There were holes in the walls, cabinets had been torn down and the yard was nothing but bare dirt and a gnarled old tree in the front yard.

The tree was twisted and old, and being a mesquite tree, didn’t really provide much shade and gave more of a creepy feeling to the front of the house.

Over the next few weeks, odd things began to happen in the house. Things would come up missing, there were strange noises and my dad began to have serious headaches. Fights became common place in the house and some of the objects reappeared near the tree outside. My sister was convinced something strange was happening. She called it a ghost, but she’s always been easy to scare and I ‘might’ have added to her fears, because, well, it was fun to mess with her. (Yes, it might have been mean, but hey, I was 13.)

My dad however, took it seriously, and began to study the tree. After some time, announced that there was a djinn in our tree.

I have to say, I didn’t really believe all that nonsense. I made a point in saying as much. Anyone of my younger siblings could have put the things under the tree, or dropped stuff outside. The house had sat for a while; the sounds could have been mice. But my dad insisted it was a djinn and went about the task of ridding the tree of the spirit.

A few days later, I was on my way home, my sister met me at the bus stop when I got off school. She was very excited and was babbling about the djinn-tree and that our dad had made the djinn leave.

I was skeptical, but as I rounded the corner to our house, there in the front yard the tree was dead. A main branch was broken and lying on the ground and it looked as if it had been dead awhile and the sparse leaves were gone.

Whether there was really a djinn in the tree, I will never know, but there are a lot of things in this world that make you wonder. It’s quite possible my dad killed the tree to put my sister’s mind at ease and get rid of the eyesore. Or maybe it really was a djinn. Either way it made me think, left me curious, and drove me to look into the supernatural and paranormal and for that, I’m glad there was a djinn in my tree.