About five years ago, a Bangladeshi graduate student in the United Kingdom described an incident he had witnessed several decades earlier: the summoning of a jinn. The jinn was invoked by a friend of the student’s grandfather.
The incident had occurred one afternoon in 1975 at his grandfather’s home in Dhaka. As he described it, a small group of people sat in a modest, thoroughly clean room from which the furniture had been removed. The windows were sealed shut and the curtains were drawn, casting the room in darkness. The room had been sprayed with rose water and scented with pungent incense. ‘We all sat on the marble floor,’ the student said. ‘A chair with a prayer mat was placed at one corner. The door was shut but not locked.’
The summoner set forth some rules for the ritual. Those present were not allowed to open their eyes and see the jinn directly, because the light that radiated from his body would be so intense that it could cause blindness in humans. They were also told not to move around the room, but to remain seated on the floor.
When everyone was ready, the summoner began reciting words unintelligibly in a low voice. With a piece of chalk he drew a protective circle around himself. He burnt a few matches and with the blackened remnants drew mysterious symbols on the floor. ‘This lasted about 20 minutes,’ the student said. ‘I was extremely dubious, however [I] remained silent and sat among everyone else. What happened next changed my life completely.’
With a sudden bang, the door flew open and then shut just as quickly. They felt a strong rush of warm wind. The jinn sat down on the chair above the prayer mat. The people greeted him, saying, ‘Salamu alaikum.’ The room grew very hot, and the student said he began sweating.
The Jinn spoke with a very deep voice and I could sense that his
personality was very strong and dominant. He was a Muslim Jinn.
Now I wanted to see what was going on. I asked if I could open my
eyes. The Jinn said that I could open my eyes but not look at him for
too long as it would cause me pain. However he said he would try
and turn down his emitting glow from his body and then I was to
look at him. He gave me the go ahead and I opened my eyes. What
I saw was incredible.
There sat before me – three feet away on the chair – the shape
of a human being but much more tall, I would say about at least
eight feet in size. From head to toe there was a bright light emitting,
like the light emitted when fi re burns at its max.
He moved closer, in spite of warnings from the others, and sat down right in front of the jinn, who began laughing and asked why he was so curious. The student was at a loss of words, in fact, in shock. The light was so bright that he was unable to distinguish the jinn’s facial features.
‘He asked if I had enough and I said no. I wanted to touch him. He said go ahead. I was expecting to be burnt, but the opposite happened. I reached out with my right hand and touched his hand, which rested on his thigh. It was very hairy and extremely soft. He stroked my palm and I sensed harmony and friendship.’
They spoke, he said, for hours. The jinn talked of his home, which he said was in the Qaf Mountains. He was very old, and a very senior jinn, the student said.
The summoner was sitting far away, in his chalk circle. He kept telling the student to hurry, because it was growing late, and the longer the jinn was delayed, the more pain he experienced. For his part, the jinn said he didn’t mind and told the student to continue. ‘I learnt a lot that day. I learnt about how life is being a Jinn. The Jinn like to eat a lot of “halwas” [Arabic sweets] and drink sweet sherbets.’
They finally said farewell. The jinn stood up and exited through the door like a fl ash of light, ‘with a massive sound, like a bomb.’
The student said he met the jinn several more times. The jinn would say, ‘I am very old, I will die soon, please pray for me. When you humans call Allah once, He replies back to you 50 times. But when we Jinns call Him 50 times, He only replies back once.’
The summoner passed away not long afterwards, and the student had no way of contacting the jinn. He never saw him again.
[Robert Lebling] Legends of the fire Spirits – Jinn and genies
In Mundo sed non de Mundo 