Walls, town
And port,
Refuge
From death,
Gray sea
Where breaks
The wind
All sleeps.
In the plain
Is born a sound.
It is the breathing
Of the night.
It roars
Like a soul
That a flame
Always follows.
The higher voice
Seems a shiver.
Of a leaping dwarf
It is the gallop.
He flees, he springs,
Then in cadence
On one foot dances
At the end of a stream.
The murmer approaches,
The echo repeats it.
It is like the bell
Of a cursed convent,
Like a crowd sound
That thunders and roars
And sometimes crumbles
And sometimes swells.
God! The sepulchral voice
Of Djinns!…What noise!
We flee beneath the spiral
Of the deep staircase.
My lamp has already died,
And the shadow of the ramp,
Which crawls along the wall,
Ascends to the ceiling.
The swarm of Djinns is passing,
And it whirls, hissing.
Old conifers, stirred by their flight,
Crackle like burning pine.
Their herd, heavy and swift,
Flying in the vacant space,
Seems a living cloud
With lightning flashing at its edge.
They are so near! – We keep clear
This room where we defy them.
What noise outside! Hideous army
Of vampires and dragons!
The beam of the loosened ceiling
Sags like soaked grass,
And the rusted old door
Trembles, unseating its hinges.
Cries from hell, voice that roars and weeps!
The horrible swarm, driven by the north wind,
Doubtless, or heaven! assails my home.
The wall bends under the black batallion.
The house cries out and staggers tilted,
And one could say that, ripped from the soil,
Just as it chases a dried-out leaf,
The wind rolls it along in a vortex.
Prophet! If your hand spares me
From these impure demons of the night,
I would go prostrate my bald forehead
Before your sacred incense burners!
Make their breath of sparks
Die on these faithful doors,
And make the talons of their wings
Scrape and cry in vain at these black windows.
They have passed! – Their cohort
Takes flight and flees, and their feet
Stop beating on my door
With their multiple blows.
The air fills with a sound of chains,
And in the nearby forests
All the great oaks tremble
Bent beneath their fiery flight!
The beatings of their wings
Fades in the distance.
So vague in the plains,
So faint, that you believe
You hear the grasshopper
Cry with a shrill voice
Or the hail crackling
On the lead of an old roof.
Strange syllables
Still approach us
Thus, of the Arabs,
When the horn sounds,
A chant on the shore
Rises up in moments,
And the dreaming child
Has dreams of gold.
The funerary Djinns,
Files of death,
In the shadows
Hurry their step;
Their swarm rumbles;
Thus, deep,
Murmers a wave
That no-one sees.
This vague sound
That falls asleep,
It is the wave
On the edge;
It is the moan,
Almost extinct,
Of a saint
For a death.
One doubts
The night…
I listen :-
All flees,
All fades,
Distance
Erases
Sound.
The poem Les Djinns, written in 1875 by Victor Hugo, the French novelist, is a description of a horde of Djinn invading a North African seaport. There are a number of translations of this poem into English however this particular translation is by Robert Lebling, author of ‘Legends of the Fire Spirits’, a comprehensive account of the ‘wondrous, often troublesome, and sometimes terrifying spirit beings of ancient Arab and Islamic tradition’. For more information on Robert Lebling see here .
The photograph heading this blog entry was taken in October 2019 at the grotto of Lalla Aisha Qandisha, a powerful female Djinn who is also known under a number of names across north Africa. She has powers to both possess and antagonise mostly men as well as to heal people of ailments. In appearance she has the face and body of a beautiful woman and the legs of a goat or a camel. The grotto can be found at the town of Sidi Ali Ben Hamdouch, on Zerhoun mountain near Meknes and is close to the shrine of Sidi Ali Ben Hamdouch, the founder of the Hamadcha fraternity. The saint and Lalla Aisha have a complicated relationship that I shall discuss further, with more photographs of both the saint’s Zaouia and Lalla Aisha’s grottos, in a later blog post.