Black Magic Stories: from Africa Ninki Nanka, Part 2

This is the second part of the ancient black magic stories from Africa that Chuks told Bobby bhai and me in a parking lot in Al Nahda. If you have not read the first part, start there.

The Boy Who Had to See

There was a young man in the village named Fedu. He was as foolish as he was curious. Madhu’s horrible death had locked the whole village indoors, but Fedu was seized by a strange stubbornness. What had really happened at that bend of the river? What exactly had Madhu seen to end up like that? The next day, ignoring the elders’ strict orders, he slipped away as the afternoon turned toward evening and appeared at the cursed river bend. The shadows of the huge mangroves made the place almost dark. Standing on the bank, Fedu stared at the still water. There was no fear in his eyes, only curiosity.

At last the waiting ended. Three days later, at a heavy, hushed dusk, Bagla Dadu and Lala Dadu came walking side by side along the dusty path into the village. The villagers started when they saw their shapes in the dim western light. Around their necks hung necklaces made from the teeth of some rare, savage animal, and on their chests sat a strange, ancient, seven-layered protective charm. Looking at their wild, mysterious appearance, you would think a tribal warrior from a thousand years ago had come down out of the deep forest into the settlement.

Listeners must be wondering where the Dadus had been all these days. They had crossed the Gambian border into the remote Casamance forest of Senegal. There they had to make a secret tantric pact with some supernatural force. While they were away, they did not know about the terror of death that was happening in the village. But what is the real secret behind the wild appearance they took? And what was in that pact? I will tell that in another episode.

As soon as he entered the village, Bagla Dadu, together with Lala Dadu, heard from the headman and the villagers every detail of the horrifying deaths of Madhu, Fedu and Jisan. Hearing it all, a shadow of deep grief fell even over the stone-like faces of the two fierce sorcerers. They sighed in bitter regret at this procession of deaths that had happened without their knowledge, and at the cruel end of three young lives. The Dadus understood that the ancient evil poison of that black magic had reached far deeper than they had imagined. Bagla Dadu laid a hand gently on the headman’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, headman. We will settle this tonight.” When he finished, he looked slowly at Lala Dadu. The eyes of the two old companions met. No words were needed. Lala Dadu only gave a slight nod.

What the Jinn Saw

As the sun in the west spread its last reddish glow and vanished into the dark, an evil, suffocating shroud seemed to fall over the little village in the Gambia. When the wooden door of Bagla Dadu’s hut closed, all contact with the outside world was cut off. Inside, a flickering lantern. Facing each other sat the two legends of the Gambia, Bagla Dadu and Lala Dadu. On the ground, a complex ancient tantric design had been drawn in ash with a steady hand. From a clay pot in the middle of the design, incense smoke rose in coils. The two Dadus sat with their eyes closed in meditation. Their lips moved quickly, and from their throats came an incomprehensible chant in an ancient African language. Their two voices joined to create a strange, hypnotic echo inside the hut, one that would numb the nerves of any ordinary person in an instant.

The incense smoke did not scatter randomly. As if at the signal of some unseen force, it began to gather in one place. Slowly the coil of smoke took the form of a huge figure. Floating in the air, it was none other than Mukbir jinn himself. This powerful jinn, tamed through long years of practice, could lift the veil from hidden news and unseen secrets.

Bagla Dadu slowly opened his eyes. There was no trace of fear in his sharp, experienced gaze, only gravity. “Mukbir, there is a reason behind the deaths at this calm bend of the river. How far do its roots spread, and where did this ancient curse come from? Go and bring me the truth behind it.”

The moment Bagla Dadu gave the order, Mukbir’s smoky form vanished into the air in a flash. Inside the hut there was pin-drop silence, only the slow breathing of the two Dadus and the stifling smell of burning incense. Suddenly the air in the room grew heavy. Mukbir jinn appeared again out of nothing. His shape was shakier than before, as if he himself trembled at facing some terrible truth. The voice that now came from the smoky form seemed centuries old.

“The one you take for an ordinary monster of the river bend, Bagla, is nothing of the kind. He is the one-time sleeping, ancient guardian of this Gambia River, Ninki Nanka.”

The gazes of Lala Dadu and Bagla Dadu grew even sharper.

“It was a few decades ago. A greedy, lost sorcerer named Ogu wanted to bring this huge power under his control. His blind aim was to turn the soul of nature’s oldest creature into a slave. But Ogu was a fool, Bagla. He thought that through this poisonous magic he could subdue that huge being. He did not realise that, far from subduing it, he was only making an endless, primal curse.

“The great crisis now is that this monster is so tormented by that black magic poison that he does not want to kill anyone himself. But wherever he looks, his gaze has a poisonous effect and enters the victim’s soul directly. And through the force of that evil, a person’s body turns a dark bluish colour, and then falls toward death through unimaginable agony.”

When Mukbir finished, Bagla Dadu and Lala Dadu fell to thinking. They understood that they were about to face a great danger. After learning that chilling truth from Mukbir, they sent him away. As the smoky shape dissolved into the air, a congealed, graveyard-like silence settled inside the hut.

A few moments later, Bagla Dadu and Lala Dadu sat facing each other on a mat spread in the middle of the room. Just then Bara Amma slipped silently in. In her hands was a huge hookah of carved wood, in the old African tradition. Even at this moment of extreme anxiety, her face held its unshakable gravity. Breaking the silence of the hut, only the steady gurgle of water could be heard. The experienced nerves of the two elder sorcerers were under an unimaginable mental strain. Bara Amma left some fragrant tobacco and went out.

After quite a while, it was Lala Dadu who broke the suffocating silence. Taking a deep pull from the pipe and blowing thick rings of smoke into the air, he said in a strangely distant yet heavy voice, “Guruji used to say one thing often. When nature itself turns hostile, no way is left open. Ninki Nanka was the guardian of this river. Today he is its destroyer.”

Bagla Dadu did not answer at once. His steady gaze was on the burning red coals in the hookah’s bowl. That red glow cast a mysterious gleam in the pupils of his eyes. “You are right, Lala. But Guruji used to say this too. The one who once loved you understood what was good for you, and will surely return to his own home.”

After Bagla Dadu’s smoky yet deep words, the heavy air of the hut stopped for a moment. Even the steady gurgle of the hookah was no longer heard. “What are you trying to say, Bagla? After what Mukbir said, can there be any doubt left? That thing is no longer a guardian. It is a plain messenger of death.”

“There is one way, Lala. The Twin Shadow magic.”

“Yes, Lala. We have to put our twin shadow into that cursed, poisonous eye, and we have to do it before its deadly gaze touches our souls.” In the light of the flickering lantern, Bagla Dadu’s face looked as hard as stone with a fearsome resolve.

The Twin Shadow

The whole surroundings lay under the blazing heat of the sun. But at the cursed bend of the river there was a strange, bone-chilling stillness. No bird or animal called, and even the whisper of the wind seemed frozen with fear. Right at this well of death, the two legendary sorcerers of the Gambia, Bagla Dadu and Lala Dadu, came to stand. On the riverbank, the first thing they did was something unimaginable. From their bags they took pieces of pitch-black cloth, and each tied his own eyes tightly. They knew that even one glance at that monster’s eyes meant certain death. Today the fight would take place beyond sight, only through feeling and the force of ancient chants.

Blindfolded, they sat down on the wet earth at the river’s edge, with their tantric materials between them. Then the ancient ritual began. Even the noon sun, dry with drought, seemed to tremble at the depth of their voices. As the intensity of the chant rose, the calm water of the river suddenly began to churn. Huge bubbles rose from below, and the air filled with the stench of rotting flesh. The monster was watching the Dadus with its poisonous gaze. But the eyes of Bagla Dadu and Lala Dadu were wrapped in cloth with no gap. The poisonous gaze of Ninki Nanka’s black magic could find no way to touch their souls.

In the blazing noon sun, the dark shadow that fell on the ground from the bodies of Bagla Dadu and Lala Dadu suddenly came alive. By the limitless force of the chant, that twin shadow left the ground, shot forward, and crashed down onto Ninki Nanka’s burning eyes. The monster let out a terrible, ear-splitting scream, a sound that made even the hearts of people in far villages tremble. The ancient net of the Twin Shadow completely trapped Ninki Nanka’s gaze. The poisonous monster of black magic was now caught in an irresistible spell.

This was no ordinary magic. Bagla Dadu and Lala Dadu drew an uncrossable boundary, so that from then on, whenever Ninki Nanka opened his eyes in the daytime, he would see nothing else in the world. While the sun was out, only one scene would hang in front of those poisonous eyes, the huge, impenetrable twin shadow of Bagla Dadu and Lala Dadu. As a result, even if he looked at a person by mistake in the daylight, the effect of his magical poison would no longer work. Because from now on, forever, the twin shadow of the Dadus stood like a wall in the middle of his sight. In the daytime this monster was now completely harmless, a blind being held in a net of illusion.

The Poison and the Release

Parting the heavy veil of deep memory and worry, Bagla Dadu suddenly returned to reality. Inside the hut the lantern light was still trembling. The silence of the night outside was so deep that he could hear his own heartbeat like a hammer. Suddenly a sharp, cold current ran down his spine. This cold was not the chill of an ordinary night. It felt like a deathly cold gathered from within. His body was growing strangely numb. With shaking hands he tried to put down his prayer beads. But when his eyes fell on his own hand in the dim lantern light, his chest lurched. The colour of the skin on his hand was no longer normal. On that strong skin, a dark bluish, ominous glow had clearly appeared.

Bagla Dadu’s mind worked out the calculation in a moment. The Twin Shadow spell they had made on the riverbank at high noon had worked perfectly only in the sunlight. But now it was night. The effect of the spell was completely helpless against the dark. Dadu understood that the monster who had come into the yard of his hut that night had not come with any trick. It had not plotted any ghoulish plan. It was the ancient guardian of the Gambia River. Because of the Twin Shadow spell, it stayed completely blind in the daylight. And because of this blindness, for many years this keeper of nature itself had been suffering unspeakable harm. Its very existence was threatened. After years of intense agony and wasting away, it had gathered its last strength and gained the power to come before Dadu. But the sorcerers of the Gambia always say one thing. A curse is the cruel truth of nature, and it never protects anyone.

The monster had not wanted to kill Dadu. In fact it needed him alive to break the spell. But when, in the darkness of that night, it stood face to face with Dadu, lowered its huge body in its hope of freedom, and spoke to him looking straight into his eyes, this tragic thing had happened. Coming to ask for freedom, the monster had, without knowing it, planted the seed of death in the chest of the most powerful sorcerer in the Gambia.

Bagla Dadu’s experienced sorcerer’s spirit rose in furious rebellion. No, he could not fall into the lap of death now. If he died, this guardian monster could never again be freed from the net of the Twin Shadow spell. The guardian of the Gambia River would be lost forever in the depths of darkness. Ignoring the agony of the poison spreading through his body, he gathered his last strength and cried out. He called to Chuks’s father. “Hurry, come here!” The voice that came from his throat was like the groan of a wounded wild animal. “There is no time for crying now. The living poison of Ogu’s black magic has entered my body. Right now, this very moment, run and tell Lala. Nobody but Lala can cure this ancient poison.”

At his father’s command, the eldest son did not waste a moment and ran like mad through the deep darkness of the night to call Lala Dadu. As soon as he got the news, Lala Dadu came running. Then, seeing Bagla Dadu’s state, he ran off again like a madman and came back with a dozen more sorcerers of that region. In the middle of the yard outside the hut, a huge ring of fire was quickly lit. A terrifying, hair-raising ritual began. In this ritual, no chants were read to drive away any evil spirit or jinn. Tonight’s fight was completely different. Tonight the fight was directly against the living poison of black magic, which was eating away at Bagla Dadu’s soul bit by bit.

Bagla Dadu’s body was in grave danger. With one hand Lala Dadu pressed a consecrated red cloth to Bagla Dadu’s chest. With the other, he pressed a burning-hot black stone straight into the very middle of his chest. “Come out, poison! Ogu’s cursed poison, come out!” The moment the hot stone touched the skin of his chest, it made a gruesome sound. A strange, bone-chilling sight appeared before everyone’s eyes. Bagla Dadu’s body shook in agony, but Lala Dadu held him firmly. In a moment, that dark bluish glow, like a living venomous snake, began to wriggle under his skin and race toward his chest. Drawn by the stone’s powerful pull, the living poison of the black magic had to leave Dadu’s body and enter the stone. This kind of black magic removal is never simple, and Bagla Dadu’s life hung on every breath of it.

After this long, ghoulish struggle, the stone drew out the very last drop of poison from Bagla Dadu’s body. And at that very moment, an unimaginable, hair-raising thing happened. The raging red-yellow flames of the fire instantly changed and began to blaze in a hideous dark blue. It was as if the poison of Ogu’s black magic had swallowed the whole fire. Bagla Dadu’s body was now completely free of poison. The dark bluish touch of death under his skin had vanished entirely, and his familiar colour had returned. He drew a long breath and opened his eyes. This time, the most powerful sorcerer in the Gambia had defeated death and come back.

At dawn, Bagla Dadu, Lala Dadu and the dozen sorcerers who were there arrived at that cursed bend of the Gambia River. A light morning mist floated over the calm water of the river. Bagla Dadu and Lala Dadu went and stood right at the water’s edge. A fire was lit. Then the ancient chanting began. At their rising call, the water of the river churned, and the ancient guardian Ninki Nanka lifted his head and stood up. With daylight now broken, the monster was still completely blind from the Twin Shadow spell. His huge body writhed in pain, but he did not attack. He knew that today was the day of freedom.

The sorcerers took out several extremely rare black stones from their bags and heated them red in the fire. Then the dozen sorcerers stood in a circle together and raised the intensity of the chant. The moment the stones touched the monster’s body, he trembled with a terrible hiss. The terrifying process of drawing out the poison began. From Ninki Nanka’s body, the vile living poison of Ogu’s black magic came out like smoke and began to enter the stones. Pulled by the chant, the sorcerers brought the stones back and threw them straight into the burning ring of fire. Just as on the night before, all together the flames blazed up in that hideous dark blue. Ninki Nanka was now completely free of poison.

Now came the final release. Bagla Dadu and Lala Dadu stood on the riverbank and raised their hands to the sky. With the same chant they had once used to create the Twin Shadow spell, they now recited it backward and broke that invisible wall for good. The permanent covering of shadow was lifted from in front of Ninki Nanka’s eyes. Then, raising a huge wave, the primal guardian of the Gambia River sank forever into the depths of the river. This is how the final end came to a terrible curse that was born from the pride of one greedy sorcerer.

When Chuks finished, the heavy silence of the Al Nahda parking lot broke, and the noise of the city slowly began to reach our ears from far away. Bobby bhai and I sat there spellbound and silent.