Black Magic Story: The Tailor of Benarasi Polli and the Taweez on the Roof

My father was a well-known tailor in Dhaka. Our tailor shop was in the Benarasi Polli area. This is a black magic story from my own family, and I am telling it as I lived it. My father was not an ordinary man who only stitched cloth, he was a true master of his craft. People trusted him with their cloth in a way they usually did not trust anyone else. So many people even left their expensive clothes with my father as a deposit. There was a strange finish in my father’s handiwork. When he cut cloth, it sat perfectly. When he took measurements, there was no room for a single inch of error. And when he finished stitching a garment, the person who wore it felt very special.

The Tailor of Benarasi Polli

Our days were going quite well. In the wedding season the clacking of machines went on night and day in the shop. At Eid time there is no need to say more, a real queue formed outside the shop. I still remember, a few days before Eid my father would come home very late, with great tiredness in his eyes, his eyes drooping from work. But even through all that tiredness I could see a strange peace on his face. He knew his sweat-soaked labour was bearing fruit, that halal sustenance was coming into the house, that the household was running beautifully.

There was no royal show in our household, no great wealth or pride. But nothing was lacking either. The month’s groceries came on time, my brothers’ and sisters’ school fees were paid on time, new clothes were bought for everyone each Eid, and my mother always had some money saved in her hands. We felt that life would probably go on beautifully like this, very ordinary, but safe.

My father often said one thing. He would say, “A person should not spend his whole life under a rented roof, he needs a roof of his own.” He did not say it only to dream, he had been quietly working for many years to make this dream come true. He saved a little at a time, put some money into the business, and kept some with my mother. In the beginning he took a small workshop with only two machines. Slowly, as work grew, he hired two craftsmen at the shop. Then he did not limit himself to plain stitching. He began taking readymade cloth fitting, boutique finishing, and final setting of hand-worked expensive cloth. The scope of his work grew. Those who had earlier come only to have their own clothes stitched now handed over the expensive wedding saris and lehengas of their daughters, sisters and wives to my father with their eyes closed. My father’s name spread through the whole market.

But as the saying goes, not everyone can see another person’s good. When someone’s labour begins to bear fruit, not only do well-wishers increase, some silent enemies are also born. People who will talk to you with smiling faces but inside burn at your progress. Who see your success not as your hard work but as their own humiliation.

The Slow Ruin

At exactly this time my father made a decision. He thought, let us take a new, bigger shop in a somewhat better part of the market. He used to tell my mother, “If this works out, the whole turn of our life will change.” Many nights he stayed awake calculating, sometimes opening the business ledger, sometimes working things out on small scraps of paper. He consulted my mother about how much loan could be taken from the bank and how much risk was right. Thinking it all through, my father looked at a place for the new shop and settled the advance. With some saved money and some borrowed money he set off on the path of his dream.

In those days my father was very busy. But we began to notice a strange thing. Even amid so happy a task, an unknown restlessness worked inside my father. He no longer laughed openly as before, he would suddenly fall completely silent, and lose himself in the middle of sitting. Sometimes looking at his face it felt as if someone had laid an invisible weight on his head. At first we thought perhaps the worry of the new shop and the bigger business made him feel that way. My mother too explained to us that with so big a responsibility, perhaps body and mind felt a little heavy. But after some days we understood that the pressure was not only from the business, it was something else, something terrible, that had begun to enter our home with my father.

Within a few weeks of taking the new shop, things began to change as if someone was deliberately shutting every road for us one by one. Customers who had come to our shop for years suddenly came less. Some people would leave cloth but not come to collect it after it was stitched. Some big orders were suddenly cancelled, for which my father had already bought expensive cloth. He had to bear that huge loss from his own pocket. Two or three times it happened that just before delivering expensive finished garments, some terrible stain or mark appeared that nobody could say where it came from. Yet in so many years of experience my father’s hands had never made such a mistake. Once dirty water suddenly began to seep from the ceiling of the shop, and many expensive pieces of cloth were ruined. Another time, after taking the advance for a big order, a customer came and directly accused my father of theft. He said my father had taken the real cloth and made the garment from fake cloth. The harder my father tried to explain, the worse the situation became.

Sometimes even my father’s oldest craftsmen began to make mistakes that they had never made in their whole lives. Sometimes a machine needle would suddenly break, sometimes the power would go, sometimes a customer would come and start a pointless quarrel. My father would come home and say, “If loss comes from one side, a man can somehow manage it. But when little holes open on all sides of a boat and water begins to come in, the boat cannot be saved.” Exactly this was happening to us. It was not an ordinary accident, nor just a day or two of bad luck. It was a continuous destruction. All the roads in front of us were closing. Each time we got past one problem, a bigger problem came and stood in front of us.

Even inside the house the blessing seemed to begin leaving. Earlier the month went well on a little money. But now even with more money, it felt as if money was finished before the month ended. The monthly groceries ran out very quickly. From where new expenses suddenly appeared, none of us could tell. Sometimes the cost of my brothers’ and sisters’ books, sometimes a sudden serious illness, sometimes making up the shop’s loss, sometimes loan instalments. When my father came home at night, the old peace could no longer be seen on his face. He was no longer the man he had been. On his shoulders was not only the burden of the business loss, a pitch-black darkness seemed to walk with him. His habit of quietness grew. Earlier he used to come home and chat with us, telling my mother all the events of the day. But now many days he would come home after Maghrib and go straight to sit in a corner of his own room, a cup of tea in his hand, which went cold until it turned to ice. Two or three times my mother went to him and asked, “What is wrong with you? Are you unwell?” My father would say only one thing, “Nothing.” But inside this word “nothing” was so much weariness and despair that it felt as if the walls of the house understood that pain. The air of the house began to feel heavy.

My mother too grew very worried. Earlier my father used to reassure my mother and give her courage. But when only bad news kept coming one after another, even in my mother’s voice a kind of irritation came. Quarrels began over very small things in the house. Sometimes a huge uproar over a little too much salt in the curry, sometimes my mother’s anger when we children made a little noise, sometimes arguments between my parents over the accounts. Earlier we had never had such bad quarrels in our house. Now they happened almost every day. The strangest thing was that after the quarrel ended, nobody remembered exactly what had started it. It felt as if the real cause of the quarrel was something else, and we were only looking for small excuses to show anger at each other. Sometimes I felt that every person in the house was very irritated with one another, everyone very tired. It was not only that our money had dwindled. It felt as if someone was draining the courage from our chests.

We siblings were not then old enough to understand the complicated accounts of business loss. But we were not so young that we could not feel the suffocating and terrible atmosphere of the house. When my father came home from the shop we could tell from the sound of his footsteps how his day had gone. If we saw that he was walking a little firmly, we thought perhaps work had gone a little better today. And if we saw that he was dragging his feet slowly, quietly taking off his shoes himself, we knew that again today some disaster had happened.

I still remember those evenings. Right after the Maghrib adhan, a chilling darkness would settle inside the house. The street lamps outside were lit, the tube light inside was on, but still it felt as if someone had drawn a black curtain over the whole house. My father would come and sit in a wooden chair, tea placed before him, which went cold. My mother watched from a distance. We siblings sat completely silent. It felt as if the whole house was holding its breath, waiting for something terrible.

The Day Father Did Not Reach the Factory

One day my maternal uncle came to our house. Usually when he came he was very cheerful and joked a lot with us. But that day his face was very serious, as if he had sensed our condition in advance. As soon as he came in he looked at my father very carefully and stayed quite silent for a while. Then slowly he brought up the real matter. First he asked about the state of the business, then asked in detail about the loss. My father told my uncle about each problem, one by one. The more he spoke, the graver my uncle’s face became. After hearing it all, my uncle gave my father a piece of advice which was easy to hear but impossible to accept. My uncle said, “Brother, since the shop cannot be kept going in any way at the moment, you take a job somewhere for a few months for now. Then at least a fixed amount of money will come at the end of the month, this bad state of the household can be managed a little, and the pressure on your head will lessen too.”

This might be easy for an ordinary person. But for a man who had been the owner of his own business for twenty years, who had taught ten people their trade with his own hands and given them work, the proposal to work under someone else was not realistic. It was something that would shatter all the self-respect and pride in his chest. But the situation had reached a point where there was no other road. My uncle said that in a factory he knew, a supervisor’s post was vacant, and if my father wished, he could speak there. It was decided that the next morning my father would go to the factory for an interview.

The atmosphere of the next morning still floats before my eyes. That morning was not normal like other days. My father bathed beautifully, put on a clean white panjabi, oiled and combed his hair, took a plastic file in his hand, in which probably were some of his old papers. Then slowly he moved toward the front door. My mother went and stood quietly behind my father. She was looking at him as if some unknown fear was clutching at her chest. Many years later my mother told us that that morning her chest had been trembling a great deal. It felt to her as if she were not sending her husband to a job interview, but to some terrible battlefield from which there was no guarantee of return. Before leaving the house my father looked at us and smiled a little, but that smile did not reach his eyes, it was a kind of dead smile. Then he opened the door and went outside. As soon as the door closed, that strange, suffocating silence came down again.

Noon passed into afternoon. My mother was consoling herself, perhaps the job talks were taking a little longer. Afternoon passed into evening. The tea my mother had made went cold until it turned to water. But there was no news of my father. As time went on my mother’s restlessness grew. She kept going to the door, and looking at the clock every little while. Suddenly a call came on the landline of our house. My uncle’s call. My uncle said something which took the ground from under all of our feet. He said, “Apa, Bhaijan did not come to the factory today. I have been waiting for him since morning.” Hearing this, time in the house seemed to stop right there. The blood dried in my face and turned white. We siblings began looking at each other in fear. At that time not everyone had a mobile phone that you could simply call and ask. Only those who have been through it know how terrible the tension is when someone leaves home and goes missing.

Every moment felt as heavy as a mountain. It felt as if someone had sucked the air out of our house. It was quite deep night. Suddenly someone knocked very softly at our front door. My mother almost ran and opened the door. When she opened it, she saw my father standing there. But not the man of that morning. My father’s face was completely pale, as if he had turned yellow like a jaundice patient. His white clothes were covered in dust, his eyes were red as hibiscus flowers, but there was no sleep in those red eyes, there was a strange terror. His lips were dry and cracked. My father came into the house, but did not sit on the sofa or a chair. It felt as if someone had taken all the strength from his body. He sat down on the floor with a thud. My mother quickly went to him and gave him a glass of water, and kept asking again and again what had happened. But my father could not make a sound, it felt as if someone was holding back the words inside his throat. Suddenly my father covered his face with both hands and burst out sobbing like a child. Believe me, brother, a father’s tears are the most terrible sight in the world for his children. Seeing my father sit weeping on the floor like this, we siblings began to cry in fear too.

After quite a while my father’s weeping eased a little and his breathing became normal. What he told us turned the blood in our bodies to ice. My father said, “I left the house in the morning and got on a bus. There was not much crowd in the bus, I sat in a seat by the window. The roads were normal too. But when the bus passed a roundabout, suddenly a strange pressure began to come into my chest. At first I thought it was gastric. But after a little I began to find it hard to breathe.” My father paused, swallowed, and began again. “Then I heard very clearly someone whispering right by my ear, ‘Go back, do not go ahead, go back, I am telling you.’ I startled and looked all around, but there was nobody near me, nobody even looking at me. I thought perhaps it was my imagination. But the further the bus went, the clearer the voice became. Along with the voice a cold gust of wind struck my ear. Then I tried in my mind to recite Ayatul Kursi, but my tongue was going stiff, I could not remember the verses at all. I felt that one more step forward and some disaster would happen from which I could never return. Fear had settled in my chest so badly that as soon as the stop came I almost jumped off the bus. After getting off I could not move a single step forward or back, my feet seemed stuck to the road. I sat in a corner of the footpath for hour after hour. I only felt that if I stood up now, the thing that was with me would finish me. When people thinned out on the road at night, I somehow took a rickshaw and came home.”

The Taweez Behind the Water Tank

Hearing my father’s words we understood that what was happening to us was not just bad luck, it was a big conspiracy, some black magic, some kufri kalam. All this time we had been trying to accept everything as normal, but now the situation had reached such a point that to accept it as mere fate would be nothing but foolishness. The next morning my mother phoned my grandmother, my nanu, and told her everything. Hearing it she was astonished. That very afternoon my uncle came to our house, but this time not alone, with a hujur (Islamic scholar).

The hujur walked around our whole house and looked at everything. During this a thing happened which proved all our suspicions true. In one corner of the roof of our house there was an old water tank, where nobody usually went. When the hujur was looking behind the tank, his eye was caught by one thing, a taweez. But it was no ordinary taweez, of the kind given for release from people’s troubles. The taweez was wrapped in a dirty black cloth. Something red was smeared on the cloth, who knows whether it was blood. And the taweez was bound round and round with red and black thread. You could tell at a glance that it had been hidden there in great haste, very carefully. As soon as she saw the taweez my mother said, “Bhaijan, since seeing this thing my chest is churning, I feel like vomiting.”

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The hujur took the taweez in his hand, closed his eyes and murmured something. Then he said, “This was not placed here for any good purpose. It was placed here to block your sustenance, to destroy the peace of your home, to put you on the street. And the most frightening thing is,” the hujur paused a little, “this work is not of any outsider, it is of someone very close to you, who comes regularly to your house.” Hearing this it felt as if the sky had fallen on everyone’s heads. Someone close? Not so many people come and go in our house at all. So who could do such a vile thing? The mark of pain on my face then I cannot explain in words. Because if an outsider harms you, you can fight him. But when someone from your own home stabs you in the back, a person no longer has the strength to fight, he dies from inside.

The hujur gave us some instructions: recite Surah Baqarah in the house every day, and he gave some blessed water to be sprinkled in the four corners of the house. And the hardest task he gave was that my father must sleep alone in a room that night. As the hujur said, that night my father separated from all of us and went to sleep in a small guest room beside the drawing room. When my father later told us about that night, the hair on our bodies stood up.

My father said, “After praying Isha I lay down in bed. In my mind I was reciting the duas the hujur had given me. For quite a while everything was fine. But around two-thirty or three at night I suddenly realised that the temperature inside the room was at absolute zero. It felt as if I was lying in a morgue, bone-shaking cold, my hands and feet freezing. I kept my eyes closed. Suddenly I felt that someone was standing against the wall. There was no sound of movement, but I clearly felt that someone was looking at me with a very sharp gaze. A little later came the sound of running from one corner of the room to another, heavy footsteps. Then began that laughter, khik khik. The laugh was not like a human’s, it was somehow hollow, as if someone was laughing inside a big empty drum. My heart gave a thud. Suddenly I realised that someone was breathing very loudly under my bed, a hissing sound, like some wild animal. I sped up reciting Ayatul Kursi. Suddenly I felt that the thing was slowly coming from under the bed to stand by my head. Then in a moment someone put a huge stone on my chest. I felt my breath would stop. I tried to move my hands and feet, but my body seemed paralysed. It was as if someone had gripped my throat with an ice-cold hand.” My father said that if he had stopped reciting that night, perhaps in the morning his body would have been found. Until Fajr that thing tormented my father like this. The moment the adhan sounded, the pressure lifted from his chest and my father came to his senses.

Aunty on the Balcony

After this incident my grandmother decided to come and stay with us. My dadi was a very devout and brave woman. She said, “We must not be afraid. Shaitan’s whole work is to frighten people. We will all recite the Quran together, let us see how Shaitan can overpower us.” But Shaitan took the test of their courage in a very bad way. One day after Asr prayer my dadi made wudu and sat on the prayer mat, the Quran Majid in her hands. As soon as she leaned forward a little to open the Quran, my dadi let out a terrible scream and collapsed on the floor. Hearing the scream we ran to that room. When we got there we saw my dadi writhing in agony, her right ankle twisted in an unnatural way. Trembling, my dadi said, “As soon as I opened the Quran, it felt as if someone with a huge hand gripped my ankle and gave a jerk and twisted it.” At that exact moment the main door of our house flew open with a tremendous noise. There was no wind outside, but the door opened as if someone had kicked it off its hinges. And at once through the house blew a wind with a stench of rotting death. My dadi’s leg was broken, and she had to be taken quickly to hospital to be put in plaster.

After this incident even the little courage that remained in everyone’s mind shattered. We understood that the thing with us was not only frightening us, it could also hurt us physically. The biggest worry became my little sister. She was then only ten years old. She was very quiet by nature anyway, and prayed five times a day. But after this incident her behaviour began to change somehow. In the beginning she would wake in the morning and say to my mother, “Amma, last night someone was lying at my feet, her body was very cold.” My mother, though frightened, explained to her that she had probably been dreaming. But after a few days my sister began to say such things that would dry up anyone’s liver. One day at the dining table at noon she said to my mother in a very normal voice, “Amma, that aunty comes every night. At first she only sat. Now she even strokes my head, exactly the way you do when you caress me.” The rice plate fell from my mother’s hand. In a shaky voice she asked, “Which aunty, my dear?” My little sister said, “That aunty, whose face is completely black, only her eyes glow. Last night she lay beside me and whispered in my ear, will you come with me?” What our state was on hearing this, you can perhaps imagine.

Dark circles appeared under my little sister’s eyes, clearly visible. At night her sleep stopped completely. All night she would sit on the bed muttering, talking to someone, sometimes giggling, and the next moment bursting into tears. One day my mother saw my little sister standing holding the balcony grille, making signs to someone. When my mother went near and asked, she said, “Aunty is very angry today. She said that if you do not leave this house, she will kill everyone.”

The situation was going completely out of hand. My nanu brought that same hujur again. The hujur sat with all of us. Very gravely he asked my father a question, “Is there any woman who used to come regularly to this house of yours, who burned inside at your progress? Please think, especially someone you considered very close.” My father and mother looked at each other. After being silent a good while, my mother with great fear uttered a name: Fupu. Fupu, my father’s own younger sister. Fupu used to come to our house often, especially when my father’s business was doing very well. Many good words were heard from Fupu’s mouth, but the look in her eyes was very strange. My mother remembered that Fupu once stood for a long time on our roof near the water tank. When my mother asked, she said, “Just taking the air.” My father could not believe that his own younger sister could commit such a great betrayal against him. But when the hujur worked out some calculations on hearing Fupu’s name, everything became clear. The hujur said, “This is her work. She had someone read kufri kalam from some big tantrik and buried this black magic taweez in your house. Her aim was not only to put you on the street, but to destroy you at the root.”

Selling the House and Leaving

After learning the truth my father turned completely to stone. When one’s own blood makes so great a decision to harm, what can anyone do. We decided to sell this house and go somewhere else. But selling the house was not easy either. That evil jinn did not want us to sell the house and leave. Whenever any party came to see the house, some trouble or other happened. Either the bathroom pipe suddenly burst, or the party took back its advance for no reason. Once a party paid the earnest money and the next morning came and said, “Brother, forgive me, last night I dreamed about your house. Someone seemed to say to me, if you buy this house, I will kill your wife and children. I will not buy this house.” We were stuck for lack of money.

Then, with the hujur’s help, after three days of khatam recitations in the house, finally Allah turned His face to us. One party agreed to buy the house. That day we left that house. The whole house felt somehow empty and echoing. As we were loading all the belongings onto the truck, suddenly my sister said, “Amma, look there, aunty is standing on the second-floor balcony looking at us, aunty is smiling.” We all looked toward the second floor, but nobody was there. My mother quickly took my little sister in her arms and got into a rickshaw. My father only turned once and looked carefully at the house. There were tears in his eyes, but a relief in his chest too, that at least this time his family would be saved. Alhamdulillah.

After we left that house and came to another area, nothing bad happened to us again. My little sister slowly recovered too. That aunty was never seen again. My father’s business began to stand up again from the beginning. But even today, remembering those days gives us goosebumps. We understood that a person’s greatest enemy is not an outsider, the greatest enemy is very close to him, who will with a smiling face stab you in the back so that you will not even feel it.

This was the painful story of this sister’s life. But this story gives a lesson: there is no telling how low a person’s greed and jealousy can bring him. May Allah protect all of us from the hands of such jealous people.