UNTER UNS von Geistern, Dschinns und Monstern

“Djinns promised real / by the Qur’an / have become B-movie tropes now“, a poem by Khashayar Mohammadi reads. So it is hardly surprising that, for most people in Germany, the word “djinn” conjures up images of the bottle genie from Disney’s Aladdin or TV’s I dream of Jeannie series—cutesy, westernized, simplified versions of beings who, in Islamic tradition, are defined by indistinctness. According to Islamic teachings, God created angels from light, humans from clay, and djinns from smokeless fire. They are neither angels nor devils, but in-between beings. Like angels, they share an ethereal nature; like humans, they are beings with a free will. Free to choose between good and evil.

Maybe the scorching wind from which djinns were forged is the stuff that fades in broad daylight without ever fully vanishing, Opacity as an integral part of creation. This makes them perfect symbols for everything that does not fit neatly into the existing order—the unspoken, that which is excluded and hidden. The leftover scraps of dreams and nightmares. Emotions that can’t be boxed into rigid concepts. So, how close can we get to these djinns? How close are they getting to us? And which are the protective signs we need to prevent them from taking possession of us?

Fatma Aydemir is a writer and journalist, and author of the novels Ellbogen (Hanser Verlag, 2017) and Dschinns (Hanser Verlag, 2022). She co-edits the magazine Delfi, and has published a collection of essays Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum (Ullstein, 2019) together with Hengameh Yaghoobifarah. She is a columnist with the British newspaper Guardian, author of the theatre play Doktormutter Faust, and curator of the contemporary discourses series Materien at the Schauspiel Essen.