I knew he was the devil the moment he walked through my door. The way he sauntered in, even the way he sat down. No mere human could exude such condescension doing so little.
‘You know why I’m here.’
I did. As deep as I’d buried it, it all unfolded to the fore now at once. Here and there over the years, an anxious lingering might’ve persisted in the rare dream. A scream yes, but no more. Never had a nightmare bubbled forth like this frozen moment.
The devil, one ankle resting atop the other leg’s knee, tugged up at his trouser. His socks of course were red. He looked around the consultation room with pretend amazement, that smile of his never approaching those falsely big eyes. ‘You’ve done well for yourself, doctor.’
‘Please. I’m a good man. I help the sick.’ How to plead with the devil? There was no use, I know. This foul creature that wore a person’s shape like a coat knew me better than any real human on God’s earth. Knew all my idle thoughts, what my hands did in darkness. But I was a good man, truly.
‘A lifetime of good could never wash out a stain so black as yours.’ So it was that then. Of course it was. The gall of me to think I could ever truly forget.
I believed – in all the proper things, God, heaven, hell – and I lived my life accordingly. But truth be told, I believed in them more as stories and metaphor. The literal devil sat in my room dispelled any notions of their fantasy now. Yes, now I certainly believed every word concretely, knew it to be as true as any diagram in my medical books. ‘I was just a child. No older than six. I couldn’t know what I meant.’
‘And yet you meant it all the same. With the best intentions, you cant put Humpty together again. That baby is dead because of you.’
Could words uttered in the human heart actually kill? Could laser eyes burn death into whatever they held? Yes: At long last I knew the truths I’d wrestled against and denied for so long. Yes.
God was real and the devil was real. My scientific rigour could not refute them, nor the old superstitions back home. Nazr, the Evil Eye was real and I had cursed a baby to death to exact vengeance for my dead bird. Decades of buried guilt, of remorse could never even the scales. His mother’s wailing scream in the dirt, that white noise of my dreams; there was no making amends for that.
Uselessly I wondered who might’ve cast nazr on me back then, a rich western child, to so ensnare me in the devil’s gaze.
It wouldnt save me now but I couldnt help but recite a piece of scripture to the devil. Verse 5:32 from al-Maa-idah, most closest my heart: ‘Whoever kills a soul except for manslaughter or corruption, it’s as if he killed all of mankind; and whoever saves a soul, it’s as if he had saved the entirety of mankind.’
Then I wept for my forfeit soul.
abdulj. 