Hidden Companions
Paranormals from the Old City of Jerusalem
by Ahmad Nabil
translated by Fatema Alhashemi
Jinns and ghouls, guardians and tricksters, wizards and possessors, Ahmad Nabil’s Hidden Companions is a testimonial and visual archive of Palestinian folklore.
In the Old City of Jerusalem, a man wakes every day to find coins under his pillow, a young lonely girl strikes up a friendship with a spectral voice, a veiled woman changes form to delude ordinary senses, a petite girl in all black breaches a group of young girls returning from a wedding, a goat and her two kids draw an unsuspecting young man into a hidden room, a group of curious boys conjure the spirit of Marx. Here, the Unseen beings are a natural element of everyday life.
With rich, vivid descriptions and stunning illustrations, Ahmad Nabil weaves a literary account of Palestinian folklore and paranormal stories collected from the Old City of Jerusalem. The tales, many of them first-person encounters with the supernatural, were collected by Nabil from more than 60 interviewees under the auspices of the Fiction Council, an organisation dedicated to preserving Palestinian heritage amid ongoing displacement. Held, shared in whisper networks, relayed over conversations, and passed down as inheritance, these stories come to symbolise a part of Palestine’s intangible heritage. Thrilling and unsettling in equal parts, Hidden Companions traces a captivating world largely unseen in popular narrative.
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Introduction
BOOK ONE: THE RESIDENT JINN (UMMĀR)
The Righteous (Ṣullāḥ)
The Guardians (Raṣad)
The ‘Amūra & the Ghūls of the Earth
The Obscure
BOOK TWO: SORCERY & RITUALS
Love Spells
Counterspell
Possession
Wizardry & Imposters
BOOK THREE: SAINTS & AWLIYĀ’
Miraculous Acts (Karāmat)
The Glad Tidings
Glimpses of the Future
Epilogue
Reference Texts
Glossary
Translator’s Note
Acknowledgements
About
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Illustrated by Ahmad Nabil
Paperback Edition
136 pages. Red card cover, illustrated endpapers, printed on quality paper with full-colour illustrations throughout.
ISBN: 9798989490226
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Press, reviews, endorsements
“This striking, luminously illustrated compendium from artist Nabil collects Palestinian folklore from Jerusalem’s Old City… Nabil’s primary focus is jinn stories, and these tales are fascinating in their specificity to the place itself… Other tales involve far more frightening paranormal figures (shaytans, aka satans) as well as various local sorcerers and saints… a lovely celebration of Palestinian culture.”
Publisher’s Weekly - read the full review here
Interview with Ahmad Nabil and a profile on his work with the Fiction council - read it here
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About the Author
Ahmad Nabil is a Palestinian, Jerusalem-based visual artist, researcher, and educator whose practice is deeply focused on documenting encounters with the unseen dimensions of everyday life, as part of Palestinian intangible heritage. He is the founder of the Fiction Council in Jerusalem, a platform dedicated to Palestinian imagination through the research of Arab and Islamic mythology, superstitions, and paranormal phenomena, and their reactivation through interdisciplinary creative practices.
About the Translator
Fatema Alhashemi is a Bahraini writer, artist, and translator based in New York City. She has translated several poetry collections, including Remember I Was a Good Man by Ahmed Saleh and Ash and Air by Nadine Murtaja. She is currently writing an Arabic-language short story collection that reimagines global mythology through contemporary characters set in imagined Arab cities.
