Scary childhood tales & characters - Part 1

Dear readers,

Growing up I was always fascinated by some scary stories and characters my mother and my grand parents relayed to me on different occasions and which had an impact in my life in different ways. I thought of sharing them here, who knows, maybe someday down the road I'll come back to this place and show them to my kids and grand kids for them to laugh at how naive their granny used to be one day.. :p


Mother Of Palms & Fibers أم السعف والليف

Is the most famous scary character in almost everyone’s childhood life. Older people used to describe her as a tall ugly looking lady, covered with palm leaves “sa’af” and fibers “leef”. We have been told that her favorite hobby is chasing the kids who refuse to follow their parents’ instructions, and then punish the kid [the punishment details used to be a secret to add more mysterious feel and creepiness to the complete story]. I can tell you how scared I used to feel each time I heared her name on anyone’s tongue. And I bet Hollywood can never imitate the level of horror she used to bring in any movie they produce.



The Noon's Donkey حمارة القايلة

The noon’s donkey is hands down the second scariest childhood character! It shares the same level of fame and horror with um el sa3af wa el leef, however, she’s a noon person. She’s never been spotted in any other time of the day as per the experts in this field. So as a kid I used to feel relieved when the sun sets. No more 7marat el gaylah threat for the rest of the day!

And worthy to mention that 7marat el gayla used to scare the guts of everyone, not only kids. I remember women in my family telling stories about her…they used to go like:

Woman 1: “Um 3llan, have you heard about flan’s widow, flanah?!”

Woman 2: “Oh yah, poor thing, she had coffee with 7marat el gayla..waai!”

Woman 3: “What! You can’t be serious woman – leave about you يعني خلي عنج " :p

Woman 1: “I’m telling you…a strange woman knocked her door, so she asked her to come in and offered her a cup of coffee and some dates & fruits…then um flan’s son came to take his mom’s permission to play with the kids during the noon time…so she asked her son never to leave home, coz 7marat el gayla will come to you…you know, she has a body of a normal person and legs of a donkey [7mar]…and the strange woman showed them her leg: “you mean something like this?”…and um flan and her son fainted on the spot!”

Woman 2& 3: No way! No way! :
*slaps her face with two hands*

Naughty 7marat el gayla!!


Mother of Boys أم الصبيان

This is almost the only yennyah “Jinni” that is not interested in scaring the kids in this part of the world, yet hearing her name used to freak the hell of the kids.

Experts say that this yennyah kills baby boys inside their mom’s tummies during pregnancy, and so the people believed. So whenever a woman loses her baby, everyone would start saying that “bloody bloody um el 9byan is behind this, you gotta put immyaz [some sort of knives] under your pillow, woman! I’ll chop my two arms off my shoulders if I’m not right!”

To be continued...