Transformers

Upper Egypt is full of many exciting and terrifying folk legends, legends that have been around for a long time and have become ingrained in people’s minds, but they are often absent from the literary scene and from the novelistic treatment of them. In the governorates of Upper Egypt, especially if you live in a village or a small, remote center, closer to the countryside than to the city and urbanization, if you are blessed with twins, your biggest concern will not be providing sufficient quantities of milk, or clothes, or the expenses of doctors, treatment and care for them. This will not be all that occupies your mind, but the concern of mothers, grandmothers and elderly aunts will be focused on a more dangerous point, and more important to them. They will strive to provide protection for the two newborns who came together into the world in one womb! They will tell you that you must take them to one of the well-known shrines to perform a strange ritual, mixing religious rituals with popular practices of unknown origin, called (Tahsib). They will tell you that you must not wake them up at night no matter what happens. They will tell you to be careful when they grow up and not leave raw fish or strong-smelling food near their hands. Most importantly, they will tell you not to risk chasing a cat at night no matter what, especially if it is a cat with a severed tail. Do you know why?! Because if you do any of these things, you will risk causing great harm to one of your children. Or you will be threatened with losing one or both of them! This is because you will know that any stray cat that storms the roof of your house, or the roof of any neighboring house, at night, is probably nothing but the wandering soul of your newborn that has left its body! You laugh a bitter laugh and do not believe these words, these superstitions. Do not cling to this certainty of yours too much and leave room for contemplation and understanding the surprise. One of us, you or I, may be wrong in the end!