The exorcist who saves marriages

CAIRO // Throughout the world, every married couple faces a typical set of challenges. Boredom, disagreement, infidelity and lack of sexual interest can all imperil, if not destroy, an otherwise happy coupling.

But for Samaa Shaaban, 24, the problem was as obvious as it was atypical. She believes she is possessed by a demon, or jinn, that prevents her from consummating her two-month-old marriage with her husband, Ayman Salah, 31.

“I’m still a virgin and when my husband approaches me, I see and hear strange things, like snakes or people talking to me. In many instances, I lose consciousness,” said Ms Shaaban, speaking from the small apartment she shares with her husband in Shubra Al Khaima, one of Cairo’s poorest neighbourhoods. “Once, the people who appear and speak to me told me that it’s a magic spell and that only the woman who cast it can break it.”

But Ms Shaaban insists she knows of no one who would try to hurt her otherwise happy marriage, and after several trips to local sheikhs failed to quell the demons, she decided to bridge Egypt’s sometimes tense communal gulf. Two weeks ago, she visited the St Samaan Coptic Orthodox Church in the Cairo suburb of Manshiyet Naser, where Father Samaan Ibrahim performs mass exorcisms every Thursday evening in front of a crowd of hundreds of worshippers.

One one level, Ms Shaaban’s experience belies reports of a growing rift here between Egypt’s Coptic Christians and its Muslim majority, and reveals the tolerance inherent in Egypt’s unique religious sensibilities.

But it also shows a pervasive reality of sexual life here. For many of Egypt’s poorest, the corporeal questions of sex and marriage are as vivid and mysterious as the supernatural world of spirits and demons.

“The Egyptian people, Muslim and Christian, have, between quotes, a deep spiritual life. Every group in its way,” said Joseph Faltas, a Coptic theologian and researcher at Cairo’s Orthodox Patristic Centre.

“As a society here, not in Egypt but in the Middle East, sex and relations between man and woman are the most difficult thing to discuss. We don’t have sexual education in our schools, even in our churches. That is the darkest area in our lives, especially in the lower levels” of society.

To hear Ms Shaaban and her husband describe it, the decision to seek religious intervention outside their Muslim community was an easy one, borne out of obvious necessity and permitted by a universal God.

“We have a lot of Christian friends. We eat in each other’s houses,” said Mr Salah. “Entering a church is exactly like entering a mosque. It’s a house of God.”

While several churches in Cairo offer such exorcisms, Ms Shaaban chose to enter what is certainly the most dramatic. The St Samaan Church is located in a natural cave in the Moqattam Hill outside of Cairo. It sits atop a mostly Christian community of rubbish collectors who live in the shadow of the hill among the rubbish they collect.

At one such session, Father Samaan began with an admonishment to the hundreds of Christians and Muslims who had gathered to witness and benefit from his “healings”.

“I will heal all of you who are possessed by Satan,” he said into a microphone. “Those who are coming to chat, and not to pray, should leave.”

Then, turning his back to the assembly, Father Samaan blessed a few dozen bottles of spring water. “Whoever has a drop of water touch him or her can be certain that Jesus will heal them,” he said. With that, he proceeded into the audience and began to toss water at the crowd.

Source: The National
Continue reading The exorcist who saves marriages