Page:Folk-lore of the Holy Land.djvu/216
who had seen him follow her, would kill him horribly. Soon afterwards her brothers came tp, when he saw that they were jinnis. They told him he had become one of themselves, and would thenceforth be invisible to the eyes of men.
Nine years he belonged to the Jân, and took part in all their depredations, till one day, when they were lying hid among some ruins, he noticed how his companions kept away from one of the walls on which was a luxuriant growth of feyjan or rue, and himself, out of curiosity went towards it. At a shriek from his jinnìyeh of “Don’t go near those plants!” he ran and plucked whole handfuls from the wall. Then, looking round, he saw that the Jân had vanished, and he was free to return to his human family. When the fellahìn, his neighbours, disbelieved this story, he asked after a woman named “Ayesha,” and was told that her husband had repudiated her because she robbed him and gave his goods to her brothers; there was no other supposition that could account for the way things vanished from his house. Thus, one day, he had filled a large “khâbieh” or mud-built bin with barley, but when he opened it on the morrow it was empty, and, in spite of his wife’s protestations, he believed her to be the thief. The man who had been with the Jân explained that he had asked for the woman on purpose to prove her innocence and his own truthfulness. He had been present when the barley was carried off by the Jân, who knew that the Divine Name was not habitually called upon in that house. Other things that had been