My Mother’s Amulet War | True Horror Story
True Horror Story: The birth of İbrahim, the family’s only surviving child, his mother’s struggles after 24 pregnancies, and a true survival struggle filled with black magic and amulets are told.
Hello, my name is İbrahim. As the only child of the family, I was born in 1985 in the Meydan Neighborhood of Seyhan district in Adana. I was born, but with what difficulty, what efforts… I can say I am my mother’s longest-surviving child born after her previous ones. After exactly 24 pregnancies, I was the last one to cling to life. Yes, you heard right, exactly 24 pregnancies! My family left no city unvisited, no hospital untried, and no door unknocked in their effort to keep me, or rather all their children, alive.
Among these 24 pregnancies, my siblings who were born besides me passed away within 1, 3, or 8 months after birth. None of them saw their first birthday. This situation not only caused unrest within the family but also severely affected my mother’s psychology. She started considering divorce, isolating herself from her peers and neighbors, unable to face people.
Until she met a certain gentleman who came from Elbistan or Erzincan to Adana to visit an acquaintance… By then, there was no one left in the neighborhood or extended family who didn’t know about my mother’s situation and didn’t pray for her. My mother used to work at Sümerbank in Adana before its privatization. An acquaintance from her workplace wanted to arrange a meeting with the mentioned gentleman. Hoping for a cure, they rushed to where the gentleman was staying.
The Hodjaefendi (respected religious scholar), seeing my mother’s desperation and innocence, said, “I want to help you, but come visit me on a bright sunny day,” and sent my parents off with a piece of Turkish delight and rosewater. It was March, and that year, snow fell in the city center of Adana for the first time. My mother headed home, unhappy and sad, and that night she prayed to God, begging for the weather to clear up and the sun to shine as soon as possible. Because the Hodjaefendi had come from another province and might not stay long. Hoping he could provide a remedy for her troubles quickly, she prayed to God for hours and then went to sleep.
She woke up early in the morning to get ready for work. The sun hadn’t risen yet; it was dark. During her first break at work, when she went outside, she saw that it was as if spring had arrived, the sun shining brightly. She became very happy, filled with excitement. Without waiting for the end of her shift, she made an excuse with her friend and they rushed to the Hodjaefendi. The Hodjaefendi took my mother into a room, had her kneel, and started reciting prayers. Then, he took some papers out of his jacket pocket, wrote something in Arabic on them, and folded them. Afterwards, he painted my mother’s right thumbnail with a green pen.
He told my mother that there was a heavy curse (büyü) on her, which caused her children to die either before birth or shortly after. When my mother asked, “Who would do such an evil thing, and why?” he replied, “It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to say who had it done, my daughter, but I will find a remedy.” He started reciting prayers again from behind my mother’s nape and asked her to hold her thumb pointing towards him. After the Hodjaefendi finished reciting, my mother saw me in the painted nail; meaning she had conceived, given birth, and was holding me in her arms, both of us smiling. At that moment, she froze from both astonishment and fear.
Seeing my mother’s state, the Hodjaefendi said, “Don’t be afraid, with Allah’s permission, you will conceive again very soon, and God willing, your child will be born. You will raise him healthily, God willing,” then folded the papers he had written on and gave them to my mother. He continued speaking: “Attach one to your child when you give birth, and wear the other one yourself,” then turned around and went to a corner of the room. He brought a canister full of water and said, “I recited prayers over this water before you came, my daughter. When you realize you are pregnant, you will shower with this water. After the birth, you will give the child his first bath with this water,” and saw them off.
My mother headed home with the greatest happiness she had ever felt, happier than ever before. She wrapped the water canister as if it were a pot full of gold and hid it carefully. She didn’t mention this situation to anyone, not even her mother or my father. Whatever she was thinking, perhaps she was afraid of the evil eye or any negativity.
As the Hodjaefendi had said, within about three months, my mother conceived me. She had an easier pregnancy compared to her previous ones and I was born healthy. As the hodja instructed, my mother gave me my first bath with the blessed water and placed the amulet he wrote on my clothes. My late paternal grandmother, seeing what my mother did, said, “This girl has lost her mind with hodjas. Putting things on the child whose writing and origin are unknown,” and threw the amulet away.
Not long after, the door knocked late one night. My father wasn’t home that night. When my mother opened the door, she encountered three frightening-looking individuals. She asked them, “If you came for my husband, he’s not home right now. Who are you?” One of them replied, “Yes, hurry up, prepare the child, we’ve come to take him,” and tried to force his way in. My mother slammed the door in panic, took me from my bed, held me tight, and screamed. Our downstairs neighbors heard my mother’s cries and came up, but when they arrived, there was no trace of the three entities. My mother couldn’t speak from the shock of the event, her eyes wild, running back and forth inside the house. May he rest in peace, our neighbor Mustafa uncle brought her back to her senses with two slaps and she told them what happened. My mother says, “If I hadn’t received those slaps and come to my senses, I might have lost my mind.”
Fear and mystery gripped everyone. They searched the neighborhood, the building, left and right, but in vain, there was no one. Since my mother was on maternity leave, she took the opportunity to do everything she could to reach the Hodjaefendi, but to no avail, she couldn’t find him anywhere. Later, she found another person in the Karaisalı area of Adana who dealt with such matters for money and explained the situation. The man promised to rid her of the problem in exchange for 5 Adana twist gold bracelets (Adana burma bilezik) and sent my mother away. My mother returned with the bracelets left from her wedding and some borrowed from friends.
This man recited prayers over my mother, placed a bowl full of water in front of her, and sat opposite her. Although there were only two of them in the room, the man started talking to a third person. My mother was naturally scared by this, even beginning to think the man was crazy. When he finished talking, the man took the bowl in front of my mother, looked into it, and started speaking to her: “There is a gift bundle (bohça) that came for the wedding. Inside this bundle, tucked into a baby bootie, is an amulet written on donkey skin. Find this amulet and make sure it burns completely in a blazing fire, destroy it,” he said.
My mother went home terrified. With two close friends, she opened the storage chest and searched through the gift bundles for the mentioned bootie. Just as the man had described, they found the amulet as a dark brown, almost black piece. They lit charcoal in our courtyard and burned the amulet while reciting Bismillah (In the name of God) to destroy it. Such black smoke reportedly came out of the small amulet that it was hard not to notice; they heard neighbors coming to their windows asking each other, “Is something burning?”
Since that day, thank God, we haven’t experienced anything unusual. Looking back, my mother asked my paternal grandmother and family elders about the contents of the gift bundles, without mentioning the amulet specifically. She wondered, “Who would want to do such evil, what reason could they have?” My paternal grandmother said that before the bundle was arranged, my father’s ex-fiancée’s mother had brought the bootie. My mother still curses that woman to this day.
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