Black Magic Woman
Originally posted on Oct 17, 2019 on medium.com/@shamandao
If you asked me about my life, I would give you maybe ten minutes of it.
“Which ten minutes?” some have asked me. I’d give you the last ten minutes of my life, because it’s pretty intense. Words which come out of my mouth to form into sentences, which become paragraphs carry a heaviness that have made some tremble and ask me,“How do you live like that?”
“Magic,” I would respond, an answer that has become my go to for these last years couple years. Magic, because what I do and how I do is something that one cannot see with the physical eyes, but you can feel it.
I walked on the bus and gravitated towards the right and sat in the second row, aisle seat. As I sat there, I felt pulled to the seat behind me, row three. I grabbed my teal Adidas backpack and put my RayBan gold trim aviators on and closed my eyes, this one meal a day transition has been a little tough on me.
It would be a one hour bus ride from Pristina to Batllava Lake in Kosovo. Where I would spend the day and evening enjoying the fresh air, a yummy vegan lunch overlooking Batllava lake, and quiet-tude. I have been going into silent mode quite often these last couple weeks where my days would be filled with silence. I would avoid people not because I don’t like talking, au contraire mon frère.
Some people have told me that I can’t stop talking. Like my mother, who was groggy from surgery a couple months back. I flew back to the states the day before and from the moment I walked in and sat down next to her bed in the hospital, I updated my family on my life in Eastern Europe. As my mom was going in and out of her anesthesia, she yelled to everyone in the room, “This girl speaks too much!” in Vietnamese and we all laughed. My mom went back to sleep.
I laughed, because it’s true, but when I go into silent mode, I turn off my phone and I go inward.
Into silence, into self, into truth.
This was the plan for the day, to go inward. Twenty minutes before I was to get off the bus, the bus pulled over to pick up two women who stood on the side of the road in the dirt. One younger woman in her late twenties held the elbow of an older woman, in her seventies who wore a black hijab over her head. They walked onto the bus from the middle door and made their way up the aisle. I could sense them behind me. I turned my head slightly to the right and before the older woman walked into the row behind me, she stopped and stared at me. Her eyes on me, my eyes to the front but my soul on her.
She leaned her head towards my seat to take a better look at my face and proceeded to tell the younger woman to go in first. The older woman sat behind me, aisle seat.
As the bus pulled back onto the road, I felt a pull inside of my body, on the left side of my rib cage. I felt this pull before while in Italy. This older woman in her seventies who sat behind me was syphoning my energy and instead of moving, I sat there. I sat there as she took what she purposely wanted and I let her.
I looked straight ahead as this kept happening, as she began stitching up my left arm in the invisible realm. A woman who stitches dolls together, to perform black magic on. I kept breathing and I waited until she was done.
As we both sat there on the bus, I closed my eyes and met her in the invisible world not many people can go to. I took the needle she had in her hand and pierced her finger, a trickle of blood came out. She stared at me. I then took the thread that she used on me to wrap around her, to wrap and wrap until she was her own spool of thread.
I opened my eyes as the bus slowed down for my stop, which was also their stop. As I got off the bus, I peeked at this woman’s eyes underneath my baseball cap. She stared straight at me and wouldn’t take her eyes off of me. The younger woman had to push her elbow to get her to move. I looked down at my phone, then looked up again at her. I know what you do and you shouldn’t do it, it’s not nice, my eyes told her.
We both turned and walked our separate ways.
The locals here in Kosovo and also the surrounding Balkan countries believe in black magic, for there are women and men who practice it, especially in villages. There are even entire villages and countries dedicated to black magic. It’s sticky, to go up against a person or persons who practice black magic. They’re relentless, they’re unforgiving and vindictive.
White and black magic exists all over the world.
I could have gotten up and walked over to another row, I could have stayed put on the second row but I made a conscious choice not to. I am not a martyr, that is true, but I am someone who stands up for the little guys, for the ones who do not know and in the world of white and black magic, I work for white. And I will be damned if I come across a woman who syphons energy from unsuspecting others and not do anything.
“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, “I used everything you gave me.”
-Erma Bombeck
Even as I typed this, I felt a tug in my right hand, where my karate chop point is. I watched as the meat of my karate chop point pulled inwards, as if someone was pulling on a needle and thread, tightening up their stitch.
If you asked me about my life, I would give you maybe ten minutes of it.
Because in the last ten minutes, a black magic woman just syphoned my energy, I stood up to her and she has now placed a spell on me. Please excuse me as I go to take off my tennis shoes, place my bare feet in the lake to cleanse my soul. So that I can close my eyes and to detach the sewing thread that is stitched inside of my esoteric body. I am here to spend my day enjoying the beauty of Mother Nature, nothing more, nothing less.
Blessed be.