Possessed

Miles of palm-trees and thorny shrubs, it's already very hot and there is nothing around but this windy and bumpy narrow street. Eventually the unmistakable features of the Mosque stand out in the distance. A little village has risen around a misty temple. A few little shops sell sacred images and foodstuffs. 'I am going to enter into one of those mystic place which is plunged into a symbolic world.' There is a big white arch and some portico houses. Lots of tiny rooms, mats next to the columns with people lying on them. They have their feet in chains. Towards the right there is a little Mosque with two rooms, in one of them children read the Koran. In the other one there are two long silk sheets embroidered with Arab inscriptions and behind those a young woman is in mourning and other are sat down around. I leave the Mosque and in front of its entrance a man is crying, I take some picture and he starts to throws small stones and sand at me. Another man is having his haircut. Children play on the sand. Meanwhile pigeons stare at me from the roofs on the houses. A young woman rolls on the floor screaming in an unknown language in a state of dreadful delirium. While photographing her, I see through my lens a couple dragging their daughter to a big water well. She is chained up and the couple begins to wash her violently. Her dark sari is drenched and the water runs down her hair. I don't really know what is going on. A woman is rocking against a column with a dreamy look on her face. She seems to be attached to the column like a plant. A thin wall of wind separates her from the others. She stares at me in silence then begin repeating a monotonous refrain shaking her head slowly. It sounds like she is singing a song, which takes her into an unknown dimension. "This is a powerful place, where people are cured by the grace of God." an old man said after watching me "...the big salty water well is holy water thrown in big buckets on the bodies possessed by the evil spirits", and then looking at the white dome of the Mosque he said " ..Faith is the only remedy, the only one. The silk sheets you saw into the second room are covering the body of a young couple just married. Four hundred years ago a couple stopped here to pray during sunset. There was no village. There was nothing, but the time had come to turn towards the Mecca and pray. They kneeled towards the East together for the first time when suddenly a cobra bit the man. His wife witnessed the scene in astonishment and felt like a tree that would never flourish or bear fruit. So the woman begged God to let her to die first and she stared at the hypnotising look of the cobra until it stood up to attack her. Later on someone found the young couple embraced with love still alive in their eyes and the snake lying down between them. That strange and sudden death in the magical moment, when is day becomes night, was a divine blessing. God invited them to his heaven for an eternal love. A blessing that reoccurred through the centuries and through the miracles that consecrated the mysterious energy of this place". [....] Few days later I find a similar place, this time with a Church in the middle. [.....] All Copyright © Kash Gabriele Torsello