Hello. I have many stories to share. This is only one of them.

I'm a Middle Eastern woman residing in one of the Arab Gulf States. Though considered Muslim, my family has never observed religious commandments. The only time I saw my father pray was once in the month of Ramadan, about 20 years ago, when I was six years old. Me and my younger brother were so fascinated by this strange ritual we were seeing our father perform that our absorbed staring made my father burst into laughter and order us out of the room so he could pray in peace.

Though we were not religious, I remember my mother introducing us to some topics related to religion. One was the stories of the different prophets. I remember liking the prophet Yusuf because I was fascinated by the idea of someone so beautiful you'd accidentally cut your hands as you peeled fruit in your awe of their beauty (also because my kid mind concluded that the palm lines on our hands were a result of those spellbound women cutting up the palms of their hands. I don't know why I thought that).

My mother also taught us about the different creatures god created. The angels- from light, humans—from dirt, and Iblis, arch nemesis of humanity—from fire.

She never mentioned anything about the Jinn.

I don't remember who warned me first. Perhaps no one did. When I started first grade, all of us students somehow knew not to use the washroom designated for us first graders.

The school I went to from first to fourth grade was a small one. We had one social worker for all of school population. I can't remember for sure, but I think there were only three classes for each level. The first grade level was situated 'outside', as in, when you went outside the classroom the sky was your ceiling. The second, third and fourth grades on the other hand were situated inside the school building. The shared washroom of the first grade level was in a separate small building behind the small building that contained our classrooms.

Early on in the school year, I remember sitting in a circle at recess, with a bunch of my classmates, as one girl told us the score.

"The jinn, you can't see them, but they live in bathrooms. In cupboards, too, but mainly in bathrooms. Don't stay long in any bathroom when you use it, don't sing in it, and don't make loud noises or stare at yourself in the mirror for too long. Be careful not to slip and fall, if you do you might accidentally fall on a jinn they will be mad. Do your business and leave—quickly. Don't bring toys or stuffed animals into the bathroom. Make sure not to let the door to the bathroom open. If you follow these rules you will be fine. We have a lot of jinn in our house, that's how I know these things"

She went on: "If you leave them alone and don't offend them, then they will leave you alone and won't hurt you. But the washroom here—It's no good. The jinn there are already angry with us. Never go to our washroom. Hold it in till you get home, that's safer for you".

For the life of me I can't remember the name of that girl. I ended up visiting her once—the first of two times my mother allowed me to visit a friend in the course of my childhood (but that's a story for another day), and yet her name escapes me. All I remember is me staring into her face as she spoke, and being transfixed by the weight of her words and the color of her eyes. She was the only girl in our class with light eyes—they were a mesmerizing mixture of hazel and green.

None of us talked about the angry jinn in the first graders' washroom for the most part, but when we did it was in whispers. Don't talk about it out loud, and don't talk about it for long, if you do they will come for you, maybe even at your own home, in your own bed, in the middle of the night.

After one too many incidents of students wetting themselves or sneaking into the bathrooms designated for the older kids, our class teacher, in the presence of the school principle and the social worker, tried to reassure us—first with words. The Jinn, like Iblis, are created from fire, she told us. They, just like humans, have the capacity to choose to do good or evil. They lived in an invisible world of their own. They only appear to prophets and holy men, though. So no, they don't live in the school washroom.

Instinctively, we knew better. The adults were lying to us. When she saw that her empty words meant nothing to us, our class teacher decided to go with the punishment route. Whoever was heard talking about the jinn in the washroom, or wet themselves because they were afraid of the jinn in the washroom, or snuck into the older kids' washroom was summoned to the front of the class, scolded in front of everyone for "telling stories" or "stupidly believing lies/ breaking the rules" and then hit ten times on each palm of their hands with the dreaded wooden ruler (the plastic ruler was usually used when we got punished, the wooden ruler was for especially bad misbehavior, and the metal ruler was supposedly used to dole out the most sever punishments, though I'm not sure our teacher ever used it).

The fear of punishment meant that we talked even less about the threat we knew to exist, and devised ways not to have to use the washroom at school. For my part, I made sure to drink very little water during school hours. Some classmates made a pact with each other. If you just had to go to the washroom, wait till recess. Take two friends with you to the washroom, so that while you got inside the stall to do your business, they were outside reassuring you that you were not left alone with the jinn, and they were ready to sprint and call for help if need be.

One fateful day I had no money to buy the usual chocolate or cheese croissant from the canteen at recess, and so I decided to drink the big strawberry juice box a friend offered me so I wouldn't go hungry for the rest of the school day. Our system at school at the time consisted of six periods. These started from 8 am and ended at 2 pm. After the third period, at about 11:30 am, we had recess for half an hour—or so I remember. That day, I felt the discomfort of a full bladder by the fifth period. I tried to project a calm exterior, but inside I was starting to panic a little bit. I told myself that I could make it till I reached home.

When the bell rang and the last period began, our grades' much hated P.E. teacher entered the class and informed our class teacher that our class was to report to the nurse's office for our scheduled vaccination (I can't remember what we were to be vaccinated for to be honest). At the sound of that I became really distressed, and my bladder felt like it would release its content at any moment, though I still tried to hide it to the best of my ability. We were organized into lines and marched to the nurse's office, where we found the first graders from the other two classes there as well. There we stood in queue to get our injections. I stood last and felt like I could not handle one more second. I started shivering despite all my attempts at self control. The P.E. teacher looked at me with derision and mockingly asked me if I was scared of the injection. I shook my head 'no' and she laughed. She then asked me why I was shaking if I wasn't scared. That caught the attention of our class teacher, who noticed me shivering, and so did the other girls.

By then I was about to pee myself. I was so scared of that happening because then I knew I was going to get punished by my teacher in front of everyone (and in those days the physical pain of corporal punishment terrified me) and that I would also be mocked mercilessly by my P.E. teacher (who would use it to humiliate me every P.E. period, which she did to other girls). That's when I said that I needed to use the bathroom.

Frowning, my class teacher told me to go quickly and then come back straight for my shot. I wanted to ask her to let someone come with me to the washroom and then thought better of it. I went out of the nurse's office feeling strange. I felt numb but was panicking at the same time. I thought of going to the older kids' bathroom but was so scared I was going to get caught. The accursed washroom was a five minute walk away from the nurse's office. Since all the first graders, accompanied with their teachers, where getting their vaccinations, and our classrooms were far from the other levels' classrooms, no students or teachers would be around the washroom when I got there.

I would be all lone there, just me and the jinn.

As I contemplated these thoughts my legs did not stop moving. It was as if I was in one of those dreams where dread fills your heart and you know you are walking to your doom but you can't do anything to stop yourself—except this was reality.

I reached my classroom and then walked around the building. When the washroom's building came to sight I stopped. It wasn't run down, of course, but it was an old building with faded and peeling white paint. I could feel my heart start to sink and my brain screamed at me to turn back and leave. But I felt like there was no way out for me. The adults were giving me no choice, and I was just a scared child. I switched myself to auto-pilot, and my legs just moved.

I entered the washroom's building and shut the door gently behind me. It was a swinging door and so I could not leave it open.

The washroom had a strange smell. Not particularly foul, but not nice either. Everything was faded shades of lime green. There were six stalls and they were all open. Three of them had Arabic style toilets and then the other three were western style toilets. I instinctively went for western style toilets, because that's what we had at home and because I made a split second decision that the Arabic style toilets (which you had to squat over) would leave me exposed much more than the western style toilet. I entered the stall, closed the door, sat on the toilet and started to pee.

My bladder was very full and it was taking me some time to empty it and as seconds went by I was losing the numbness and the fear was starting to foreground itself more and more in my brain. When I was finally done I washed up and dried myself, but I hesitated to flush the toilet. Would the noise that that caused make the jinn angry? I quickly decided to close the lid of the toilet as a compromise and then got out of the stall and closed its door behind me. I went to the basin to wash my hands quickly and get out of there, intent on making as little noise as possible. As soon as I turned on the water though, my eye caught the mirror in front of the basin and I noticed something.

All the doors of the stalls were closed.

I froze for a moment. All the stall doors were open when I got in, I knew they were. There were no footsteps of anything other than me during all the time I was in the washroom. As the horror of that realization dawned at me I heard a creak. I watched in utter horror as the door to the stall that I used started slowly opening. As the door was opening I glimpsed the lid of the toilet, the one I had closed, upright and open, and then—

I bolted out of there. Never ran so fast in my life.

I don't remember much of what happened that day. I only remember that I was sick for a week. I didn't want to stay home from school though, because that meant I would have to stay home alone till noon, since both my parents worked and my other siblings would be at school. I remember being so scared to tell anyone at school, for fear they would tell the teacher and I would get punished. I ended up only telling my light-eyed friend. She knew the truth and so my secret was safe with her.

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