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Beware of who you fall in love with. Beware of who visits your room at night while you sleep. It could be a fairy, a cursed angel, or perhaps Tanirt, the beautiful creature with a fondness for humans.
If you wake up, and I’m speaking to the boys here, and you find a stain of henna on your hand, know that she has chosen you. And that is not a good sign. Your life will turn into hell, and you will be enchanted by her beauty, taken away from your family and loved ones.
We know this from Hammou Ounamir, the young, handsome man whose beauty seduced the wrong person. Ounamir, the only child of his widowed mother, was an Amhdar (Tamazight), a student enrolled in a Koranic Madrasa.
Every night, he woke up with a stain of henna on his hand. During the day at school, he was mocked by his peers and even rebuked by the Taleb or Fqih, his teacher at the madrasa. Embarrassed by the henna tattoo on his hands, as it was a tradition only for girls, he decided to unravel the mystery. Advised by his Taleb, Ounamir pretended to sleep to finally catch who had been marking his hands with henna each night. If only he hadn’t done so. Ounamir discovered that it was Tanirt who had been doing it all along, for she was deeply in love with him.
In love with a fairy, condemned to death
But their love was forbidden. To marry this otherworldly creature, Ounamir had to follow strict rules: No human, apart from him, must ever lay eyes on her, not even his mother.
Enchanted by her love, Ounamir agreed to hide the heavenly creature in a sealed room, an «impregnable dwelling». But his mother found the key, unlocked the room, and saw Tanirt, who fled to the seventh sky to live among her kind.
Now that his secret was out, Ounamir was devastated. His lover had left, and he was determined to find her. But the journey was far from easy. Ounamir took his horse and slit its throat to feed «Iguider», the magical eagle who would carry him on a years-long journey to the seventh sky.
As they ascended, Ounamir fed the eagle pieces of his horse's flesh. When he ran out of meat, he fed the eagle with his own flesh to continue the journey.
Upon reaching the seventh heaven, Ounamir was reunited with Tanirt, but she set a new condition: To stay with her, he must never lift a stone from the slab. He would be sentenced to live away from his mother, with no contact from any human. Ounamir agreed.
But there’s always a «but» to every story. Condemned to loneliness, even in heaven, Ounamir felt nostalgic on Eid al-Adha, missing his mother. In his longing, he lifted the slab separating the fairy world from the human one to see her. What he saw shocked him: his mother, blind from crying over the loss of her only child, holding a ram, with no one to perform the sacrifice, as the only male in her family, Ounamir, was stranded in heaven.
Saddened by the sight, Ounamir leapt, but only two drops of his blood made it to earth—one restoring his mother’s sight, the other immolating the ram.
It’s frightening what love can drive a lover to do. First, he left his mother to live with his celestial bride, then he sacrificed his life to console his mother and dry her tears. Most importantly, be careful who you fall in love with, who visits your room at night, and if you ever see henna stains on your hands—know she’s there. Don’t look at her.
