Jerusalem the Spectral and Fantastical: In Conversation with Ahmad Nabil

“Is Jerusalem cursed?”

This was the question I asked the man who investigated paranormal sightings in the city. He gathered tens of accounts from people who, speaking on condition of confidentiality, vouched that they have “seen” spectral action—ghosts, deceased people, imaginary friends, and even monsters in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem visual artist Ahmad Nabil has always been fascinated with the supernatural world. Ever since he was a child, he has had a vivid imagination, and he gravitated toward the enigmatic corners of the Old City of Jerusalem, where he found some intriguing accounts: People have told him their houses were haunted; random people have described the ghouls they saw roaming the streets of Jerusalem in detail. Throughout his curious work, he would come to realize that magic exists in Jerusalem, but this remains highly private and also frightening for many people, thus, it is a subject that people don’t talk about easily. For his sold-out book of illustrations and short scripts, Uns al-khafi (Hidden Companions), published in 2022, he interviewed 60 people and spent more than 35 hours gathering little-known legends of paranormal encounters with the unseen world in the city.

Meeting with Jerusalem Story in Beit Safafa, Ahmad says that he previously used to introduce himself as a visual artist interested in the worlds of legends and paranormal phenomena—particularly within the Arab and Islamic world—and their connections with the community. Recently, however, he’s opted for a more elaborate description: “I’d define myself as an intermediary between our [Palestinian] society and the [fictional] legacy around us. I embody this role in as many creative means as possible.”1

Born on June 7, 1988, Ahmad is the youngest of five children; he has one brother and three sisters. Originally from Beit Safafa, a neighborhood that straddles both East and West Jerusalem, he was born in Kuwait; his family returned to Jerusalem when he was about two years old. He graduated from high school in Beit Safafa and then went to Jordan to study design and applied arts.

Since 2011, he has dedicated most of his time to art training in Jerusalem.

In 2015, he launched an atypical (and highly intriguing) project: The Fiction Council.

After the publication of Uns al-khafi, Ahmad proceeded with his vision to create The Fiction Council, a space for everything and anything related to imagination: legends, fables, paranormalism (unusual events or experiences that can’t be explained scientifically), folkloric tales, and collective stories gathered throughout the centuries.

It is tricky to describe what The Fiction Council is, Ahmad admits. In fact, it might even be counterproductive to attempt to explain the whirlwind of creative and imaginative activities that resonate from the supernatural world.

The Fiction Council started with the intention to identify a group of children from Jerusalem with phenomenal imagination and offer them artistic and other platforms to use their creative powers. Soon after, The Fiction Council began to take on legends and paranormal heritage as experienced by the Palestinian population.

As Ahmad describes it, The Fiction Council is “a revival of the Arab legends, a reclaiming of the folktales and stories.” Through illustrating, writing, drawing, and storytelling, a core objective of the project is to introduce people to the Arab (including Palestinian) heritage as it had naturally been seen, heard, and experienced in another time. This is essential, as these elements are part of documenting the lived history of the place and its people.

The council meets in a tiny studio in Beit Safafa where Ahmad, an exceptional painter, started to teach students techniques in writing and drawing. He also gave artistic workshops at schools, and, in due time, identified a few students who had great potential. Slowly, he found himself “adopting” 12 children and letting them use the studio in Beit Safafa. “They somewhat reminded me of myself when I was a kid,” he smiles. He shares how one of his students, a seven-year-old boy, had his own theories of spacetime, gravity, and the black hole. “Some kids have a special X factor. Their imagination is horrific.”

Today, almost 10 years later, not all the students have become artists in the traditional sense; some of them established careers in engineering, education, and medicine. Their involvement at The Fiction Council, however, proved invaluable for them; it made them more open, accepting, and tolerant. “Imagine the impact this would have if more and more people were to find mediums by which to interact in the world,” Ahmad reflects.

“People with nontypical outlooks have a deep urge to be heard and believed,” he explains, and The Fiction Council was like a release for these students. Many of them came from places like Sur Bahir and Jabal Mukabbir, which are neighborhoods where artistic potential has little opportunity to thrive. But such people should not be ignored, he believes; they can be “ambassadors” for the council and share inspiration with new people. The Fiction Council started to progress along these lines.

After 2015, workshops started to include atypical interactive tours of legends and folktales: They’d have mystical expeditions (such as in the form of walks, hikes, and readings) with explorers looking for the ghosts of ‘Amura (a phantom that haunted the roads of Jerusalem for years) or Abu al-Rummaneh (a local legend with mythic stories that date back 2,000 years).

The Fiction Council also creates the space for artistic projects, some of which involve mirrors, masks, and psychosocial therapy.

Jerusalem Story was able to attend an interactive session by The Fiction Council in Haifa’s Fattoush Bar on May 25, 2024, where Ahmad shared fantastical legends from Arab (including Palestinian) folklore.

Each of The Fiction Council’s sessions has its own theme. Because this one (advertised mostly through social media) happened to take place during the ongoing war in Gaza, Ahmad thought that learning authentic historic fables and fairy tales could pique the sense of imagination toward instilling hope. Contemplating the ways in which heroes and heroines weathered storms and faced adversities (and which of them got chronicled or not) could encourage emerging from the conventional ways of looking at the world and potentially finding new ways of knowing, learning, being, and perhaps even resisting.

Ahmad started the session in a friendly and welcoming manner. He invited the audience of about 20 people to think of the event, not as an academic lecture, but rather as a cozy visit in a friend’s kitchen or an auntie’s living room. He asked the audience to help themselves to tea and biscuits, which were set out at the table. In a warm environment, he explained, people feel freer to exchange strange fantastical stories of legends.

Legends, which have been shared for centuries and maintained from generation to generation, are significant for the living memory of the place and its people, Ahmad believes. He asserts that preserving legends is “in fact essential for the collective survival of the inhabitants of cities. The legend is important in maintaining and protecting the place.”

By “place” he has Jerusalem in mind, which “is magnificent for its legendary history.” This corner of the world has survived a succession of conquests. Most (if not all) of the original tales from the Canaanite days (spanning the years 2000–1001 BC) died out. He thus makes it his mission to shed light on the rich accounts and wise anecdotes (most of which were erased) that have once had resonance in Jerusalem. These include examples of Adonis/Tammuz, the demi-god associated with the goddess of love. (In Greek mythology, this was Aphrodite, and for Canaanites/Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamian and Levantine deities, this was Ishtar.) Ahmad finds such stories connected to comparative mythology quite exhilarating: “The different connections and influences are fascinating to trace.”

Ahmad’s imagination seems to be full of animated images of the Arab world from past and present, such as the frequent depiction of a monster with nine or seven heads. Such a figure, Ahmad explains, is portrayed in Greek and Roman mythology (the Hydra), but it also appears in the Amazigh indigenous population of the Maghreb region of North Africa and even further back to the ancient city of Babylon in Iraq.

Looking into how legends change (or reappear in various geographies) is not disconnected from the understanding of the impact of colonizers, Ahmad explains. He calls attention to the appropriation of fables, tales, and legends by Western books and Hollywood films. Examples include the children’s stories of Hans Christian Anderson; for example, his story “The Princess and the Pea” is recognized in cultures around the world, but the much older and legendary ancient Arab tales, such as that of Zarqa’ al-Yamama (the blue-eyed woman who was known for her exceptional intuition and sharp eyesight), are not known. Ahmad makes it a point to introduce such native powerful stories, which are plentiful and, he believes, crucial for the collective memory: There is a sense of pride that resonates out of knowing that the local culture is not at all lacking in powerful legends and heroes.

“Everybody loves such stories,” he shares, explaining that the supernatural world, paranormal activities, and fantastical legends pique the interests of people from all different religions, ages, backgrounds, and upbringings. Some might get scared of the khawareq (paranormal activities), he admits, but all are interested.

All events and activities of The Fiction Council have individualized banners, Ahmad says. The banners represent a ritual; a ceremonial practice that shows a sense of discipline and of belonging to an artistic hub, namely, the council. Those who are actively involved with the council for three years and up receive a small banner of “Sadan El” as a sign of belonging.

The banners include the logo Sadan El, a label that means “Godly protection”: It is inspired from the Arabic “Sadan/Saden,” meaning the gatekeeper of the holy place, and “El,” a Semitic term meaning “of God”; it refers to speaking the names of the angels.

The illustration of The Fiction Council’s “Sadan El” symbolizes the Arab imagination: The creature has the thorns of a gazelle (earthly feature), a tail (water and swimming ability), the face of a horse (representative of untamed running ability), and wings (connecting to the skies). The bust of the animal is in human form, with a brush and book and hand, representing writing, drawing, and illustrating; the human is the intermediary. By and large, the drawing represents creativity between earth, sky, and water. “Sadan El” has a mythical feel to it: Between animal and human, the sense of imagination, freedom, and creativity soars, swims, and flies.

“Stories are the best way to transmit information, and it is crucial for us to exchange them,” Ahmad observes. Sharing stories (even bizarre ones), tales, and anecdotes—such as the account of how the Palestinian thawb (embroidered dress) designs from the Nablus-area village of Beit Dajan might represent symbols of omens and fortunes—is part of maintaining the local culture and traditions. Documenting them provides a record of a people’s presence, making it impossible to erase or deny their existence.

At the end of his presentation, Ahmad told the audience with a smile on his face: “Even if you get nothing out of this, at least you can say there was some eccentric guy who came all the way from Jerusalem just to tell us this and that tale.”

In addition to sharing the legends as they are, Ahmad believes his mission is also to open the space for personalizing them. He uses active and motivational verbs, such as muwallid al-asatir (“legendator” is the term he coined to describe the generator of legends), as if to encourage people to run the motor of imagination and birth their own legendary tales. This, he finds, is crucial in preserving the nonphysical heritage of the people and the place while opening new energy for creativity.

The Arabic language itself brings a different understanding to the metaphysical world: For example, the word “jinn,” referring to invisible creatures in the form of supernatural beings, demons, or wicked forces, dates back to pre-Islamic Arabia. The Semitic root jinn means “to hide” or “to be concealed from the senses.” It is the root of words as different as majnun (usually translated as “crazy” but derived from the same root which means to be overtaken/possessed, to the point of losing sanity); janna (heaven); and janin (embryo, which again in Arabic has a mystic connotation to that which is concealed). The word “genie” may well have been the anglicized version taken from the same source.

Other words that are associated with the supernatural include mandal (the supposed communication with the dead, which could have the common understanding of necromancy, soothsaying, or invocation toward future prediction). Another is qarin, meaning friend or companion, but has a broader metaphysical interpretation in the Quran, which is associated with the Devil.

Growing up in Beit Safafa definitely had a role in developing Ahmad’s imaginative sense of self, particularly in the 1990s: Although Beit Safafa is in the Jerusalem Governorate and is about 4.5 kilometers from Jerusalem, it feels for most local Palestinian residents like it is on another planet. “That is so true!” Ahmad notes. “When we first got here, Beit Safafa was so isolated—even the roads didn’t exist. Muddy roads. It had many stories of jinn—bumpy and marginal. We’d walk around in our pajamas knowing we wouldn’t see anyone!”

There was space for discovery: “The lack of entertainment made us create our own,” Ahmad tells the deeply focused audience. “We had self-generating input and did not have as much external influence as kids do these days.” He recalls that he often drew monsters as a child and would go on to write stories and create imaginary figures.

Listening to Ahmad, the magical element of creativity is apparent in the Arabic language. The word wahi comes to mind, which translates to “revelation.” In Arabic, when someone is deeply inspired, the expression is that the wahi has descended and thus made it possible: God’s chosen individuals get to deliver a divine message that was revealed to them.

Ahmad believes that there are various avenues of worship in Jerusalem. He is referring to the magical connections made with the spirits and all that is buried therein.

“These things are not spoken about—at least not openly,” he notes, “but they are definitely there.” He shares how various people opened up to him, in a matter-of-fact sort of way, that they are fully convinced that they are not the only ones living in their houses; that there are other spirits dwelling with them, and that (unseen) others are strolling in the narrow streets of Jerusalem.

The people who spoke about being exposed to paranormal activities in Jerusalem were all “normal.” His original interviews for the book did not include anyone with a clinical diagnosis or other mental health issue; they were all “regular people who trusted me.”

It does not take long to realize that Ahmad’s open-mindedness is reflective of his acceptance of people at large. “People who ‘see’ things are generally open and tolerant to hear and accept different viewpoints,” he says. Perhaps Jerusalem too could really benefit from being more accepting of differences.

Ahmad has invested time exploring a world that regular folk would dismiss, which has to be a lonely experience. On the other hand, maybe not: In a city like Jerusalem, which evokes much passion, how does one differentiate between history and fiction, reality and legend? How can one dismiss the power of the fantastical elements of religious representation in this overpowering city?

In Ahmad’s opinion, being tolerant entails the openness to be receptive to truths, rather than rigidly dismissing that which is not seemingly normal. It is important to have an open mind. Ahmad insists that “creativity” of this sort must not be focused on children, who are already open as it is, but rather on adults, whose opinions tend to be more formed and fixed, or even inflexible.

Ahmad dreams to create a large space for Palestinians in Jerusalem to use their imagination toward creativity, openness, and healing. He already has a plan for a facility (the building requires some work), and the ideas already exist in broad outlines.

Hearing Ahmad speak, it becomes apparent that the platform of The Fiction Council also has a healing effect: Besides the individual impact that this space provides, there is also a healing factor in knowing one is not alone. In this highly charged part of the world, the therapeutic element of imagination and art cannot be underestimated. Perhaps even more significant, as Ahmad sees it, is the collective factor. Opening the doors to conversation and imagination may be one way toward healing together: collective therapy, and the preservation and revival of culture. “Imagination is our ultimate tool for change,” Ahmad asserts.

Tolerance, as he sees it, begins with having an open mind. The more open one’s imagination, the more accepting one will be of differences. This is crucial in developing emotional intelligence, as it also makes one more empathetic. Listening to Ahmad’s experience, it becomes apparent that the route to openness does not only benefit the self, but it could even be an act of service: Imagine how much less lonely the individual experience can be when one feels safe to share the unscripted and uncommon experience of humankind—and beyond.

Ahmad admits that working by himself has consumed a lot of energy and often made him feel discouraged. “It took me eight years to know where to get with society,” he allows.

Ahmad is still struggling to make ends meet as he is working toward getting funds to renovate his family home (built more than 150 years ago) as an ideal spot for The Fiction Council. The vision for the council, however, is strong: to provide a space for applied imagination and mythology and to be a place where people find all relevant information and data on legends from the Arab world.

When asked whether Jerusalem is cursed, Ahmad pauses only for a second. With a grin on his face, he says: “Jerusalem is not so much cursed as it is inhabited.”

Clearly, he is not referring (only) to humans.