The familiar‐strange manifestation of the dead

Abstract

This article draws on Islamic perspectives that conceive of visions (ru'yā) and nightmares (kābūs) as instances whereby Jamilā, a 13‐year‐old Syrian refugee girl in Brooklyn, New York, imagines and makes sense of the dead. She uses the Arabic words ma‘rwf (familiar) and gharīb (strange) to describe her dead elderly neighbour, Safiyya, in her visions and nightmares. Jamilā’s familiar‐strange experiences imagine the dead both as good (the divine nature of death fundamental to Islamic values) and as evil (the pain and suffering of the departed). These familiar‐strange feelings constitute an irresolvable uncertainty about death, shaping an imaginative space for Jamilā to be with Safiyya, who was like a mother to her. The manifestation of the dead consists of dynamic interpretations for the living. This results in a familiar‐strange experience granted through the in‐between space of what the philosopher Ibn ‘Arabī calls barzakh (‘obstacle’ or ‘separation’), which allows for an understanding of the departed as both blissful and suffering. The vernacular Arabic used by Jamilā in describing her familiar‐strange experiences and the Islamic values upheld by her family underscore the importance of knowledge accumulated in the Islamic tradition for understanding the perception of loss and death for an adolescent Syrian refugee.