dream 016 - abeer salah on r/occult, haunted houses, and seeing aliens
Abeer’s first photo, 1994
At the beginning of the year, I spoke to Kavari after the release of her EP Plague Music, about her predictions for what was looking like a medieval year ahead. It seemed she was right about the growth of mob mentality, but as we enter the later half of the year, I’ve been getting the feeling we’re seeing more similarities to the witch hunt crisis than we may like to admit (something I’m saving for October’s edition, feels more appropriate).
For decades, film and TV has been obsessed with dreams. Twin Peaks, Perfect Blue, The Sopranos; Hollywood’s fascination evolved into connecting these ‘visions’ to stories of witchcraft and magic like we see in Cast a Deadly Spell, Practical Magic (the second released earlier this month), Sabrina The Teenage Witch, The Prestige, just to name a few. As a ‘niche’ genre, it surprisingly spread like the plague through pop culture in the 90s and early 00s, casting fantasies into heads of the next generation across the West (cc: the American Dream). This obsession with witches, magicians and illusionists of the 19th century and earlier, is undeniably something we find comfort in as the season’s change; as we are less likely to admit it being a sinful hangover from America’s interest in capitalising on scapegoating community members who didn’t fit the script.
A few months back, Abeer reached out to me expressing her passion for dreams, so one evening we called with our cameras off, unexpectedly setting us up for some dark rabbit holes, like therapy for the damned. I listened to her softly speak with the conviction of only someone who has lived many lives, as we talked about her experiences with prophetic visions, living with derealisation and her relationship to her Sudanese heritage. She tells me of her family’s ties to zār rituals, a form of community healing through folk psychotherapy, and resistance to modern medicine brought by colonisation. It left me wondering as we all continuously search for new forms of meaning and community, if society’s constantly on the supernatural pulse, where does it lead to? Well, welcome to the dream.
alisha: Do you dream?
abeer: I dream almost daily, very vividly, almost nightmarish. Very heavy. I would say the keyword of my whole entire life is to dream.
a: What do you dream about?
ab: Stuff that is usually symbolic, and profound, some context I should say is that I have severe de-realisation. I got this panic attack when I was 17 or 18, and ever since, when I experience reality it’s a little distorted. So, I don't feel real, I always feel like I'm inside this plastic bubble. I feel that just sounds like what the Wikipedia description of what de-realisation is, but it's actually what it is. I had a panic attack, and I got taken to the hospital to run some neurology checks, so when they were hammering my knee to see if I'm reactive I couldn't really feel anything, and ever since then I've just been trying to come to terms and survive with it. It's been like 10 years almost and I haven't really been out of that state ever since. Prior to that, I’ve always been dreaming, and I'm still dreaming.
a: How do you think your dreams have changed since having this become a part of your life?
ab: I feel like I can't really differentiate anymore between what actually happened and what was a dream, in the sense that they could be so vivid. The way I experience reality right now is sort of just passing moments where I feel like my brain is a broken recorder, like someone threw it or messed it around, so the recording part, the memory part, of how I recall moments is kind of weird.
a: I relate to that, I definitely know where you're coming from with having an incident, and then it kind of alters the way you perceive reality.
ab: It's luckily been stable for a really long time.
a: Do you record your dreams?
ab: I used to keep a journal from 2016 till 23 but lately I don't really feel like I do write them down, but I can recall them. Like recently I dreamt of a beheaded, coiled snake in the supermarket, which was something that just stayed with me. Or it’ll be like the head of an orca whale in the meat aisle.
a: Do you have any recurring dreams?
ab: I do have that. I've had the same one like eight times, if I'm counting correctly. It's an airplane and it's in the sky, and sometimes I'm inside, sometimes I'm perceiving it from outside, but it always explodes, and when it explodes, when I'm inside it, I just die, and I wake up.
a: Oh my god.
ab: The dream of the airplane is something that's just something that keeps repeating and repeating and repeating, it made me sort of scared of flying sometimes. I just feel like, what if the dream comes true?
a: Did that dream start after the panic attack?
ab: No, it started way before, I'm kind of scared when it pops up. I'm like, oh, here we go again.
a: I have one where I’m texting someone, like from the past or whatever, and then I can't exit the chat, and then my phone screen breaks, and my fingers start to bleed. It's like, I'm trying to press the back button, but I can't get out, and then I just wake up. Then I have to check my phone to see if it was real, like, did I actually send someone a message? [laughs]
ab: Very interesting, especially the bleeding part.
a: But you said you read a lot of theories about dreams, is this something that has started recently?
ab: No, I think the Carl Jung book I mentioned to you, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, I read 11 or 12 plus years ago. He was saying that there's big dreams and little dreams, and the big dreams are the ones that are symbolic and profound, and have this symbolism that just cannot be something that your brain manufactured, so it's not really something based off of real life. So, for the orca dream, for example, why would my brain make that up, you know? And he says there's little dreams, which are daily things, like if I met up with a friend last night, and I just have a dream about them, or stress dreams about a meeting I have or something. I could actually differentiate what I'm dreaming, like when I have a dream and I wake up and I'm like, oh, that's a big dream, that's a little dream, so it kind of resonates with me.
And the question I always ask myself is who makes dreams? Who's the dream maker? It's just, so well directed [laughs] you know what I mean?
a: Yeah, like, who's the one pulling the strings?
ab: It's so insane to think about. A whole plot makes sense sometimes, then sometimes it really doesn't make sense, but I don't feel like my subconsciousness could actually make such a plot. It's just so interesting to me. So I always think, who makes these? Is it like something from the divine? I’m not religious but I do believe something is out there.
a: Do you believe in spirituality, or do you think it's some other kind of energy?
ab: I feel like I believe in a little bit of everything out there. I feel like there's truth in every religion. I feel like it’s been distorted as it got passed down, but there is some kind of truth in there somehow. But spirituality, I don't know. I don't really like to think about it a lot. It’s more, like you said, energy, I believe in the sea, in the moon. When I look at them, I feel something. It's kind of like my personal religion. I love water, and I love the sea, and if I pray to something, I will pray to the sea, and I'll pray to the moon. They are like such powerful forces on their own, and they control so much, and the moon controls like the tidal waves and stuff, right? So they are kind of connected.
a: Have you always had this belief, or has it changed over the years?
ab: I’ve always had it. I grew up in a city called Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia. I'm not from Saudi Arabia, I’m Sudanese, but I was born there. It was like a port city with the sea. I got this on my birthday [sounds of gentle rattling] a little dolphin necklace with letter on it. When I was young, I would just hold my necklace and pretend I’m a protagonist, and pray to the sea, my deepest wishes. I've always done that since I was a little kid, I know it's kind of weird.
a: I like how intuitive it is, and I feel we often pass off what kids do as silly, but when you get older, you kind of realise actually how intuitive you are as a child. You can sense that something's wrong but you can't quite put your finger on it, you know how to kind of be in tune with yourself, whereas when you grow older it gets a bit harder to do that, because there's so many other distractions.
ab: Right, it's exactly that!
a: Do you have things that help you to keep present?
ab: Honestly, I've tried everything under the sun. I feel like it's the damn phone, as they say, I need to touch grass more. I feel like my mind is just so occupied with so many things at the same time, I feel like if I just disconnect a little bit, I could sense maybe 0.01% that I'm coming back to reality. But it's just that I always go back inside a plastic box, and I'm just thinking again, and I'm just so anxious again. It feels like this knot inside my chest and my brain I just sort of can't really untie, and like it loosens up a little bit sometimes. Oh, shit, it's raining. Can you hear it?
a: Oh, yeah, wow!
ab: It was thundering earlier, but wow, yep. Sorry to get back to what I was saying, it just feels like a knot I can't really untangle. I don't know, maybe I need a fucking, like, what do you call it, a lobotomy? I honestly think about it all the time, do I need a lobotomy? Like, is that all what's left from me?
a: Well, if you get one, then I need one as well. [laughs]
ab: [laughs] But to answer your question, though, I don't know if it’s something that has to do with my phone or not, or something digital, or something within myself.
a: Do you feel like you've ever been able to lucid dream, like been able to control your dreams?
ab: I've tried. I actually tried.
a: How did it go?
ab: Um, very brief. I started like flying in the sky, and then like I jolted up, I just couldn't take it. It was so real. But that shit is scary, I have a lot of sleep paralysis though actually.
a: What happens when you get sleep paralysis?
ab: Last time, if I remember correctly, I was at the dorm where I went to school here in Korea. It was by a mountain, and in the mountains in Korea is where they bury people, so there's tombs and graveyards. I felt like I was getting squeezed by someone, I was just getting squeezed and squeezed, and I couldn't move at all. When I was back home in Sudan, there was one where I actually saw a figure that was kind of alienish and brown, and it was watching me sleep, but I couldn't really do anything because I couldn’t move.
a: Have you seen this alien figure again since?
ab: No, I've only seen it once, our house at home is haunted. It's actually where my father also grew up, so it was inherited by my Dad from my Grandfather. So everyone in my family grew up there, and my Grandma's actually, I don’t want to say Shaman, but lowkey she is.
a: Oh wow, tell me more.
ab: I come from a really complex cultural background. So, in Sudan, the way we believe in things, and spirituality, is a really big spectrum. We have an island where cats can talk. African countries are known for magic, black magic, voodoo, it might sound crazy to someone from the West.
a: I’m reading at the moment about people witnessing this kind of stuff. Did you have any experiences?
ab: In my childhood home, I would see a figure when I'm sleeping, hovering, just very quickly. When I was a child, I never actually told anyone this but fuck it, I'll just say it. I had sleep paralysis as a kid, and it's something I remember so vividly. I saw something so small, but it was moving, and it was a person, and he was dressed in all red. An almost comic sort of figure that was pacing back and forth. It was so creepy. I was born in a city, but I moved to Sudan. I would see stuff by the window that my mom could not see, and I would ask her to look, but she’d always tell me there's nothing.
My latest thing that I remember is being back home, in the haunted house, it wasn't bad energy at all, and I was 100% fully awake, fully sober, but I saw floating lights, really small lights just jumping, and I was so scared. So I went on Reddit. I still have the Reddit post up, asking what the fuck is this? I posted on r/occult or something like that, there's a page for shared experiences. And people replied like it's just energy, it's just a message from the divine. I was like how can you be so chill?
a: That's so interesting! Do you have a strong connection to your heritage in Sudan and occult practices?
ab: It’s difficult, there’s not a lot of written literature about magic in Sudan, per se, it's just word of mouth. Some stuff that I heard from my mom, or about her mom, and my grandma from my dad's side, I haven't really read up on it, but the cats that speak, that's just a fact. If you ask someone from my country, do you know the island where cats speak, they’ll know exactly where it is.
It goes back to King Solomon, because he jailed jinn and demons in that island, so there's like a whole ass castle that still remains, and that's exactly where the cats speak, and the lore just keeps getting deeper if you look into it. That's all I know, on that part where he imprisoned those demons, I haven’t been there, but I believe in it.
a: Are there any stories that you remember from your grandma?
ab: So, my mom told me that my grandma had jinn, which are like these Islamic demons made of fire, at her disposal, so she got them from her father, who used to teach those entities Quran. I don't know if I believe this. I don't believe in Islam, but I remember this memory with my grandma, I don't know if it was like a trick, but when we were kids if we would be like we want candy, she would clap, and it would fall from the ceiling. I asked my sister about it again recently, and she remembered too. My mind can not wrap itself around that fact that she could do that.
My father's side of the family is kind of weird, like his mom, which is the low key shaman, and my aunt, who I don't know, I don’t know if she's a schizophrenic or not, but he heard her talk to someone in the bathroom a few times, and I don't know, good luck to her, she’s my aunt. But on my mom's side, though, my mom's aunt, we have this thing I feel is pretty interesting. It's called Zār, which is a shamanic ritual where people get into like this state of hypnosis, and they start dancing with very certain beats or drums. I can send you videos after this.
There's whole documentaries about it, they get haunted and they get possessed by these entities. So, my mom's aunt, she would frequently transform into someone completely different when she was under hypnosis of those drum beats. They would start drumming, and then someone would get possessed, and then they would start acting like someone they're completely not. So, from my mom's stories, she would say that her aunt, would speak fluent British English. She does not speak a word of English when she's herself. She would turn into this British soldier, because we got colonised by Britain, and so she would make the sound of guns during the ritual. So, thats my family history.
a: I wonder if it's connected to your sleep paralysis or anything?
ab: I don't know, I feel like everyone has sleep paralysis, honestly? The alien figure, like a hat, man, or like getting squeezed, I feel like these are not stuff that are just like exclusive to me. I feel like everyone sort of experiences them in a way, so I don't want to be like I don't want to toot my own horn and be like, oh, I'm a magical girl.
a: Did you say it’s just your mom’s side of the family?
ab: So, my dad's side of the family is the one with Shaman Grandma. My mom's side of the family is the one with the aunt, my mom's aunt, who does the Zār thing, where she dances and turns into a white solider.
a: I love that it's all the women in the family as well.
ab: It's definitely the women, not the man. I mean my dad's grandma's side is like the one her father gave her those demons or something to teach or something like that.
a: Why do you think that is?
ab: I don't know. Historically, women are more intuitive, more emotionally intelligent, and they're the providers of life, and everything goes back to the moon, and the mother. Yeah, I really believe in that. It's like Mother Nature, the moon itself, I feel like everything is female. Men are less emotionally intelligent I guess, and the source of life is female, so I feel like something like that, probably.
a: I learned so much from talking to you, these conversations always take directions I never expect. I wanted to ask, as well, for last question, do you remember what was the last dream you had?
ab: The last dream I had? I dreamed last night, but I don't think it was a big dream, it wasn't big enough for me to remember.
