Appeasing the Djinn

I am 22 weeks pregnant. During this pregnancy – my fourth; I have two children already and had a miscarriage in February – I have become unduly superstitious, increasingly preoccupied by the idea of life emerging in the shadow of death, and half-remembering folklore taught to me by my Turkish grandmother.

Though it isn’t forbidden by scripture, there is a belief in both Muslim and Jewish cultures that a pregnant woman should not attend a funeral, visit a cemetery or see a dead body. Some people imagine the angel of death becoming confused and entering the new soul in the womb of the pregnant woman; others have a more prosaic view that emotional stress can bring on early labour. Moderately realistic and wildly fantastical beliefs, intertwined in the same tradition.

A few weeks ago I had a number of sleepless nights because I absent-mindedly ate some unpasteurised cheese, strictly forbidden in the scriptures of the NHS because of the risk – real if remote – of listeria. It is not the angel of death, but those sleepless nights felt like living in its shadow. Some of my other fears are more patently absurd. At one point, to avoid walking under a building covered in scaffolding and ladders, I swerved into the road, dodging traffic, before realising this was far more dangerous.

I don’t normally use emojis, but I’ve been peppering messages in which I mention my pregnancy with the nazar boncuğu – the blue amulet that wards off the evil eye, which Turkish friends gave me in solid glass form to hang over the cots of my first two babies. Never one or two, always three – the magic protective number – at the end of the message, the last word, the seal. I don’t care what the recipients of these messages think. It is a conversation between me and the capricious djinn.

My miscarriage was ‘missed’, which means we only discovered it at the first scan, when the sonographer failed to find a heartbeat. I never actually miscarried – my body continued to think I was pregnant, refusing to let go of the foetus. I waited to bleed. Finally, I had to have surgery.

Now, pregnant again, I have been going for a private scan every three weeks, getting a fresh dose of reassurance, like an addict. I can afford to do that, but is it healthy? I sometimes imagine a less privileged version of myself, stoically waiting for the two NHS scans allotted over the course of forty weeks. Would this woman be an emotional wreck, or would she find inner reserves of strength that I have not?

When I was convinced I had contracted listeriosis, I went to my local hospital in Somerset to see a consultant and get some blood tests done. When the consultant walked into the waiting room and called my name, my stomach flipped. There she was, a beautiful young woman wearing neon-pink lipstick and gold clogs with her hospital scrubs – the same doctor who had removed the remains of my pregnancy six months earlier.

She looked at me quizzically as I walked towards her. ‘Have I treated you before?’

‘Yes,’ I said, and paused. I couldn’t figure out how to phrase it euphemistically. ‘You took out my dead baby.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, and threw her arms around me – an action as unexpected and glorious as her golden clogs. ‘Do you want to see a different consultant?’

I didn’t: I craved her kindness. She led me into the same room in which she’d done the procedure, to the same chair. I placed my feet awkwardly in the same slippery plastic stirrups – difficult to jump up and run away, I’d thought the first time. The consultant passed the ultrasound wand over my belly – the same wand she’d used to check she’d got everything out the first time. Together we peered at the screen, at the grainy, wriggling image, as a nurse wordlessly passed me a box of tissues.

The anxiety is abating, but I know it will never entirely leave. In The Wilderness, Ayşegül Savaş writes about the Scarlet Woman or Red Hag of Turkish mythology, who lurks around postpartum women and their newborn babies for the first forty days, waiting to attack mother and child. Some Turkish women wear a piece of red cloth in labour to ward her off, or hang a red scarf above the baby’s cot alongside the nazar boncuğu.

There is truth in the superstition, medical validation for the old wives and their tales. A country’s maternal mortality rate (worryingly high in the UK) is measured as the number of deaths per 100,000 maternities during pregnancy or in the 42 days following birth or termination.

As my due date approaches, I will no doubt find myself some red cloth, feeling silly. After the birth – inşallah – the medically trained health visitor will come to check on us, and I will hang up the red cloth and the nazar boncuğu. Hedging my bets, appeasing the djinn, dabbling in madness to ward off what I cannot control.