Evil Eye

Although I’m quite superstitious, I’ve never taken much stock in the concept of the evil eye. I’ve always liked little evil eye pendants and I find the idea rather interesting. But while I don’t have much trouble believing in luck and chance, I have a hard time imagining one person hexing another. And while I knock on wood and cross my fingers, I’ve never taken any precautions against the evil eye.

If you asked two of the ladies who work in my dorm, though, they would tell you that it appears as though someone looked at me funny and in a not-so-friendly way this weekend.

On Saturday, I went on an extremely exciting (about-which-I’ll-write-more-later) trip to Mt. Hoverla–the highest peak in Ukraine. The Carpathians aren’t too far from me and although I did a little hiking there last summer, I didn’t make it to Mt. Hoverla and I was itching to go back. So when an opportunity to tag along with a group of 300+ Ukrainians and Peace Corps Volunteers came up, I decided to go, even though the weather at the end of March isn’t exactly ideal for climbing mountains.

The climb was amazing, but beyond exhausting. All of my muscles hurt the day after the climb (probably from a combination of the climbing and all the falling I did) and I was completely worn out from a lack of sleep and an abundance of physical activity. So Sunday I rested as much as I could, but started to feel significantly worse for the wear by the end of the evening.

This morning, when I woke up, I felt a little less than normal. A bit sick to my stomach and rather dizzy. I made it through a day of lessons, but by the time I finished with school, I was a little nervous just walking home, I felt so dizzy. I laid down on the bed and tried to relax but I didn’t feel any better. And worse, I was really hungry so I needed to stand up and fix myself something to eat.

I went into the kitchen and found two of the women who work in the dorm cleaning up after their lunch. They asked me what was wrong and I explained that I wasn’t feeling well. At first, they tried to convince me to drink 100 grams of vodka, assuring me that this would definitely make me feel better. I insisted that drinking vodka would most certainly not make me feel any better and we continued chatting for a while. One of the women asked me exactly what was wrong and how I was feeling and I told her that I’d woken up feeling sick and dizzy and that it had only gotten worse throughout the day. She looked at me, nodded gravely, and said, “Ah. I know what to do.”

She asked the other woman if there was any bread, and asked her to hold a plate of bread near me. Then she filled a mug with water and placed a knife across the top of the mug. I was already sitting on a stool and she stood in front of me and told me to put my hands on my knees.

Before I knew what was happening, she placed the mug on top of my head and began praying. She spoke so quickly that I could hardly understand a word she said, but I heard the word “health” a few times. After saying ”amen,”  she placed the mug on the table, and picked eight tiny crumbs off the bread. Then she dropped the crumbs into the mug of water, on either side of the knife. She removed the knife and both women stared into the mug, analyzing the results. The woman who’d done the praying insisted that it wasn’t quite normal. She then turned and looked at me and said “Where were you standing up high this weekend? Were you in a tall building? At a monument? You were standing somewhere high.”

I couldn’t help but laugh as I told her that I’d actually been at the highest point in Ukraine on Saturday. She nodded and told me that everything would be okay. She dipped her hands into the mug and rubbed water on my forehead, my cheeks, my chest, my wrists, and my ankles. Then she washed her hands up to her elbows, the way you see doctors do on TV medical dramas, and explained that more than likely someone had given me the evil eye this weekend. And this bad energy was what was making me feel so sick. But not to worry, she said, everything would be fine. All I needed to do was eat a little, have some tea, and not go to bed just yet.

I still can’t quite imagine who would have hexed me this weekend. I like to think maybe it was an accident, if someone did give me the evil eye. Maybe they were staring up at the thousands of feet they still had to climb and their evil glance accidently grazed my elbow as they cursed the mountain. Or maybe a hex deflected off the sheet of ice that covered the top of the mountain during one of the few moments of sunshine that day.

Or maybe it was just a coincidence.

Here’s what I do know: it’s been an hour since I was doused in bread water and the dizziness and nausea have almost completely disappeared, perhaps, it seems, with the curse of the evil eye.