The Vampire-Jinn: Full Moon and Fangs of Egypt and Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The rise of Gothic in MENA has indicated the shift toward a discourse of fear that deconstructs, commercializes, and makes entertainment. This comes in the wake of the Arab Spring with the vacancy of nationalist identities. From Mesopotamian vampiric-jinn to a reinvestigation of Lilith’s myth, to the Islamic Feast of Sacrifice, blood currency runs deep in tribal and Islamic cultures. Framed by the repertoire of two of the most influential countries in the region, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the chapter traces the depiction of Dracula and its subtext within the political journalistic and fictional writing of Ahmed Khaled Tawfik, dubbed the region’s Stephen King, to illustrate the revolution against political vampires, zealous Islamists, to the fictional revision through Dracula of the rise of such ideologies in the continuum of half a century. This is further highlighted in an outline of examples from Saudi Arabia, where conservative Gothic casts away women as vampiric-jinn in TV shows to the rereading of the legend of Vlad from a moderately liberal point of view within the Ottoman Empire.