"I have nothing to do with the jinn or the devil. What I do is not magic — it is a skill that I have developed — a skill that we all possess. I’ve worked too long and too hard to give the credit to the jinn,” Ahmed El-Bayed, a 28-year-old Saudi, told me.
In a few months, Ahmed will be buried underground for a week without food or water. Should he survive, he plans to make the pyramids at Giza disappear. “For now though, until the right time comes, let me show you what else I can do,” he said.
The night before, I had spent some time with his media relations manager, Mansour Al-Nomeis, who said: “Ahmed is the Middle East’s premier illusionist — the first of his kind here. He can do things that will blow you away. He can bend metal with his mind and teleport things — and he levitates.” I was hard pressed to take him seriously.
Now after a two-hour lunch with El-Bayed, I am faced with writing about him. This is no unusual task considering the nature of my job — but when writing about someone who does things in a restaurant that defy not only logic but gravity and the laws of physics, one runs the risk of possibly not being taken seriously as a journalist again.
El-Bayed however, faces a much greater risk. In all other countries, he describes himself as a magician, but in Saudi Arabia, where the punishment for sorcery is death, El-Bayed calls himself an illusionist. “There is no black magic or witchcraft here. What I do has a method that I can demonstrate to the concerned authorities should the need arise,” he explained.
I can’t offer any logical explanation for what El-Bayed did before my very eyes, but I left Lost City Restaurant on Friday afternoon, having reset my mental parameters about what was “normal.”
According to El-Bayed, his mother was the first to notice something strange about him. At five years of age, he wrinkled a tissue in his hand and gave it to her. Before her eyes, he ran his hands over hers and the tissue became smooth again.
“I began to realize that there were some things that I could do that really amazed people, and so I began learning how to perform illusions and perfect them. Allah blesses everyone with a particular skill — a gift. Performing illusions is my gift,” El-Bayed told Arab News.
The night before at Al-Shalal Amusement Park on the Corniche, I had met El-Bayed briefly. He said hello, made a few incredible claims about levitating and other abnormal abilities but said he couldn’t perform half of them at the show as it would frighten the children.
“During one show, a woman ran out of the theater screaming that I was the devil,” he said.
After the show, I explained to El-Bayed that, though by Saudi standards the show he put on for the kids at Al-Shalal was quite entertaining, I felt that he had quite a few more tricks up his sleeve. “You’ve made some outrageous claims that you haven’t backed up in your show. Quite honestly, I am impressed, but David Blane (a famous American illusionist) has done far more on his shows,” I told El-Bayed.
The following afternoon during lunch at Lost City Restaurant, El-Bayed made me eat my words. Exclusively for Arab News, he agreed to sit down for a one-on-one interview to demonstrate some of his up-close and personal abilities. He performed numerous card tricks that had me staring and wowing as his sleight of hand tricks had cards changing colors, appearing out of nowhere and vanishing — but his more “interactive” illusions one could describe as being really spooky.
Standing several feet in front of me, El-Bayed had me stretch out my arms and expose my palms. “Check your hands, are they clean?” he asked me. Once satisfied that they were, he had me turn my palm toward the ground and told me to make each one into a fist. He then took a lit cigarette and dropped some ash into his right hand. He told me to put one hand behind my back. The other hand, he asked me to open up. The hand I opened had cigarette ash in it. The other one was clean. Since no one had approached or touched me, I was baffled as to how my clean hand was dirtied by the ash.
Moments later, when dessert arrived, El-Bayed took a fork and asked me to check if it was a real or trick one. It was solid and matched the cutlery being used by the other restaurant patrons. El-Bayed had me put a mark on the fork and place it under a napkin. I was told to put my hands over the napkin while his hands were held a few inches above mine. “Tell me when you feel the heat or a tingle in your hands,” he said. When the tingle came, he asked me to lift up the napkin. When I did, the fork had been bent in half. Amazed, I asked him to do it again, but this time with something of my choosing. Again he performed the same trick and my cappuccino spoon emerged from under the napkin — bent in half. It was soon clear that El-Bayed did indeed have more tricks up his sleeve.
He asked me to take two toothpicks from the table, break them in half, then mark them — which I did with a ball-point pen. I was told to put one toothpick in each of my hands and to make a fist. As I tightened my grip on the toothpicks, I could feel one in each hand. El-Bayed ran his hands a few inches above mine without ever touching me. He asked me how many toothpicks I had in my hands. “I feel one in each hand exactly as I put them there,” I said. “Are you sure?” was his response. When I opened my palms, both toothpicks had somehow transferred to my right hand and my left hand was empty. I am still trying to figure that one out.
Naturally, the illusion that I was really anticipating was the levitation that El-Bayed had promised. After being urged by me several times, he agreed and found a space where he could levitate. In front of me, he put his hands by his side, concentrated, then hovered approximately eight inches off the ground for two seconds before landing. There were no chairs or tables or trampolines or anything that would give any indication as to how El-Bayed had managed to defy the law of gravity.
What I saw during those 90 minutes can perhaps be explained by someone, somewhere — but not by me at this point. Many will offer various explanations that range from “sleight of hand” to “consorting with the devil and jinn” but the reality of how these sort of things are done remains with El-Bayed.