"Imagine two souls, intricately connected across lifetimes,
drawn together by a force beyond comprehension."
PROLOGUE
WRITTEN IN THE UNSEEN
Somewhere between sleep and the silence that follows prayer,
he felt her.
Not in memory,
but in marrow.
Her name etched beneath his skin,
not as a thought,
but as a truth.
And across the tides of time,
she felt it too,
that silent ache in the chest,
the way the wind sometimes curled through her veil,
whispering a name her lips had never known,
but her soul always did.
They were born apart,
but carved from the same divine fire.
A soul halved by destiny,
scattered across lifetimes,
still tethered by something older than the stars.
Each life,
they almost found each other.
Almost touched.
Almost stayed.
But fate is a patient storyteller.
And now...
the stars are bending.
The prayers are louder.
The veil grows thinner.
This time, the call will not be silenced.
Not by fear.
Not by time.
Not even by fate itself.
Because some souls do not meet.
They remember.
Imagine two souls,
interlaced across realms,
drawn not by coincidence,
but by the echo of something divine.
Some call it fate.
Others, madness.
But those who've tasted it,
knows it.
It is the ache of recognition.
The gravity of the unseen.
A thread spun not in time,
but in eternity.
And somewhere in that realm,
between slumber and the divine,
between the breath and the silence after it,
their story begins again.
_____.
As the sky above the desert yawned in endless silence,
a solitary canary cut through the dusk. Its feathers kissed by the last gilded breaths of twilight.
It cried once, piercing, sharp, a high-pitched lament that stirred the restless dunes into slow, swelling waves.
The air pulsed with earth and oud, steeped in an ancient, whispered secret.
Jamal stood barefoot, anchored by the burning sand beneath him.
His breath caught, not in fear, but in reverent awe. The desert was no void; it thrummed with unseen life, watching him with patient intent.
Before him, the sand stretched infinitely. A pale, breathless ocean beneath a bruised violet sky.
His feet remained still, but his soul was pulled forward, drawn by a force nameless and deep.
A whisper curled in the wind.
A scent that seeped into his bones, calling him home.
Across the luminous expanse, she waited.
Draped in white, her veil caught the breeze like wings of silence.
She was light and shadow intertwined. Her face veiled, but her gaze a piercing flame. Burning through flesh and bone, deep into the marrow of his being.
He shouted into the void:
"Who are you? Why do you haunt my dreams?"
She did not stir, but her voice flowed across the dunes like a lullaby lost to time:
"Time is a gift, Jamal. You will find me only when you find yourself... but not today."
Defying her words, Jamal surged forward, running across the scorching sand, desperate to grasp her, or at least glimpse the truth behind her veil.
The desert groaned beneath his feet.
Without warning, a storm erupted, blinding and furious, dunes screamed and twisted in golden chaos.
And in that swirling tempest, she vanished.
From the roar emerged a voice, mighty, ancient:
"Every soul shall be tested, Jamal... because hays are made in the sun."
The earth groaned beneath him, deep, ancient, relentless.
Suddenly, the desert cracked open, swallowing the golden dunes whole.
Jamal stumbled, breath caught in a strangled gasp as the ground buckled beneath his feet.
When the shaking ceased, he was no longer standing on sand, but on a cracked desert road, dry and fractured, stretching into a murky twilight.
His body was older now, lines of fifty years etched in his worn face. But his eyes still burnt with the same fierce urgency of youth.
The sun had vanished; the sky above was a heavy, leaden slate.
Ahead lay a forked road, two paths diverging beneath the weight of silence and shadow.
To the right: a slender golden path, edged with fig trees and bathed in soft, pulsing light, as if angels had just walked it.
To the left: a wide road choked with dust and shadow, its stones shifting like something alive. No light reached that path. Only silence and the weight of unseen things.
Between them stood an old man, draped in sand-colored robes, his turban wound tight. His beard was silver, his eyes ageless. He leaned on a cane made of twisted olive wood.
Jamal halted. The man looked up.
"Which path?" Jamal asked, already tasting the bitterness of his own answer.
The old man's eyes twinkled, amused and sorrowful.
"The question is not which path, young one... but why."
Jamal stared long and hard at the golden path. Then he shook his head slowly.
"Absolutely, there's nothing left on the right," he said, voice low.
"I've been walking that path... for what felt like every day. Today, I need to know if there's anything right on the left path."
The man nodded, face tightening.
"So," he murmured, "you seek ruin disguised as revelation."
"No," Jamal said. "I seek truth in whatever form it comes in."
The old man leaned forward.
"Truth breaks men who aren't built to kneel."
"But I've knelt." Jamal protested.
"Then rise wisely." The old man warned.
Jamal hesitated for a moment before turning left.
And with that step, he walked into the unseen.
_______.
As he moved further, the air grew thin.
And the world... stilled.
Not with fear, but with that same hush the earth makes when a command descends from above.
At the end of the unseen, a structure emerged, not built, but revealed.
It stood like a verse awaiting recitation.
Its frame bowed in sujood, the beams curved not by time, but by worship.
The doorway opened like a rib parted for revelation.
Overhead, bones of serpent and owl swung gently, not in menace, but as signs.
Wisdom. Resurrection.
Every prophet was once led by signs.
And the walls were scorched with verses, some inked in fire, others in salt.
Ayahs rewritten again and again, not for God to remember. But for the souls to return to.
Jamal stood before it, and the ground beneath him felt like prayer.
His chest rose and fell in dhikr, though no word escaped him.
From inside, the scent of oud rose, mingled with frankincense and something finer, like the trace of a prayer long accepted.
And beneath it, that metallic note; not blood, but something deeper.
Like the air before a divine answer.
He knocked.
And the door did not open.
It inhaled.
And then a voice rose from within his own ribs, calm and vast:
"You knocked like a man...
But do you enter like a soul?"
He stepped forward.
And the veil parted.
________..
Inside, time was no longer linear,it prostrated.
Candles burned backward. Shadows moved with purpose, as though remembering where light began.
Smoke coiled inwards, then disappeared, as if a once uttered dua returning to the mouth of a prophet in exile.
The silence was thick, not absent, but full.
Not empty... but reciting.
And by the glowing pit; not fire, noor (light) , sat the Ruqyah Keeper.
He wore a garment of raw wool, like the zahids of old, patched and holy.
Ash and time traced his cheeks.
His turban rose high, wound like the dome of a forgotten maqam.
His eyes were closed, but not in blindness.
He saw what could not be borne by open sight.
He did not speak yet.
He was listening.
To Jamal's bones.
To the rustle of his niyyah.
To the weight of what he came seeking.
He chanted not aloud, but inwardly. Yet Jamal felt the verses crawl under his skin.
"Alif. Laam. Meem..."
Each syllable bloomed through the walls like blood through gauze.
Jamal stood frozen.
Not by fear, but by recognition.
Something ancient inside him... stirred.
The Keeper opened his eyes. Not milky. Not blind.
But burning.
"You've come from the left path," he said, voice neither welcome nor warning.
Jamal nodded. "I needed to know who I am, to find myself, so I followed the unseen."
The Keeper leaned forward a little, as if smelling the lie beneath the statement.
"For that to be possible young man, you must first remove who you are not."
"The Ruqyah Keeper did not leave his spot, yet Jamal felt his gaze, not with his eyes, but with the soul behind them.
The fire dimmed, then pulsed once, like a heartbeat in reverse. A wind stirred from nowhere. It circled Jamal with a hush that resembled prayer. Like verses breathed into being.
"You've come," the Keeper said, voice low as thunder before it strikes.
"Not all who knock are willing to see.
Fewer still to be seen."
Jamal's breath caught. Not from fear. From recognition.
"Will I see her again?" he asked.
"Only if you see yourself first."
The Keeper stood. His turban cast a crescent-shaped shadow across the walls. He reached into the folds of his robe and withdrew a shard of obsidian, etched with a verse Jamal could not yet read. With a single gesture, he cut the air open.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
The space before them tore, a silent gleam, slit through the fabric of the dream-realm. Light did not shine from it. Nor did darkness pour out. It was something else.
A void wrapped in stillness.
"Enter," said the Keeper. "But remember:
Reflection is not mercy.
It is just truth without disguise."
Jamal stepped through.
______.
Suddenly He fell. Or perhaps rose. Or neither.
Gravity no longer applied.
When he came to stillness, there was no sky. No floor. No orientation.
Only mirrors.
Infinite. Seamless. Layered in dimension and depth. Each one reflecting not just his form, but his fragments.
Some held him as a child.
Others showed him as he might have been.
A few didn't show him at all. Only memories he hadn't yet lived.
He turned. Slow, wary, and caught a reflection of his.
But it wasn't the Jamal who had entered the Keeper's threshold.
This one was aged.
His beard wore ash at the edges. His back was bowed, not from time, but from carrying years of silent ache. His eyes looked like minarets abandoned by the muezzin.
Heavy. Holy. Hollowed.
He whispered:
"This... isn't me."
A voice; calm, omniscient, eternal, answered from nowhere and everywhere.
"Not what you see. But it is what you carry."
Jamal moved closer. His reflection did not blink at the same time. It moved slightly behind him, slightly ahead. As though it lived beyond his present.
"What have I become?" he asked.
"The question," said the voice,
"is what you've always been... when stripped of performance.
This is you without armor, without audience, without amnesia."
Jamal's breath grew slow. Intentional.
He watched his mirrored self weep. Not from sadness, but from exposure.
Like a soul suddenly naked before its Lord.
"Can I change it?" he asked.
A long silence.
Then a voice:
"Return.
Return different.
Or return again."
Suddenly, the mirrors began to tremble, like glass remembering it was once sand.
Fractures spread. Each crack pulsed with unrealized memories:
- Duas never prayed.
- Truths never spoken.
- People he loved, but never forgave.
His knees buckled. He fell, not from fear, but revelation.
And as he collapsed, the mirrors caved inward.
Not shattered.
Absorbed.
He was no longer many. He was one.
And in that one, the voice rose again, not loud, not soft, but as if spoken from the marrow of his bones:
"You chose the left path, Jamal.
You chose the unseen.
You chose the truth before comfort."
A pause, rich and celestial.
"There will be no map, only mirrors.
No companions, only echoes.
And every step forward...
will either awaken you,
or cost you everything."
The dust of the mirrors swirled around him, golden and fine.
And as it encircled Jamal like a departing storm, it whispered a single word:
"Begin."
__________.
"Some are born with a thirst they do not understand, because the soul remembers what the world has forgotten."
-ANONYMOUS-
______________.
Love is the secret thread binding creations, woven before time, through stars, rivers, and souls. It stretches across realms, stitched with compassion, truth, and Divine will. When we live in remembrance, when we love for the sake of the Beloved, our souls begin to see past illusion. Distance fades. The veil thins.
Two souls can be drawn together across lifetimes, not by accident, but by decree. Yet ego resists. The nafs clings.
Divine love demands surrender.
It demands tawakkul. And in that trust, the heart unmakes itself before God.
And the soul no longer seeks union.
It remembers it.
So trust the thread.
Even in the dark.
Especially in the dark.
For when we live in love, the thread is light.
The thread is mercy. It brings mercy around us.
And in the moment you stop looking for the door.
You awaken.
_________.
Jamal woke to a cramp curling through his gut. But it wasn't the pain that held him still.
It was the silence.
The dream had not faded.
It had rooted.
The Woman.
The mirror.
The voice that cracked the desert sky.
Each clung to him like ash after fire;
proof of what had burned.
He lay beneath the worn blanket, the room holding its breath.
No call to prayer yet. Only a whisper from beyond the veil.
The Shaykh's words returned; sharp, unbidden:
"Dreams are cosmic messengers, Jamal.
They ask for no transportation.
You only pay with your attention."
He sat up slowly. Reached for the worn notebook at his bedside.
Jotted something down with fingers that still trembled, then sank back into the warmth, but not into rest.
Today would come with teeth.
It would not leave him unchanged.
The dream still murmured behind his eyes. The crescent moon, quiet and intrusive, spilled silver across the room.
He lay suspended;
between the man he was,
and the one the unseen now waited for.
Some doors open without warning.
Some names are called from the other side.
And Jamal...
was beginning to hear his.