# Qareen and Marid *Beyond our realm of flesh and bone lies another world of infinite spirits.* *Among it's inhabitants are the Qareen and Marid.* *A Qareen قرين is a spiritual double of a human, often a complementary creature in a parallel dimension.* *A Marid مَارِد is a powerful jinn characterized by it's rebellious nature.* *I have met a Qareen once, who in desperation, adultered with a Marid.* *With a sorrowful murmur it recounted it's story...* *...the tale of Jullanar and Mehmoon...* ## 1 "Please. Don't cry." As if the fire erasing her could be doused by the tears of a jinn. "Please, *obey*. It is God's will." The Angel speaks, perched on a stone arch above us. Seven wings shield it's twisting body from the dark rain. An ocean seethes nearby, lapping the hot sand. "*Obey.*" I would tear each white feather from this Angel's skin and find blood yet within it's body. But how can I? With no strength, no hands. A pathetic and formless Qareen. "*Obey.*" Malha, the ferryman, watches from afar, holding his drenched turban in one hand. The invincible fire reflects in his pearl-like eyes. Once the rite is complete, he will ferry me to a realm of Jinn where I will spend a thousand more years weeping, awaiting the day of judgement. My companion... I feel the embers scorching your skin as if we are one, yet only you vanish within the pyre. Your earthly shrouds crumble as God's fire travels across your body. A dark coat, a floral yellow scarf... stark against the cosmic indifference of this burial site. Fabric still stained from your fall into the river. "*Obey*." How absurd that your wet brown eyes stare and see nothing. These eyes, set in a delicate face, I have seen transform from supple to sour in your sixty three cycles around Earth's blazing sun. How absurd that I have seen all your misery, all your joy, all your breath, all your cries, and you have not laid eyes on me even once. "OBEY." I wanted peace for you, my dear companion, instead of this absurd horror! "OBEY." God! Let me burn in place of her, for my complicit sin! Thunder roars above the pyre and shakes the burial site. The Angel slips from its perch, raising it's wings to cushion it's fall into a graceful descent. In this brief moment, Zahra's scarf has been pulled away from her body and thrust towards my empty form. Terror and grief tear my formless spirit in two. The Angel shrieks, opening it's maw and commanding me in painful language. "RETURN IT AT ONCE." I fly towards the shore. *Take me back!* I beg Malha. *Take me to her home!* He has already prepared the oars. When we are separated by a stretch of dark water, I look back and see the Angel standing inanimate at the shore. Watching. "A cruel trick indeed, to leave you to your fate..." Malha mutters. "You sure about this?" *I... There is a better way to do things.* "Of course," Malha nods as wisps of ocean smoke feather us. *I must find her body. Put it to proper rest.* "Yes. Yes, of course." Malha whispers, thinking carefully. "Qareen... do you recall the nature of Earth?" *What of it?* Malha rows steadily through the water, breaking a pattern of reflected stars. "Jinn... you beings die every one thousand years or so. Yet humans, they pass like droplets of rain. What does that make them?" We row deeper into the dark sea. "It makes them a weeping calf. Qareen, do not join with humanity." I gaze at the infinite threads of her scarf. *I will shed no more tears.* "My dear Qareen..." Malha sighs. "Whatever has possessed you to take upon this quest, I cannot stop you. But I might request, try not to blame yourself for what has happened, whatever will happen, whatever *could* happen… nor is it any use to blame *him*." We are soon covered by the mist of a thousand converging seas. Angel's fly over us, dancing among the stars, minions to a cosmic force beyond comprehension. "Listen to me carefully, Qareen. Everything, in all the worlds, everything *breaks*. Memory, might, mind... all of it." Malha rows steadily. "*Everything* breaks... What remains?" A deep absence within me blooms as reality begins to tear. Malha sings in a soft voice... "_Man Atkeya Beparwah De Nal..._ _Us Deen Duni De Shah De Nal..._" ## 2 *"Naina moray, taras gaye.. "* Centuries stream by as I try to recall your name. *Zahra... was it?* "_Nadiyon Paar Ranjhan Da Thana_ _Keetay Qol Zaroori Janna…_" Malha rows in front of me, singing with a carefree splendor, lulling me into a grateful nausea. His boat is a haven of static reality among the river’s flow of time. Fluttering alongside us is a floral yellow scarf. The threads binding it are withering, unraveling a latent fear… *"Minta kara main, mala de nal..."* I clutch the scarf dearly as my sense of self flutters… "_Man Atkeya Beparwah De Nal_ _Us Deen Duni De..._" Delicate face, skin torn, I see you. Malha's voice fades as I sink away from the boat and into my beloved... into freezing water... towards the beating heart of some warped entity. *** Breaking through the ice surface of the river I enter a world of cold misting smoke. It is night. Train cars hurtle across a bridge to my left, and on the right a line of skyscrapers glitter with overnight workers. In between, on the shore, a shocked human watches me, wrapped in layers of clothes, breath misting in the air. It's eyes... they recognize some aspect of the sublime, but cannot see truth in their attempt to attach some meaning to the sight of a spinning yellow scarf. I run from these eyes, away, further into the world of humans and their spewing smoke, away into alleys of concrete and snow, away until I blend into Earth and it's people... a cold man shivers, two lovers draw close, an angry worker yells at another man in a machine, someone smokes alone in an alley, another lies dying in garbage bags... weeping calves, all of them... I wish I could warm these bodies with an embrace but with no form my spectre simply passes through them. This world is drenched in grief. I fly further into this thick air which has been polluted with the entrails of machines. Skyscrapers emerge in the mist and watch as I am magnetically drawn forward, towards an abandoned building. Despite my eviscerated memory I recall that we had dreamt a vision of three final years in this hollowed structure... There is a beating heart in this carcass, calling to me. *"Naina moray, taras gaye..."* ## 3 Along the vein of this gutted skyscraper, I find my place in an empty room. I have rested the scarf on the ground. It is torn in many places and yet maintains its complete form, a beginning and an end, it's colourful floral patterns a separation from the banal grey of the carpet underneath. I wish I could see you again. Pale whispers of transpired events scatter throughout these empty rooms, becoming my own, reminding me that we once roamed these halls together, as I watched you work, cleaning away… snow falls delicately outside as these memories, too, begin to fade... *** *Be somewhere.* The wish escapes me like a drowned breath. *** *Be somewhere.* I begin to consider, for the first time, that I am finally, completely, absolutely, *alone*. *** *Be somewhere.* In this deep, blasphemous, absence, everything begins to break. *** And I am stuck in a dark room that slithers and contorts in disgusting throes. Striking my mind like a wisping snake, melting into a torturous rhythm. Broken, finally, by a beautiful voice: *God! Have you left me?* I frantically search for the voice as it speaks again in that sublime chord, unifying a thousand languages: *God! Have you left me?* Where are you, demon?! Transforming silence into agony, where are you?! *God! Have you left me?* A stark flash of light. I rush towards the ceiling, away from the person who has just entered. When I see the face of this human woman I am struck with a familiarity so intense I almost fall and disappear into her. Who is she? A being both kin and alien, as if an artists’ hopeful rendition of a long forgotten memory, something transformed again through birth. *…Hawa? Was that your name?* The woman diminishes her light and walks to the room's windows. She gazes into the formless snow of this world with sunset eyes. Their are layers of thought within her: Tired, alone, searching. I follow her as she leaves. She inspects room after room, seeking nothing, finding nothing. The back of her uniform spells out SECURITY in human language. When she has searched the entire floor, she rests her head against the wall... ... and then exits into a spiralling staircase lit with bright white lights. I follow her as she, half asleep, fumbles her way into a dilapidated lobby on the bottom floor. Parts of her dreams are drifting into the space around her. I look away, ashamed. She takes a seat at a desk, immediately putting her head down and falling into a deep sleep. Soon, words from the books and papers around her bleed into her dreams, taking on an intoxicating glow, like the pungent aroma of an alcoholic spirit after a long day of suffering. Hesitantly I step into her dream. ## 4 Autumn leaves shed from weary trees, swathes of memory settling into auburn blankets along a flowing river. In this dream, a five year old Hawa is standing on wilting grass and gazing at her parents. Her father is standing at the bank of the river with his back turned. Her mother... ... Zahra is sitting on a bench and tracing it's wooden texture with her index finger. Hawa wonders what she is thinking. Zahra, being enmeshed within you, I remember your thoughts. You are simply recalling the taste of fish cooked by your mother decades ago. You notice the lines in our hands are unending, like the grains of wood, like the feelings you are experiencing now. I am sitting on this bench with you, cycling through a state of apathy and pulsing absence... my hands feel heavy, all of a sudden. Piercing cries prompt me to rise from Zahra's body. Immediately I feel the lightness of an immaterial form, my particles no longer flesh. Hawa is holding a baby. She rocks her back and forth. Stoic, machine-like. She is no comfort to this weeping child. As I rush towards them... they begin to age and morph, still clumsily holding on to eachother, bleeding into one another, into a singular creature with three eyes. *Oh, God!* I look away. *Zahra!* She is gone. Replaced by the ashen trail of a recent pyre. Dust sifts through the air alongside orange leaves as the sky is broken by that angelic voice, screaming in a thousand languages: *God! Return to me!* *** I am thrust out of the dream and into the drab realm of the building's broken walls and flickering lights. A shaft of dawn light shines through a distant window. In the corner I see a creature of shadow dissipate. Hawa blinks in confusion. What a terrifying dream, we both think, as it slowly evaporates from our minds as dreams gratefully do. Her eyes settle into a haze as she begins to pack her things. *** In the day's light humans drone like muted honeybees. They are assigned tasks which they are much too tired to protest. It is a perfect, torturous, city. We are in a tram car hurtling away from this congested collection of souls. Surrounded by other tired workers on their journey home, I am perched above the railings, carefully avoiding the effluent of their dreams. Through the window, Hawa watches the sun emerge behind thick clouds. The star's warming rays give the flat sky form and purpose, revealing the infinite colours of a hidden spectrum. This display of beauty strikes Hawa with a quiet yearning for something *more*, a wish I can see is shared by the hundreds of humans around us. *** Hawa descends concrete steps to the side entrance of a small home. Unlocking the door, she enters a dark basement. Light shines from slim windows in the upper corners of the kitchen. She sets her bag down and rests against the wall. A young girl emerges with her arms crossed. "What?" Hawa asks without lifting her head. The girl points at some ground meat sitting on the counter. It is pooling blood and smells repulsive. Hawa looks at it. "So? That's how it looks when it thaws." "It's gross." Hawa sighs. "It's food." "It's been sitting like that for *hours*. It's developing bacteria." "Hm," Hawa looks at it carefully. "I'll cook it right away." "But it's been sitting like that all night!" "So?!" "IT'S GROSS!" "Muna, anything that's been growing on it will die when I cook it!" The young girl, Muna, stares at her sister. "You never listen to me." "You never had a problem when mom did it that way." Muna leaves the kitchen and a door somewhere is slammed shut. Desperate words emerge in my thoughts but I can make no sound to comfort my daughters. *** Moonlight peaks through her window. The young girl is asleep, clutching her pillow tightly. *...Muna...* If I could fill your dreams with blissful memories, so that you might know someone is there, perhaps, then, you could sleep better... I begin to enmesh myself within her thoughts. She wakes, panicking, and looks to my fleeting form, seeing *nothing*. ## 5 *Nothing*. That is what I am. Hawa gazes quietly through the window at this buildings summit. Outside, a snowstorm wars with the cityscape. *Look at me.* I reach forward to touch her hair. She turns, and my being flutters. Yet she steps forward and passes through me. Alone, my mind begins to tear. ... *God!* *Have you left me?* The multi-choral voice echoes throughout the building. It burrows deep inside and transforms my alienation into a dripping agony. A wisp of shadow darts around the room. A clamor of animals screech beyond the walls. Carefully, I drift outside, into the hallway, lured furthermore by the sound of a wonderful oud... *God!* *Have you left me?* The building has changed. The hallway I have travelled countless times now extends eternally. It is filled with creatures of shadow that pulse in rhythm to the music reverberating from the end. Apes, lions, squids, dragons, eight-legged, infinite-eyed egregores, following the beautiful oud and a voice filled with the light of a thousand languages: *God!* *Have you left us?* The congregation travels towards a door seeping alien light. One by one, we slip inside... A lavish chamber awaits us, decorated with cushions of monochromatic gold, carpets woven in geometric designs, and music spilling from the hands of a Giant in the centre of the room. As more beings enter the room, their shadow skin morphs into fur, scales, teeth, nails. The congregation find seats among stacks of crumbling books, chattering among themselves through snouts, beaks, muzzles, lips. The Giant puffs from a bejewelled hookah and continues his song. *God!* Powerful fingers string the oud as he looks upwards to a curved ceiling. Vapour rises from his skin through gills, mixing with the pungent smoke of the room. *Return to us!* The creatures repeat the chant, *return to us, return to us!* *Without you, I sin, (I sin!)* *Without you, I yearn, (I yearn!)* *Without you, I break, (I break!)* Losing control of my body, I step over a pile of books onto the ornate tiles of the stage. A thin layer of water ripples outward. I tilt my head. Tears roll across my face and fall onto the floor, joining with the water. There is a frail picture in the reflection... a body... *my* body. *God!* *I need you no longer!* I look up to my beloved and remember his name. *Mehmoon.* The water separates as I stumble toward him, aching. *God!* *I have found another!* I thrust myself into the Giant's embrace and under the dense fur feel his beating heart. The creatures around us mutter in awe and confusion, hooting and screaming in frenzy. "Disperse," the Giant's voice silences them with an abyssal resonance. ## 6 "For a moment, I thought you would not return," In the quiet orange light my pale body is still enmeshed with the Giant's fur. He runs his hand through my hair. "I..." a sound emerges from my mouth and sputters. I try to speak again. "Who are you?" The Giant laughs. "At least *try* to recall my name, dear Jullanar, you have spoken it many times before." I look upon the Giant's emerald eyes and though no memory manifests itself, the wrenching terror of a past life lingers within. "Meh-moon." "Yes, *Mehmoon*." He holds me tightly. "How beautiful is it, to have a name? And even moreso, to have a *body*? A beginning and an end? A *self*?" We look into the deep galaxies within each other, my newfound eyes welling with tears. Why can I not stop crying? I push myself further into Mehmoon's embrace, hiding my tears, though I find myself now to be finally whole, at once, and completely. Our bodies, flesh and blood, sever into a million multitudes. I whisper into his ear in a language I had once forgotten, and he speaks again in that multi choraled voice, a rhythm complementing the song of my humid breath. He whispers to me: "Do you enjoy the pleasures of this body?" I nod. The light of the never-setting star in this realm bathes us in a warm glow. "Would you like to keep this body, eternally?" "Yes." Mehmoon smiles, flashing sharp teeth. "Then simply do as I request, and the flesh is yours." *** Under the grace of moonlight I sit by Muna's bed. I watch her silently as my heart beats, ready to break. She has been crying for hours before falling into this dreamless sleep. Carefully, I brush her hair away from her face. *Muna, I am here.* She opens her eyes. A valley opens between us as I wait for her to speak. "...Hello?" "...?" I vanish into the darkness. ## 7 "What is wrong?" "I... don't think it's possible." Mehmoon scoffs. "You've done it before." I feel that deep disturbance of a sin committed in a past life. "No, I have *not*." He sighs and rises from the emerald cushions, looming over a bookshelf, leafing through a tome with pointed nails, his back turned. After a moment he speaks. "Why must you always make things difficult, Jullanar, there is only one outcome, and I would rather proceed with love." "For what purpose do you wish me to possess these children?" He looks over his shoulder and glares at me with death. I lower my gaze. "If I am to do it I must know why..." Mehmoon snaps his fingers. Blinking, I wait and realize with horror that my body is beginning to fade. "*Mehmoon!*" He snaps again and my body returns. Looming above me, he speaks quietly. "Jullanar, what remains when everything breaks?" He flashes his sharp teeth. "Hunger. Greed. Desire. *More*." He puts his hand around my throat. "*More*." I wish to scream but my lungs are collapsing. He let's go. Gasping, I run to the door, but as I do my body begins to morph, crumple, sag, I am at one step a small child, at another I am dying and taking my last breath, then I am man, woman, I am rolling hideous flesh wracking with shame as I hear Mehmoon's gurgling voice behind me. I step out of his realm and fall a few feet below into a trap of loose yellow fabric. I claw myself up, and in the faint light I see the threads and fabric are familiar. I realize with horror that I am wrapped inside Zahra's scarf. Mehmoon looks from above, mocking me with his spitting eyes. "Ugly creature, your intrusions outweigh your value." Tears roll over my wrinkled face. "*God* remains." "What?!" "What remains... *God* remains..." Mehmoon, after a draining silence, begins to laugh hideously. "Ah! You could never be my dear Jullanar, believing in such absurdity! Do you not recognize it?! Have a look!" He seals the opening of the scarf as I weep in darkness. ## 8 Zahra. A glass bottle drifts to the surface of the ocean. Had a fisherman not found it alluring enough to bring home to his wife, our fates would perhaps never cross. And certainly not, had your exhausted mother not smashed it in frustration. As her hands bled, my invisible spirit escaped and saw the burdens of your world. How familiar are jinn and humans, how familiar our enslavement, how familiar the itch to return to it once set free... I thought, perhaps, my destiny was in another vessel. Zahra, I was born with you, wrapped in your mother's yellow scarf. I watched as you were neglected, drinking leftover milk. Fed scraps. Tired of caring for your five sisters, it seems your father, the fisherman, has given up on the sixth. And when he dies, the family is thrown into chaos. In this tornado you are married and in a year have a child of your own. In two years you find yourself in a foreign land. In three years something within your husband breaks, straining your marriage. Another child does not save it from crumbling. Yet you continue to fight, stubborn Zahra, how I wish you had listened to my whispers then... *Why are you showing me this?* I curse into the memories. *Let me forget!* You begin to work in that accursed building and soon, *something* infects your husband. While you work tirelessly every night, *something* leads him to shut himself in his room. You sleep on the sagging brown couch in the living room, where cold seeps easily through the windows. Your daughters grow up thinking this is normal, and before they are old enough to question their father, he vanishes. *You*! With your arrogance and fighting spirit, armed with your mother's yellow scarf around your shoulders, *you* cover this pain of abandonment and do not shed a single tear! Yet, sixty three, your joints aching, your mind numb, your emotions hardened, Zahra, one day you simply slip and fall on a stairwell. And then, as you stand, the absurd failure of a generation comes crashing down on you, and *you* begin to laugh. You would have given up, soon after, had I not beseeched his help. That demon. *Forgive me!* In exchange for a blasphemous adultery, he extended your life. Yet how could I have known, a life gifted beyond it's measure did not extend the limits of sanity? Oh God, if I could erase the images you saw, the horrific incomprehension of seeing beyond love, life, death, emotion, physics... how you laughed, every day, whispering in languages you never knew before: “God, have you left me?” Standing at a bridge, yellow scarf fluttering in the wind, the laughter still does not escape you. Still does not escape you as you slip from our body and fall into the water below. Leaving me behind, on that bridge, alone... ... some time has passed, and there is someone watching me from down the bridge... *Oh, God...* I wish to tell her to run, to escape me, to sever this bond between the other world at once. "Mother!" Hawa yells, running to me. ## 9 MISSING PERSON: ZAHRA OMER DOB: August 6, 1978 LAST SEEN: Nov 23 2023, on the bridge between Memorial Drive and the River Pathway. Goodbye, Zahra. I clutch my head between sputtered breaths. My mind begins to collapse and melt within itself. Everything is breaking, after all. What remains? What remains but this eternal loneliness. This abandonment of all desire. What remains? A cold, empty, carcass. A yellow scarf hiding my transforming face. Hawa is watching me from across the dilapidated lobby. Shocked, unable to process the image she is seeing, of a tall being wearing her mother's scarf. I try to speak to her, but what emerges is a deep mixture of words resembling distorted winds. My vocal chords are in the wrong place. I run shamefully and enter the building's stairwell, further into the body infected by accursed Mehmoon. His creatures leak from the walls, hollering taunts at me and plucking memories from my spirit, repeating precious words and distorting them into obscenities. Past the stairwells, past the endless hallways, past the infinite doors, I finally step into his golden realm. He tunes his oud in the centre of the chamber, humming harmonic notes that glide across the water. "*Mehmoon*." He begins to play a melody... "Mehmoon, her body isn't in the river, is it?" He smiles mournfully and sings, in Zahra's voice: *God!* *Have you left me?* The distorted physical heart within me begins to beat rapidly as he walks across the water, continuing his song. Creatures appear and grasp my arms, barring my exit. He crouches down and looks at me with his star ridden eyes. "Dear Qareen. *Obey*. It is better for you." He moves closer to me and whispers into my ear. "Better for *them*." "You will never have them." After a stunned moment, Mehmoon answers me painfully. "I *will* have them, for the husks of my beautiful children, as I have you, for the skin of my dear Jullanar." He commands the creatures to let me go, and as the chamber begins to fade, he speaks: "Until the end of time, I will consume. That is my nature. Your God knows this. Your God *wills* this." I am sitting on a grey carpet, in an empty room, swamped in darkness. Steam rises from my body as I shed a collection of human clothes. Somewhere on the ground is the paper with Zahra's image, stained with blood. Everything is breaking, after all... What remains? What remains but this eternal loneliness. This abandonment of all desire. What remains, but Zahra's yellow scarf in my thin, pale, hands, still maintaining its complete form. *** *Hawa.* The words escape my lips, blending with memories and language, traveling down the stairwell. Looking at her terrified eyes, I wonder what it is she hears? I follow her into the lobby. *Hawa.* She is frozen at the desk, looking at my hideous face. I walk to her and, delicately, place Zahra's scarf around her shoulders. With my stolen flesh I touch her face, whispering this prayer: > [!poem] > *Hawa, my daughter, I wish to tell you that there is nothing that can be done.* > > *Death settles and has its way, corruption is the nature of your world.* > > *Still, I will mend what I can.* > > *For as inevitable is the destruction of your world, so is my love for you.* > > *[Forgive me.](https://youtu.be/KdCHc7ChkEs?si=G51ig2t5qJDPO11V&t=610)* *** [[Qareen, 2025]] [[2025-11-19 Be Somewhere]] [[2025-08-04 God]] [[2025-04-08 Skin]]