The Zohari — Part Two

Entering the Faqih's House

We stepped through the old wooden door, surrounded by ancient olive trees. The room the old woman led us into was small, lit by dim oil lamps that cast dancing shadows on the walls. It was filled with the scent of herbs I couldn't name, and a silence that hummed with unease. My parents and the lady sat in the corner, while they placed me on a woven mat in the center of the room.

We waited for nearly an hour. The old woman didn't speak, and neither could I. She just watched me with narrow eyes and that smile I still couldn't decipher. Then, slowly, a door on the far side of the room opened, and a very old man appeared — tall, wearing a white robe and a white turban, with a long white beard. His eyes were strikingly deep, as if they could see things others couldn't.

The Faqih Mimouni

The Faqih Mimouni approached me slowly, without a word. He sat across from me and stared for several long minutes. Then he smiled softly and said in a calm, deep voice: "Don't be afraid, my child. I can see them around you, but they won't harm you tonight." A chill ran through my entire body.

He turned to my parents and said: "Your son is not sick, and he has not suffered a psychological shock. He is a first-degree Zohari child. This type is extremely rare — they carry a natural ability to glimpse the unseen world through their dreams. Jinn know these children. They attempt to make contact from early childhood, either to use them or to protect them. What happened to your son is that a jinn tried to communicate with him that night, frightened him terribly, and caused this condition."

My father looked at him in disbelief and said: "And how do you treat it?" The Faqih replied: "I don't treat it. I only mediate. I open a channel of conversation between what is unseen and what is here."

The Session

The Faqih asked everyone to leave the room except for me. My father tried to object, but the Faqih said to him calmly: "This is not a choice. What is about to take place here cannot be witnessed by many eyes." They left slowly, and the door closed behind them.

The Faqih began reciting in a low voice. I couldn't make out the words, but I felt each syllable as if it were colliding with the air around me. After some time, he burned some herbs in a small copper vessel. A thick white smoke filled the room and my eyes began to water.

Then something happened that I did not expect.

The Other Voice

I opened my mouth — after a full year of silence — and said: "I don't want to leave."

I was not speaking of my own will. These were not my words. The voice was coming from my throat, but it was not my voice. The Faqih went quiet and said in a steady tone: "I know you don't want to leave. But this is not your place. This boy has his own path, and you don't belong to it."

I heard myself say in a strange, hoarse voice: "I have been his guardian since his birth."

The Faqih replied without flinching: "No. You were afraid for him, and you harmed him. Whoever protects through fear doesn't protect — they imprison."

A long silence followed. Then the Faqih said in a final tone: "Go. And if you truly love him, you will not return."

The Moment Everything Changed

After that silence, I felt something rise slowly from my chest, like cold smoke seeping through my ribs. Then, in a single instant, my body felt impossibly light — as if a weight that had been pressing on my shoulders for an entire year had been lifted all at once.

My parents came in after hearing my voice from outside. I saw my mother standing at the door, her eyes full of tears. She said in a breaking voice: "My son? Are you okay?" I answered her for the first time in a year: "I'm okay, Mama."

I cannot describe that moment of embrace. My mother was crying and laughing at the same time. My father stood quietly in the corner, wiping his eyes without a word.

The Faqih's Instructions and the Return

The Faqih said to us: "He will need some time until everything returns to normal. Give him these herbs in warm water every day for a week. And when you return home, open the windows and let the air come in."

We left the Faqih's house before dawn. Unlike the journey there, no shadow followed us on the way back. The earth beneath our feet was quiet, and the sky was beginning to turn pale gray before daybreak.

In the car, I looked out the window and said to my mother: "The shadow is gone." She looked at me, then looked outside and said quietly: "Yes, my son. It's gone."

The End

Days passed, and I recovered gradually. I ate on my own, stood on my own, and slept without nightmares. Exactly seven days later, it was as if nothing had happened.

But the dreams never fully stopped. I still occasionally see things before they occur — only now they come more clearly, and with far less terror. As if the jinn the Faqih called "my guardian" had been suppressing the visions all along, not releasing them.

As for the Faqih Mimouni — I never returned to him. And when my mother tried to find that village again years later, she was told that the house had been in ruins for a long time, and that no one knew anything about the Faqih.

I don't know whether everything that happened was real or not. But I know one thing: since that night in Al Hoceima, the dark has never frightened me the way it once did.