"The taste of qat is endlessly sweet."
I didn't say it out of pride. I said it the way a man presses a final seal onto a document he already knows will be burned.
The words left my mouth in fragments, because my lips had almost forgotten how to part. It wasn't silence, and it wasn't fear.
It was the **bajma** I'd built inside my cheek—a dense pack of premium **bayadh**, leaf stacked on leaf with the careful patience of a pampered man who believes precision is part of pleasure.
This wasn't a qat session.
It was a **monument**.
A green monument that trapped the air, pulled my face to the left on its own, and made me feel like I was carrying in my mouth a weight meant only for a lazy king.
And in that hour—yes. I truly was a lazy king.
My fingers held the next leaf as if it would add another stone to a tiny palace inside my cheek. My mind floated. No complete thought. No complete conscience. Just a gentle current dragging me to a place where you don't need to be good or bad.
It's enough to simply exist.
A cheap existence.
But a tempting one.
---
I sat on the wall of **Cairo Castle in Taiz**, where the air learns what height means—where people below look like a failed idea repeating itself without end. I leaned back against an old cushion. I knew its smell better than I knew the smell of home. My shoulder sank into it until even my bones felt rested.
Then I looked down.
O Lord… Taiz looked like a stray beehive. No clear purpose—only motion. In Al-Musalla and Al-Tahrir, people were tense dots: running, stopping, arguing, reconciling, then repeating the same loop the next day, as if they were prisoners inside an old program.
I saw two young men shoving each other at a street vendor.
I saw a man yelling at a child over something trivial.
I saw a woman dragging a bag heavier than her back, walking like she was carrying a life that wasn't hers.
Everything was small from up here.
Even disasters.
And I was above it. Nothing touched me except the cool mountain breeze sliding across my face like a polite slap.
In that moment I didn't feel outright arrogance—only something darker: **quiet contempt**. Not contempt because they were poor or weak, but because they ran as if running could change the ending.
As for me, I had stopped running a long time ago.
My life—if it could be called a life—had shrunk into three words:
qat. my cushion. the view.
A voice inside me said: *This is enough.*
And another voice—one I'd kept buried for years—asked: *Enough for whom?*
I lifted a new bayadh leaf. Thin. Greenish. Its edge gleamed with a trace of moisture. I knew the shape of that leaf better than I knew my own face in the mirror. I placed it onto the bajma with care, as if I were adding another layer to a fortress that protected me from everything, even from myself.
Then I said calmly, like someone reciting a memorized maxim:
"Whoever owns this view… and this bayadh… owns the keys to happiness."
It was an easy sentence.
The best thing about it was that it demanded no proof.
---
Then the **taqreeha** started knocking inside my skull.
It wasn't a gentle high. My taqreeha was always a heavy guest—entering without permission and rearranging the furniture of my mind with violence.
My eyelids grew heavy.
My breath lengthened.
The veins in my neck rose like the taut strings of an oud.
I knew the pattern. If I let the wave complete its path, I would reach the place where only one feeling remains: **false peace**.
But this time, peace was not alone in the room.
At first, I thought it was my blood pressure—an odd echo in my ear. Then came an unnatural stillness, as if the wind itself had been caught in the mountain's throat.
And finally, the silence inside my head split open.
No human voice.
No jinn voice.
A cold, dry voice with no emotion—like it had been copied from an official document and buried for centuries.
It spoke directly inside my skull:
"Do you want qat… or do you want a future?"
My fingers tensed.
A simple question—the kind that drags an entire history of humiliation behind it.
I laughed inwardly, short and soundless, like someone answering a preacher who arrived ten years too late.
*A future?* What future is left for a man whose lifetime is melting into his cheek?
But the voice didn't vanish.
It returned, sharper, testing me:
"Choose."
---
My hand rose to add another leaf. It froze midair—not because I regretted it, but because my body refused to cooperate.
Then the headache hit.
Not ordinary pain. A hard, precise blow—like a steel nail driven into my forehead—lighting thin lines of fire behind my eyes. For a moment I thought my skull would split in two and the question would crawl out between the halves, untouched.
"Ah… enough!"
I tried to scream, but my full mouth allowed only a muffled hiss. I stood up unsteadily. The wall twisted in my vision. The ground swayed under my feet, as if the castle itself had lost its certainty.
My hand shot toward my pocket by habit.
Panadol. One pill—just one.
My fingers touched nothing.
I'd left the pack at home.
As usual.
I stood there breathing hard, cursing myself, cursing qat, cursing my head—and then something I didn't expect happened. In the middle of pain, an old part of my mind opened, so the kayf hadn't dulled yet.
A calculating part.
Cold.
I started thinking—not like an addict in pain, but like someone watching his own life from the outside for the first time in years.
*What is happening?* This isn't just a headache. The question itself is causing the pain, as if something inside me is punishing me for not answering correctly.
And with each pulse, images that weren't mine slipped into my mind:
— A narrow room with no windows.
— A steady white light that didn't blink.
— A man is placing a black mask on a table.
— A sheet of paper with a strange triangle drawn on it—pyramid-like, three points, as if it were a mark, a seal.
— And a single phrase, crossed out again and again as if someone was trying to erase it on purpose: **The future is not a gift. The future is a contract.**
I gasped.
These weren't my memories. I'd never entered such a room. I'd never seen that triangle in my life.
And yet the images were clear, as if they had happened yesterday.
Only then did I feel the real danger for the first time: not the danger of falling from the castle wall, but the danger of **my sense of self collapsing**.
If something could place thoughts inside my head, then the world that looked so small from this height wasn't the only world.
The voice returned, closer now, as if whispering from inside my ear:
"You understand now. Your body is finished… but the show isn't finished."
I let out a broken laugh.
*My body is finished?* Maybe. I knew it better than any preacher: the tremor in my hand, the sour smell in my mouth, the nights where sleep didn't come—only a heavy numbness.
I wasn't a man fighting to survive, because survival itself had become a cage.
And yet that merchant-logic—measuring everything like weights on a scale—woke up inside me with sudden clarity:
If this voice is real… if these memories are foreign… then maybe there's a third option beyond "qat" and "future" the way people usually mean them.
Maybe there's an **exit**—not from the castle, but from my entire life.
---
The headache eased for one second, then returned harsher.
And instead of fleeing, I began to observe it like a phenomenon.
Every time I reached for qat, the pain stung me. Every time I thought of a future, the room appeared—the mask, the pyramid.
This wasn't preaching.
This was a **condition**.
And conditions are made with entities you cannot see.
I took a step, then another, until I stood close to the edge.
The city sounded different here—not ants anymore, but distant voices rising from a well. And the castle above me, with its stones and history, felt like a massive tombstone.
Without realizing it, my other hand had grabbed the bag of qat. It was warm and damp, holding the smell I knew best: the smell of a postponed decision.
I raised it in front of my eyes and said to myself:
*If I stay here, I will die slowly. That is certain.*
*If I jump, I will die quickly. That is also certain.*
But between a slow death with no meaning and a fast death that might open a door to something else—even if it's only an illusion—which is the more logical choice?
The voice returned, as if smiling without a mouth:
"Good. That is the correct calculation."
Coldness ran through my limbs. Not fear—clarity.
I said in a broken voice, barely forcing the words past the bajma:
"If there is a price… let it be now."
Then I did something I never imagined I could do while fully inside the kayf.
I let go.
First, I let go of the bag. It fell between air and stone, a small green thing leaving my hand at last, as if it meant to judge me on the way down.
Then I took one final step—to where there was no step after it.
I didn't jump like a brave man.
I'm not brave.
I jumped like someone signing the final paper because every paper before it had been a lie.
---
The air slapped my face.
The castle flashed past me in gray.
The world shrank into two lines: above and below.
And in the fall—between one heartbeat and the next—the headache stopped.
Not because I had rested, but because something else began to work.
I heard a click inside my head, like an old lock snapping open.
And in midair, in front of my eyes, a thin layer of writing unfolded—neither dream nor hallucination—letters transparent like compressed fog, appearing and holding steady.
It wasn't Arabic.
But I understood it instantly, as if understanding itself was being poured into my mind:
[TRIAL: FUTURE]
[CONDITION: CHOICE CONFIRMED]
[ERROR: BODY INCOMPATIBLE]
[INITIATING TRANSFER…]
I gasped, and my lungs filled with air as if they wanted to protest.
*So it isn't only a voice… It's a system. A test. A contract.*
The pyramid appeared again—sharp and clear—then wove together with the black mask on the table, and a hand writing beside it:
"Unmade."
Then everything went dark, the way a screen goes dark when the power is cut.
Stone rushed up.
I saw jagged rocks swelling larger, faster.
I saw the bag hit first, green splattering on gray like a foolish wound.
And in the final instant—before impact—the voice returned, not as a question but as a verdict:
"Now… the future begins."
My body struck.
All sound stopped.
But instead of nothingness…
something else was waiting.