Written by: Ahmed Al-Majdouli

Youthful recklessness. I entered the cemetery and started walking among the graves, only for something unexpected to happen. Shortly after dawn, Uncle Saadan saw a person lying on the ground as if dead without a grave. He rushed towards him and brought him into his room. That person was me. Uncle Saadan tried to revive me, asking, "What's wrong? What happened? Why did you enter the cemetery at night?" I opened my eyes but couldn't answer. Uncle Saadan carried me and took me home. He left me near the door and ran inside, calling for my aunt Najia. He said, "Help, Najia, I found your nephew lying among the graves, and he is now in shock and unable to speak." My aunt quickly came down and found me like a statue, not moving, just staring with my eyes. She did something I didn't understand; she covered her head with a scarf and started saying, "Submission to the masters, submission to the masters." Then she placed her hand on my head and began muttering strange, incomprehensible words. At that moment, I felt as if I was about to drown and was saved. My breathing was rapid, and my forehead was sweating. Then my aunt took out a small bottle with red oil from her pocket and started sprinkling it on me, saying, "Blessing of the masters, blessing of the masters." I didn't understand what was happening around me. Then my aunt asked me, "What's wrong, my son? What happened to you?" I looked at her and then at Uncle Saadan, indicating that I wanted to speak to her alone. She said to Saadan, "Thank you for your help, he is better now. You have tired yourself with us." Uncle Saadan left after making sure I was okay. I didn't want anyone to know what had happened to me inside the cemetery. I only wanted to tell my aunt. I started telling her the details of what happened. I entered the cemetery aimlessly, just out of curiosity and recklessness. I started hearing someone calling me, "Badr, Badr." I thought it was Uncle Saadan's son, Rabee, who is about my age. I said to him, "What do you want, son of Saadan?" But he didn't answer. I turned towards the sound but saw nothing. The darkness was intense, and I could only see the grave markers. A frightening sight. I continued my way and reached the farthest point in the cemetery where the very old graves are, hundreds of years old. At that moment, I felt I could no longer move, I couldn't walk, as if I was shackled. Then I saw something unbelievable. I saw a large shadow coming towards me, getting closer and closer. No features were visible, and it couldn't be distinguished because it was indeed a black shadow without features. But the most terrifying thing was its voice, it was rough and said to me, "You will die, Badr." I was trembling with fear and started begging it to leave me alone. It told me it was a leader of the jinn and a master of treasure guardians. Then it proposed to leave me alone on one condition. It said, "My condition to leave you, Badr, is that you become my servant and that there be a pact of absolute obedience between us. If you break this pact, my revenge will be severe and painful. I will turn your life upside down, and you will regret it when regret is of no use." Out of extreme fear, I agreed to its condition. It asked me to repeat words after it that I didn't understand. After that, I was no longer aware of what was happening around me until I saw you in front of me, my aunt. Please, you know about these things, try to save me from what I feel and expel that terrifying creature from my mind and my entire life. At that moment, I saw a change in my aunt's features, who said, "Do you want me to remove the blessing from you? A great door to abundant wealth has been opened for you, congratulations." I asked her in surprise, "What are you saying, my aunt?" She replied, "This is your chance, a chance that will never come again. The jinn have chosen you, and if you disobey their orders, they will take severe revenge on you, and it is not far-fetched that they will take revenge on your aunt as well." I looked at my aunt, not knowing then that she was hiding a big and dangerous secret from me. Then she said to me, "You will become of great status and value, everyone will seek to please you. Do not fear anything, I will always be with you and by your side." A few days later, I traveled with my aunt to meet a well-known sorcerer in another city. This sorcerer was a Jewish expert in magic. His rituals when I first met him showed me that he was extremely wealthy through his attire and the luxurious car he drove. I spent four years in that city with this sorcerer and learned from him all kinds of magic, its methods, and techniques. During these four years, the people in Badr's village were divided over the reason for his disappearance. Some said he emigrated with his aunt, and others said he had died. The important thing was that Badr's return was a surprise to all the villagers. Badr says: I returned to the village completely changed. What do you think of a 15-year-old boy spending four years with a Jewish sorcerer surrounded by charlatans and impostors from all directions? I absorbed magic at a young age and excelled in it to the extent that the Jewish sorcerer started calling me the heir of the devil. I began to show the villagers some of my abilities. I told a neighbor named Malika that her son would return from his trip and bring much good with him. A few days later, what I told her happened. It was not a revelation of the unseen but rather assistance from the jinn. In the village, there was a man named Haj Zakaria, who had a son named Wael, five years old. One day, Wael went out to play in front of the house and then disappeared, and they couldn't find him. They searched for him throughout the small village and its surroundings but couldn't locate him. After exhausting their search, Wael's mother knocked on my door, pleading for my help, saying, "Our Sheikh, help me find my child, and I will give you whatever you want." I smiled and said, "Calm down, I will help you with this matter." Then I entered the house and secluded myself in my room, asking my servants from the underworld about the child. They told me his location and what had happened to him. I went out to Wael's mother and said, "Your son is with some people who found him lost, and this evening they will bring him to you." On the same day, shortly after sunset, a man and others from a distant village came, carrying Wael and handed him to his parents. Wael's mother and father were overjoyed. Haj Zakaria, Wael's father, said he would give me a part of his agricultural land. People started calling me Sheikh or Our Sheikh, even though I was not yet twenty years old. One day, two women visited me at home. One of them said her gold had been stolen, and she knew who had stolen it. She claimed that her sister-in-law, who was present, was the thief due to their strained relationship. The sister-in-law swore she was not the thief and asked me to reveal the truth. I left them and entered my seclusion, returning after a few minutes with the final word on the matter of the stolen gold. I looked at the woman whose gold was stolen and said without preamble, "Your husband took the gold, sold it, and intends to marry another woman in the city." The woman began to wail and cry, saying, "I wish you hadn't told me this." Meanwhile, her sister-in-law was happy, laughing and gloating because she had been accused of theft. Badr says: With such stories, I began to build my reputation, and everyone started talking about my miracles, and people came to me from everywhere. Although everything I did was nothing but charlatanism and deception. People believed that my greatest aid was the jinn, but no, my greatest aid was the ignorance of people and their distance from religion. I remember we had a dispute over land boundaries, and a quarrel and argument occurred between me and the neighbor who owned the adjacent land, which made me very angry, so I decided to take revenge on him. I entered my seclusion for this purpose, the purpose of revenge, and the next night, our neighbor became paralyzed. The matter became terrifying for the rest of the villagers; they began to avoid angering me and sought to please me for fear of my revenge. People started coming to me for malicious deeds, and I would carry them out. I didn't care about anything but money and nothing else. I even preferred acts of evil, revenge, diseases, and separation. It was enough for the visitor to bring me an item or a picture of the person they wanted revenge on, and I would do the necessary and send my servants to afflict them with whatever I wanted, from illness to madness. All these deeds were in exchange for gifts, offerings, and money. I became the richest person in the village, bought two more houses, and acquired vast lands. I could have moved to live in the city, lived in the most luxurious house, and driven the most expensive car, but I preferred to stay in my aunt's old house adjacent to the cemetery. In that cemetery, I buried the magical works and sometimes took what I needed from the bodies of the dead how an ordinary young man’s life turned upside down after he entered the world of magic against his will. A very strange and bizarre story, but it is true and comes from the harsh reality. I will tell you the story in the words of its owner. Badr says: My story began when I was 15 years old. I grew up in my aunt's house. Everyone in the village looked at us with caution because my aunt was known as Najia, Najia the fortune-teller. She practiced divination, fortune-telling, and a bit of witchcraft and magic, exploiting the ignorance and weak faith of the villagers. I know nothing about my parents and remember nothing about them; even my aunt always avoided talking about them. I lived with my aunt in an old mud house adjacent to the village cemetery, which was guarded by Uncle Saadan, who lived there with his family. He had a son about my age. One night, while walking in the village and on my way back, I felt the urge to enter the cemetery just to challenge myself. Recklessness and inventing myths about myself that had no basis in reality. I indulged in acts of evil and separating couples for no reason, just for money. How ignorant and reckless I was. And because God is merciful to His servants, He sent me signs and messages confirming that I was on the path to my destruction, but in my arrogance, I ignored these divine messages and did not repent from my satanic actions. When suspicions began to arise about me and my connections with jinn and magic, I decided to get married just to silence people. Years later, I had a daughter while still living in the forbidden life adorned by the devils of humans and jinn. After that, I gained the ability to uncover buried treasures. Once, while passing by the house of Haj Zakaria, Wael's father, I stood in front of the house and looked down without realizing it. I had a strange feeling that there was something beneath the house. I called Haj Zakaria, and he came out to me. I said to him, "I need to talk to you about something important." He replied, "At your service, Sheikh, what is it?" I told him, "The matter I want to discuss with you is a secret that I don't want anyone to know." He replied, surprised, "Hopefully, it's something good, Sheikh." I smiled and said, "Great good, there is a treasure beneath your house, guarded by strong protectors, but I can handle it, and I am the only one who can extract this treasure." Haj Zakaria stood in shock, silenced by the news, then said, "What should we do now?" I told him, "Tomorrow, I will come with someone else, and I will tell you what we need to do." The next day, just before midnight, I went with Uncle Saadan to Haj Zakaria's house. We entered in the cover of darkness, and I drew symbols on the ground and walls. At exactly midnight, I lit incense and stood in the middle of the house, chanting incantations and calling out the names of the jinn. I asked all the house's inhabitants to leave and wait outside. After being alone there, I received a sign of the appointment, so I went out and told Haj Zakaria that the digging would be in two days and that only he should be with us in the house. I also told him that he would take a third of the treasure, and the rest would be mine. Haj Zakaria agreed and said, "Whatever you do and say, I am with you, Sheikh. This treasure is thanks to you." Two days later, it was time to dig. I stood in front of the house and began reciting incantations. Zakaria told me he heard a strange sound in his ear. I told him, "That's a good sign." I entered the house carrying a large black rooster, which I slaughtered in the middle of the star I had drawn in the middle of the house, then sprinkled the blood on the walls. Moments later, Haj Zakaria shouted, pointing to a corner of the wall near the door, "Here." I asked him, "What did you see?" He said, "A small stone door with non-Arabic writings and strange symbols." I marked the spot and instructed Uncle Saadan and another man to dig there. I advised them, "If you hear a scream coming from the place, stop immediately, and the same if you see a black cat." The process went smoothly, and we extracted the buried treasure. I took my full share and gave the homeowner his share. After that, I began to show signs of immense wealth. Haj Zakaria left the village and moved to the city with his family, becoming very wealthy. I became known for extracting treasures, and every treasure seeker came to me, of course, in exchange for a significant share and a known percentage. I extracted many valuable treasures and made new pacts with the leaders of the lower jinn. I even learned another type of rare ancient magic, the magic of the Pharaohs. I had money and strong influence in the village and beyond. One day, while walking in the village for some purpose, I was stopped by the sound of a Quran recording from the house of an old woman sitting in front of her door. I stood near her and began listening to the Quran as if hearing it for the first time. While I was doing so, the old woman noticed me, raised her head, looked at me, screamed, and ran away. When asked by the villagers what was wrong, she said, "I saw Sheikh Badr in the form of a devil, his face hairy and ugly." But there was no turning back. Years passed, and my daughter grew into a young woman, with many suitors desiring her for her beauty and wealth. Do you remember our neighbor with whom I had a dispute over land boundaries and whom I cursed with paralysis? Yes, he is still paralyzed despite the passing years. He had a son named Asim who wanted to marry my daughter. This is what my jinn servants told me. They also told me that my daughter wanted to marry him. I told her, "You will not marry him no matter what, and I will never agree to it." I was very angry. I entered my seclusion to start sending curses on that unlucky family because they had a bad neighbor like me. That night, we began hearing screams coming from their house. Neighbors and villagers rushed to see what had happened to them, except for me, of course. I was sitting in my house, smiling slyly and thinking, "This is very good. I will make Asim and his family suffer so much that he won't even think about marrying my daughter." Asim was screaming hysterically, tearing his clothes, and running as if fleeing from something. Two days later, people found him sleeping in the cemetery. They brought him back home, but he soon ran away again and wandered aimlessly. Asim had lost his mind, and at night he wouldn't stop screaming, heard by all the villagers. I had cursed him with a malicious spell, black lower magic. Asim's mother realized that what happened to her son was because of me, so she came to me, pleading, even trying to kiss my hands and feet. I told her arrogantly, "I will make your son a lesson for others, and he will suffer for the rest of his life." She left, crying bitterly. It didn't affect me; my heart was like a piece of iron, devoid of feeling. Then Asim's mother returned with the villagers, pleading for mercy for this poor mother and the paralyzed father. I told Asim's mother, "Now you know who I am and the consequences of defying me or trying to approach my daughter. I will lift the spell from your son, but on one condition: you must carry your paralyzed husband and son and leave the village entirely, and you must give me your house and land." The woman had no choice but to comply and agreed to the harsh condition, announcing her acceptance in front of everyone. For those who thought I had reached the peak of evil and harm, I say listen, for what comes next is worse and more evil. My aunt Najia used to perform magic for the villagers and neighboring villages, and they would come to me to break it. She was the disease, and I was the cure; she was the illness, and I was the treatment. But before I treated them and broke their spells, I took all their money, and for those who had no money, I took their land or house. Uncle Saadan did not fall short on his part; he brought me many clients or victims, to be precise. People started coming to me from other distant cities and even from other countries, as my fame spread far and wide. Even a high-ranking official in our area, whose son my aunt had bewitched with a spell of diseases, couldn't find a cure for him. He was exhausted from visiting doctors and hospitals and was about to take him abroad for treatment when Uncle Saadan visited his office and requested a meeting. When he entered, he said, "I came to you, sir, as an advisor for the sake of God after learning what happened to your son. In our village, there is a blessed man with miracles, and many have been healed by him. You have tried all the doctors with no result, so why not try Sheikh Badr? He will surely help you." That same day, the high-ranking official visited me at my house with his sick son. I treated him, or rather broke the spell on him, and he immediately recovered as if nothing was wrong. His father was overjoyed and showered me with money. But what good is all this money if one is drowning in the mire of vice and major sins