Chefchaouen, Morocco, November 7, 2023.

   Heavy panting. Fast running along with adrenaline-pumping inside his terrified veins. Beads of sweat covered his small forehead. Nothing made sense, nothing seemed real, yet the feeling of terror was the most genuine thing he ever felt in his entire life.

   His pace was getting faster with every step. The air felt sticky and suffocating, and his legs felt numb. His eyes shifted sharply into the fast view in front of him; it was dark and unfamiliar to his aghast soul.

   He paused, catching his long-gone breath. He looked at his shaking legs and his bloody hands that rested briefly on his weak knees. “Not again,” he said and resumed running. The darkness faded slowly with every fast leap he took; he didn’t stop running until his eyes glimpsed something forcing him to stop roughly and almost fall from the horrific place he was in.

   A massacre was a simple word encounter with what he saw. His breath stuck between his lungs, refusing to get out of his unsteady body. His hands were shaking uncontrollably, and his warm tears ran over his hot burning cheeks, hurting him.

   He couldn’t move, he couldn’t believe his own eyes, he couldn’t believe it was too late yet again.

   Aside from his fast-beaten heart, no muscle dared to move closer. He felt ravaged and enraged. The city that is no longer recognized was filled with burning dead bodies, shredded flesh, and running blood. His nose itched terribly from the unbearable smell of blood running between demolished buildings that looked like a waterfall covering the cracked ground mixed with burning flesh.

   Everything seemed slow and almost not moving; he blinked his eyes once, waking himself up from the heart-dropping shock. A horrific cry filled his ears, forcing him to move his head toward it. Dark, cold black shadowy figure standing far. The city was dim, completely dark, yet that colossal figure stood out clearly. Something behind it gave the figure an absolute light and aura that seemed foreign to it.

   His body moved on its own; walking in a leap to stop the dark figure even though he didn’t know how or what it was, he kept his pace and stopped again when his vision became clear. A young, tall, muscled man wearing an endless black cloth with an oversized hood, nothing was visual from the man’s body, but his tall defined figure was clear underneath the black undefined cloth that looked merged with the cracked ground.

   Hundreds of black wisps flew around his figure. The man moved to the left, revealing what was giving him all this light. Behind the wisps was a beautiful woman with a devastating face and shaking, beaten body and unstopped, bleeding back. Next to her were bright golden feathers lying on the ground with splashed blood over them.

   The man laughed at her begging state and mercilessly hacked his right hand in the middle of her uprising chest. The woman screamed painfully. Around his black veined hand, an unsustainable light came from within her weak standing body. He twitched his hand inside her chest. She screamed like a dying banshee fissures the ground deeper.

   With his other hand caressing her raven hair, he watched her last tears run over her luminous pink cheeks before he ripped her heart out, the light that was covering his hand inside her erupted violently over the last pieces of the city along with screams of the last two men standing.

   “NO!” he screamed — jumping from his bed and falling hard on his face on the rough ground of his bedroom. He looked at his bed, almost not believing his luck that he was back in his room; unharmed — the room’s light turned on and his eyes laid on the beautiful woman sitting on the bed, looking at him, terrified.

   “Nabil! Are you okay?” she said with a voice filled with terror and sleepiness. He looked at his wife, who also looked unharmed, and sighed loudly. He stood up and went back to their bed next to her. She caressed his back, whispering sweet words into his left ear. He clenched her other hand as tears ran down his face. “Same nightmare?” she asked softly after wiping his warm tears.

   He didn’t answer, he just nodded and buried his sweaty head between her arms, forcing her to lie back and hug him tightly. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, it keeps happening every time,” he said after a while. “What happened this time?” she asked, kissing his forehead.

   “It’s not a nightmare anymore… it’s a vision.”

   She flinched and moved her arms away from his body, looking shocked. “What? Are you sure it’s not just a dream?!” his tears ran again over his face, overwhelmed. “but… you can’t have visions! How is that even possible!”

   “She told me… it’s a vision…” he said, resting on his back.

   “She… oh my god you mean—”

   “Jalila.” A loud gasp slipped from his wife, both resting on their backs freaking out.