Qaf by Mina Hamedi
The fate of a person is written on their skull.
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There is a medium who lives in a small town along the Euphrates.
She wanders to nearby villages selling wares gathered from the land. Caraway for the evil eye, coriander for the skin, lime for cooling the blood. She sells fennel for heavy coughs and kohl, the famous powder of antimony. You apply it to the edge of the eyelids. Verdigris for the eyes, mastic for smoking, and cherries, for the pleasure on your tongue. She preaches of spirits in the shadows, between thresholds, within colors, in the corners of your eyes.
Guardian angels, my mother calls them. They are watching over you.
Why do they only appear when I’m angry?
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25:11 They say the Hour is a lie,
but We have prepared a Blaze
for those who say the Hour is a lie.
25:12 When it sees them from afar,
they will hear its roaring and sighing.
25:13 And when they are thrown into a narrow place,
they will cry out.
25:14 ˹They will be told,˺ “Do not cry only once for destruction,
cry many times over!”
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The small town along the Euphrates was governed by three brothers. Their wives gathered water from the nearby wells. The men smoked and ate and ran fingers over beads as they planned their futures.
The medium wails of beings in the deepest waters. Black and white specters, patterns in the form of hollow faces. A star-like decapod, with legs that can slide across seafloors. Siphonophores made of venom and sand. Coral skeletons with tentacles that wrap around prey. Long, thin snakes that once tread land, and now hide in the seabed, between the cracks in the earth, cracks that will swallow us whole one day.
The medium cries out for someone to listen. Please, she says, Please believe me. I have a double and she is not human.
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39: 26 Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom and spread its wings toward the south?
39: 27 Does the eagle soar at your command and build its nest on high?
39: 28 It dwells on a cliff and stays there at night; a rocky crag is its stronghold.
39: 29 From there it looks for food; its eyes detect it from afar.
39: 30 Its young ones feast on blood, and where the slain are, there it is.
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The small town along the Euphrates was known to tremble. Fault lines that need to move, to somehow fit back together.
They blamed it on the medium, calling her a witch rather than a seer with good intentions.
Once there was a wealthy elderly merchant who spent his days hiding in his home. When night fell, he would lay upon his divan as his three daughters recanted his tales of travel from their childhoods. The youngest had a wild imagination, regaling her family with stories of spirits and otherworldly beings. But one night, she was agitated. Troubled. She foretold the impending descent of the bizarre upon their town. A colt with the face of a young boy. Twin boys joined at the heart. A lamb with eyes the color of pomegranate seeds. A lion covered in scales. A holy woman.
It would be the end as they knew it. You must heed this holy woman, she is the medium who has lived in our town for years!
My foolish daughter, that medium is a witch, the merchant said. There is no such thing as a holy woman!
The walls of the merchant’s home began to quiver. Shadows rose up the walls. The roof collapsed.
His daughters sobbed, cradling their father’s lifeless body as their husbands tried to dig through the rubble.
The youngest stood, transfixed. He defied the holy woman, she said.
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7:13 Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.
7:14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
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There is a medium who lives in a small town along the Euphrates.
When she reached the age of 90, she retreated from her wanderings and preachings, tending to her modest home by the riverbed, the flowers that broke through the marsh.
Every day, she’d remove her slippers and step into the water until it reached just above her waist.
The fate of a person is written on their skull.
This can be changed. She will show you how.
Mina Hamedi is an Iranian/Turkish writer and literary agent at Janklow & Nesbit Associates. She represents adult literary fiction and nonfiction and is drawn to stories from around the world. Her writing has appeared in Joyland, BOMB Magazine, Off Assignment and Catapult, among others. She is the co-founder, along with Naomi Falk, of the gothic art magazine, NAUSIKAE. Mina lives in New York with her husband and two Turkish street cats, Saffron and Lemon.