The Hashish-Smoker's Grave-Trial Poem by Mystic Qalandar

One Friday, amid the fire-veiled throng of the sermon, a hashish-wanderer sat, the vapors of his vice curling like forgotten prayers. The preacher hurled thunder of the Grave—of Nakir and Munkar rising from earth's womb, those hammer-angels who crack the soul's facade to unveil the unprepared self in the Barzakh void.

Fear, that veiled archon, stirred in his marrow, a serpent uncoiling from the root of his being. He fled to the bone-yard of Malkhah, ears sealed to the chorus of caution, eyes fixed on the abyss-mirror of an open grave. There, in its cold embrace, he lay down—thirst his guru of detachment, hunger the whip for his ego, curiosity the hook in his restless soul. Trembling, sleep took him, a samadhi laced with the dreams of bhang.

Then, fate's irony danced: two Sikh sentinels, turbaned jinn of this iron age, trudged through the necropolis on their shortcut, their guns and shot the worldly burdens of their own barzakh. They spied the sleeper in the grave and roused him with rifle-strokes—a harsh and sudden awakening. 'Why do you mimic the dead? ' Their question pierced like an angel's barb.

Trembling, he beheld them as Nakir and Munkar made flesh, azure-veiled enforcers of the Sirat Bridge. 'I scaled the wall of illusion to evade you, ' he stammered, his heart a moth in flame. 'Truly, you are the Questioners of the Tomb! '

Amused by his frenzy, they bartered a grace: 'Carry our load to the garrison on the cliff, and freedom will unbind you.' Obedient, the soul-hauler bowed, shouldering the ammunition—the leaden karma of empires. Released, he bolted homeward, the shadow of death nipping at his heels like a phantom.

Next Friday, the preacher's blaze reignited the myth. The smoker rose, luminous with trial-won light, and proclaimed to the mosque's sea of faces: 'The mullah weaves veils! I have plunged the grave-ocean and faced the interrogators raw. They were no cherubim of wrath, but earth's soldier-djinn. ‘What deed binds you here? ' they asked. ‘Carry our weight—we will aid your rise.' I yielded, and they bestowed a hundred rupees—a seal of Heaven's own writ! '

In that thunderclap of realization, the esoteric veil tore: the grave is no terror-throne, but the mind's own forge, where imagination alloys with archetype. The angels of dread wear the garb of the world's burdens; the ego, by surrendering to the load it is commanded to carry, crosses its private Sirat—not on wrathful pinions, but by fearing the trial and thus transmuting it into the soul's release.

And so the smoker became a sage: what we flee as Munkar is often the very weight of Mercy we were born to bear.

—December,29,2025