The wind howled through the trees, their branches slamming against the wooden windows with a sound like soft knocking on a door in the middle of the night.
Dusk was descending slowly over the village, swallowing the colors one by one until everything turned gray, as though the world itself had put on mourning for him.
I sat far from the others, on a rock at the edge of the graveyard, watching them gather around the grave. They spoke in hushed voices, recited prayers, wept, then fell silent.
But I heard none of it.
I could only stare at the fresh earth and think that the man who had always known exactly what to say... had nothing left to say now.
He was the first person who ever taught me fear.
Not the simple fear of darkness or loneliness, but the other kind. The kind that keeps you awake long after the fire dies and the entire village has fallen asleep.
On cold nights, I used to sit beside him, watching the orange firelight dance across his face while he spoke of Aisha Qandisha, The Mule of the Graves, Shamharoush, and Bou Khanchah.
To me, those names never sounded like stories.
They sounded real.
Like things that lived just beyond the door, or at the end of the road, waiting patiently for me to fall asleep.
And I believed every word.
With all the foolishness of childhood, I believed the long shadow beside the well was not a shadow at all. I believed the sound of the wind at night might be a woman laughing. I believed the faint tapping on the window after midnight did not always come from the trees.
And now...
I no longer believe in any of it.
I grew up. Or at least, that is what I like to tell myself.
I learned that everything has an explanation, and that fear is nothing more than a trick the mind plays when it is alone.
Yet as I sat there, I felt a strange longing for those days.
Not for the stories themselves, but for that old feeling—when the world seemed larger, darker, and full of secrets.
When the funeral was over, I went back to the house.
My grandmother was inside, surrounded by women, sitting in a strange silence, as if she had become twenty years younger and a hundred years more tired.
I did not want to stay.
Something was pressing against my chest, something that drove me out into the yard without thinking.
And there, at the very end of it, behind the fig tree, was the small door.
The room no one had ever been allowed to enter.
I hesitated for a moment.
Then I pushed the door open.
Inside, nothing was as I had expected.
There was no chaos, no sign of an old man living among forgotten years. Everything was arranged with unsettling care.
Old books.
Folded papers.
And on the table, a small wooden box.
I stepped closer.
I do not know why, but before I even touched it, I felt that I should turn around, close the door, and forget everything.
But curiosity...
Curiosity had always been the worst thing about me.
I opened the box.
Inside was a small silver amulet, set with a black stone so glossy it seemed not to reflect the light, but to swallow it.
I stared at it for a long time.
Then, for reasons I could not understand, I remembered one of those distant nights, when he laughed and said:
"There are some things that do not stay buried forever."