Shadows of Fear
A Story by: Abdel Latif Moubarak – Egypt
In the farthest corner of Al-Dhababiyya Alley, “Um Al-Saad’s” sanctuary exhaled an ancient scent of incense and myrrh. Mamdouh entered with hesitant steps, carrying a crushing weight in his chest and a firm resolve to lift the veil on his future. The fortune teller sat behind a worn wooden table, facing a dish of pure copper filled with black ink mixed with oil.
She took his hand, opened his palm, and, swaying her head, whispered in a voice as sharp as shattered glass: “My boy, I see a great and terrifying destiny for you… The Mandala does not lie. You will fall dead on the night of the middle of the third month after your fortieth birthday, and your end will be a swift, sharp cut delivered by the person closest to you.”
Those words struck Mamdouh like lightning. He left the place with a trembling body, guarding that prophecy in the depths of his heart like a suspended death sentence.
Days passed and fear settled in Mamdouh’s mind, turning his daily life into a ritual of constant terror. He abandoned his dream of investing in the stock market and founding his own company; what was the point of building a future destined to shatter against the axe of fate at forty?
His isolation from others gradually grew. Whenever a friend or neighbor approached him, he recalled the fortune teller’s words: “The person closest to you.” He began to see potential betrayal in every smile and a trap set to end his life in every gesture of affection.
Upon reaching thirty, he met Salma, a pure-hearted woman who loved him genuinely and wished to share her life with him. But Mamdouh feared intimacy: he saw marriage as a way to bring “the closest person” into his home to kill him.
He broke off the engagement with icy coldness, offering no logical explanation and leaving behind a broken heart. He decided to live alone in a secluded apartment on the outskirts of the city, furnishing it with as few sharp or wooden objects as possible, far from anything that could cause injury or danger.
Mamdouh entered his fortieth year. Every passing day felt like stepping closer to the gallows. His hair began to fall out, his skin turned pale, and his eyes grew sunken from endless insomnia.
He started counting the days and hours to reach the “night of the middle of the third month.” He locked himself inside his house, disconnected the phone cord, and resigned from his modest job. The home transformed into a dark prison, and his life remained suspended between terror and anticipation.
The promised night arrived: the middle of the third month after his fortieth birthday. Mamdouh sat in the center of the room, on the floor, stripped of any object that could be used against him, far from windows and doors.
His heart beat so violently it felt as though it would break his ribs. He froze at every whistle of the wind outside. The first hour of the night passed, then the second; midnight arrived, and the minutes trickled by as slowly as tar.
The first rays of sunlight filtered through the gaps in the lowered curtains. The morning call to prayer echoed through the air, filling the horizon with peace. That sound reached Mamdouh’s ears like the call of a soul returning from death.
He looked at the clock hanging on the wall: the night was over. The third month had passed, the promised day had gone, and he was still alive, with warm blood in his veins and a steady heartbeat, completely untouched and unharmed.
Mamdouh was seized by a state of total bewilderment. He rushed out of his apartment, running like a madman toward Al-Dhababiyya Alley. He wanted to confront the fortune teller, to ask her how she had deceived him and how her words had turned into a prison he had inhabited for twenty years.
He reached the old corner, but found neither incense nor ink. He found only an abandoned place, covered in dust and filled with cobwebs.
Mamdouh asked the owner of a nearby shop about the fortune teller “Um Al-Saad.” The man looked at him with regret and said: “Um Al-Saad? She died ten years ago! She was a delusional woman who pretended to know the future just to wring coins from the gullible and the frightened. She made up stories from her sick mind to terrify people and force them to return to her.”
The news fell upon Mamdouh like a boulder. It had not been a prophecy, but a simple lie told to gain a few coins.
Mamdouh sat on the curb, weeping with a bitterness he had never felt before. In that terrible moment, he realized that the fortune teller had not lied about death, but that the deception lay in how he had understood it.
He was already dead, not from a swift cut on a specific night, but from the gradual severing of his days, his health, and his youth. Fear had killed him: a false prophecy had destroyed the best years of his life, his marriage, his success, his friends, and had isolated his heart from living.
Mamdouh returned home and looked in the mirror. He saw a forty-year-old man with the features of a seventy-year-old. He understood that the “sharp cut” the fortune teller spoke of was fear itself, which had severed him from the entire world.
He opened the windows that had remained shut for years, letting in the air and sunlight. He threw his illusions into the trash and decided to begin what remained of his life, accepting the truth: the future belongs only to the unknown, and man’s worst enemy is not what fate conceals, but the illusions created by his own mind.
