By : Abdel latif Moubarak
In the “City of Mirrors,” people did not wear cloth; they wore colors that reflected their emotions. For long years, the city was draped in a forced gray under the rule of the “Silent Statue,” an ancient ruler whose features were so frozen that people thought he was part of the mountain’s rock. One morning, red exploded in the squares. It wasn’t blood; it was the anger of hearts weary of monotony.
Thousands marched to break the stillness until the “Silent Statue” cracked and fell. In that moment, the people elected Yasin, known as the “Lord of Light.” He was a man who carried a handful of jasmine seeds in his pocket and an unquenchable spark in his eyes. He believed the city could be governed by poetry and music, not by whips. Standing beside the “Lord of Light” was always Asim, the Commander of the Guards.
Asim was a man clad in armor of cold iron that reflected no color. His duty was to protect the Lord of Light, yet he saw weakness in jasmine seeds and security flaws in poems. Asim would watch the people dancing in the squares and whisper to himself: “Too many colors bring chaos. The city needs a single shade to be easily controlled.” A year passed. Flowers had begun to bloom in the plazas, but Asim was sowing something else in the shadows of the barracks. On a night when the moon was hidden, Asim ordered his guards to shroud every mirror in the city. He entered the chambers of the “Lord of Light.”
He did not draw a sword; he simply stripped the colorful “Presidential Sash” from Yasin’s shoulders and said coldly: “You have ruined the majesty of silence, Lord of Light. The city longs for gray.” Yasin was taken to a dungeon deep underground, a place where the sun never reached and no flower could grow. Asim took the title of “The Savior” and declared that colors were a foreign conspiracy intended to fracture the unity of the City of Mirrors. The people were forced back into the gray. It was forbidden to utter the name of the “Lord of Light.” As for Yasin, he spent his days drawing suns on the walls using water; the stones would drink the moisture, leaving him alone in the dark. In the third year of his imprisonment, the health of the “Lord of Light” began to fade. He asked for neither a doctor nor extra food; he only requested a “small mirror.”
Asim refused, saying: “You have no need to see your face, for your place now is in oblivion.” On a cold night, Yasin’s pulse slowed to a halt. He did not die screaming; he died smiling, as if his soul had found the crack through which to escape the silent walls. Asim announced that the “Lord of Light” had passed away peacefully because his “heart failed to keep pace with reality.” He was buried in an unmarked location, and the people were forbidden from mourning. Asim believed that by killing the body, he had killed the idea. But the following day, something strange happened. Everywhere the secret funeral procession had passed, wild jasmine began to sprout. The flowers bloomed in a brilliant white a color the people hadn’t seen in ages.
The guards tried to uproot them, but they sprouted back the very same moment. The people began to gather around the flowers, touching them and reclaiming their lost colors. Asim grew frantic. He began to see Yasin’s face in every corner. He would shutter the windows, but the sunlight would trace the silhouette of the “Lord of Light” upon the rugs. He ordered the flowers to be burned, but the scent of jasmine filled the palace, choking his breath already heavy with the smell of gunpowder. The people realized that Asim was nothing more than a prisoner within his own iron armor, while the departed Yasin was the truly free one.
The people no longer feared the gray, for they discovered that colors do not come from the ruler, but from the soul’s capacity to rebel. The story ended, but it did not conclude. In the City of Mirrors, Asim still rules from behind the walls, but he rules a city of ghosts. In the hearts of the people, however, Yasin became the light that cannot be imprisoned. Legend says that if you approach the wall of the old prison on a moonlit night, you can hear the sound of jasmine seeds splitting the stone, and you will see a shadow smiling at everyone who refuses to wear the gray. For the true prisoner is not the one behind bars, but the one who has locked the doors of their own conscience.
