1. Where the Mountains Keep Secrets
In the heart of Kashmir, nestled between valleys that glowed green in summer and vanished under white silence in winter, lay a village called Noorabad. A place so quiet that the mountains could hear your thoughts if you weren’t careful. Streams giggled like mischievous children, willows whispered to one another, and life moved slowly stitched into the rhythm of five daily prayers, apple harvests, and snowfall.
But Noorabad had a rule.
A rule no one questioned.
“Do not enter the Old Masjid after Maghrib.”
That was it. That was the one line, the single commandment passed from grandfather to father, from father to son, as seriously as the Kalima itself. Outsiders scoffed. Locals fell silent. Even the kids who stole mulberries from the orchard or whistled at dusk never dared go near it.
And yet, I did.
2. A Dare That Shouldn’t Have Been
My name is Murtaza. I was nineteen when I returned to Noorabad for the summer break from university in Srinagar. My mother insisted. She missed me. And honestly, I missed the village too the smell of nun chai, the call of the muezzin echoing through the crisp air, the old people who remembered me as “the little one who broke his tooth chasing a goat.”
But mostly, I missed the freedom.
In Srinagar, you’re someone’s roommate, someone’s classmate. Here, I was just Murtaza the brave one, the loud one, the daredevil.
It was on one of those warm June nights, as the sun bled behind the mountains and the tea vendor’s radio played old Kishore Kumar songs, that my friend Zeeshan leaned in and said it.
“You remember the rule, right?”
I smirked. “What rule?”
“The one. The only one.”
He didn’t need to say more. We all knew what he meant.
He pushed it further. “Go inside the Old Masjid. Stay there. Just until Fajr.”
I laughed. “That’s it?”
“You won’t even last till midnight.”
The others joined in boys who had run with me across rooftops as kids, who once dared each other to swim across the freezing Jhelum in March. They stared like I was already a legend.
So I did what legends do.
I said yes.
3. Entering the Forbidden
The masjid sat at the edge of the village, half swallowed by wild grass and mulberry trees. Its minaret, once majestic, leaned now as if too tired to stand. No one maintained it. No one spoke about it. But they all kept a distance. Even the wind seemed to walk lightly near it.
At exactly 7:45 PM, I stood at its rusted gates. I had packed a small bag a prayer mat, a flashlight, my phone (though it had no signal), a bottle of Zamzam water my grandmother had saved, and a small Quran.
The lock on the gate was broken. I pushed it open. The creak it let out didn’t sound mechanical. It sounded… angry.
Inside, the masjid was colder than outside, even in June. Dust covered everything. The once polished wooden floor was splintered and uneven. The mihrab, carved with verses of the Quran, was chipped like forgotten memories.
I laid out my mat, prayed Maghrib, and waited.
The sun disappeared completely.
And the rule had now been broken.
4. The Whispers Begin
It was sometime past 9 PM when I heard the first whisper.
Faint. Female. “He’s here.”
I sat up.
I wasn’t asleep. I was wide awake. My flashlight flicked slightly, but its beam held. I scanned the room. Nothing.
A gust of air brushed past me. But the windows were closed.
Then again, “He broke the rule.”
I stood up, heart beating in my throat. “Who’s there?”
No reply. Only silence.
I turned around and noticed something that hadn’t been there before.
A trail of water.
Leading from the mihrab to the back wall. It shimmered slightly, like moonlight on Dal Lake.
I followed it, stepping lightly. My shadow moved beside me, but sometimes only sometimes it didn’t move at the same time.
There was a door in the back. One I hadn’t seen before.
It was open.
5. The Girl with the Silver Bangles
Inside, it wasn’t a room. It was a courtyard ancient, hidden, surrounded by crumbling walls with vines hanging like the hair of forgotten graves.
And in the middle, stood a girl.
She was maybe my age. Dressed in white, her back to me. Her long black hair touched her waist, and silver bangles clinked as she moved slowly, almost rhythmically.
“Excuse me,” I said, cautiously.
She turned.
Her eyes were the color of dusk neither day nor night, just that in-between when the sky holds its breath.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said.
I swallowed. “Neither should you.”
“I was born here,” she whispered. “You came.”
“I was dared,” I muttered, feeling suddenly childish.
“Dares are for the living,” she said. “This place belongs to the forgotten.”
I took a step back. “What do you mean?”
But she was already fading. Like smoke. Her outline blurred. Her voice lingered.
“You broke the rule. Now the rule will break you.”
And then she was gone.
6. Memories Not My Own
I don’t remember falling asleep. But I remember waking up.
To Fajr.
The adhaan echoed, but it wasn’t coming from a loudspeaker. It was being called live. And not in 2025.
I stood, confused. Everything around me was… new. Clean. The masjid was restored. People filled the prayer hall. Lanterns glowed.
And standing at the front, leading the prayer, was an imam I had only seen in a black-and-white photograph in my grandfather’s room.
I blinked.
I was in the past.
After prayer, the Imam looked at me and smiled. “You must be lost.”
“Very,” I whispered.
He placed a hand on my shoulder. “Then maybe you’re meant to be found.”
And just like that, I was back.
Back in the broken masjid. Alone. The sun rising. My flashlight dead. My body freezing.
And something in my chest had changed.
I wasn’t alone in there.
7. The Truth Revealed
When I returned to the village, everyone stared.
Zeeshan dropped his chai.
“You… you actually went in?”
I nodded. I couldn’t speak.
That night, I dreamt of the girl again. This time she sat beside the mihrab, reciting Surah Yasin. Her bangles silent.
“You saw them,” she said.
“Who?”
“The ones who stayed behind. The ones whose prayers were never completed. Who were interrupted.”
“By what?”
She looked at me, her eyes heavier than the mountain snow.
“By men with guns. By war. By fire. The masjid was their sanctuary. But it became their grave.”
Suddenly, I remembered the news clippings the ones no one talked about. A massacre. 1990. Militants had taken shelter. The army fired. Innocents were caught. The masjid was sealed.
Not haunted.
Wounded.
8. What Happens Next
The next Friday, I stood before the village.
I asked the elders for permission to clean the masjid.
To reopen it.
They refused at first. But then one by one, their silence cracked like old stone.
“My brother died there.”
“My husband disappeared after that night.”
“My son was never found.”
We cleaned it. Together.
We repainted the walls. We repaired the mihrab. We reopened the gates.
And on Eid, for the first time in thirty-five years, the masjid echoed with prayers.
And I saw her.
Standing in the back. Head covered. Eyes at peace.
When the prayer ended, she nodded once, smiled, and walked away.
No footsteps. No sound.
Just peace.
9. The Final Line
People still say I broke the unbreakable rule.
But sometimes, rules aren’t meant to be followed.
Sometimes they’re meant to be understood.
The rule didn’t exist to punish.
It existed to protect.
And once the truth came out, once the voices were heard, once the prayers were completed…
There was nothing left to fear.
Only to remember.
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