Daletwrites
In Chefchaouen's blue-washed veins, where the Rif Mountains crouch like mourners over a forgotten bier, twin brothers Jamal and Tariq blaze through the haze of their youth-eighteen, faces carved from amber and shadow, beauty sharp as a blade. Jamal spins poetry that hums with the pulse of the living, Tariq runs like a djinn unbound, their futures a golden thread snaking free of hash and ruin. But across the alley, in a house sagging under the weight of its own curses, Zahra-the Hag-watches with a lightless eye, a void that drinks their light and spits back malice. Her world is ash: Youssef, her son, paralyzed and mute in his chair; Fatima, her daughter, a twisted bloom of inbreeding and madness; her husband, a drunk who met the earth too soon. The twins' radiance mocks her decay, and she answers with the Evil Eye-snatching their hair, their clothes, weaving rituals in the Rif's shadowed folds, her envy a noose of blood and pins tightening around their throats.
She stalks them, her Darija-laced taunts-"Shnu smiytkoum, a lwlad?"-a venom that unravels their every stride toward redemption. A ritual blinds her mid-tale, but her magic surges, dark and unbound, summoning an eyeless shade from the mountain's heart. The twins wield salt and steel, but Zahra's hate is a tide: Fatima, warped by a mis-swallowed potion, turns feral, clawing Tariq's life away in a frenzy of red before she's caged in an asylum's stone walls. Zahra triumphs, stealing a twin's soul, yet her victory is a pyre-blind, alone, her power a curse that gnaws her hollow. Jamal stumbles on, a wraith in blue streets, his beauty dust, his brother a whisper in the wind, the Rif's silence a shroud over a town that forgets their fall.