I was appointed as the Imam of the historic mosque in Bersa.

Let me paint a picture of this place for you.

This was not a small roadside prayer room.

This was a monument 600 years old.

The stone walls were thick and cool, holding the silence of centuries.

The dome soared high above, covered in intricate geometric patterns that symbolized the infinite nature of Allah.

The calligraphy on the walls was a masterpiece of gold and azure.

When I first walked into that mosque as its leader, as its among, I felt a surge of pride that nearly knocked me to my knees.

I walked to the mirro, the niche in the wall that points toward Mecca.

I stepped up onto the minbar, the pulpit where I would deliver my sermons.

I looked out at the vast empty carpet that would soon be filled with thousands of men waiting for my voice.

I thought to myself, I have arrived.

This is what I was born for.

This is what my grandfather prophesied.

My life became a rhythm of perfect devotion.

I woke up every morning at 4:00 a.

m.

long before the sun to prepare for the fajger prayer.

I performed the wadu, the ritual washing.

I washed my hands up to the elbows.

I washed my face.

I washed my feet.

The water was often freezing cold in the winter, numbing my skin.

But I welcomed the cold.

I believed the discomfort was part of the sacrifice.

I believed that the cleaner my body was, the cleaner my soul would be.

I put on my long robe.

I wound the turban around my head.

and I walked to the mosque in the dark, the streets silent and empty.

I climbed the stairs of the minouet.

In the old days, the muesin would climb to the top to call the prayer with his own voice.

Today, we use loudspeakers, but the act is the same.

I would stand before the microphone, take a deep breath, and let the sound pour out of me.

Allahu Akbar, God is greatest.

My voice would echo over the rooftops of Bersa, waking the city.

I called them to prayer.

I called them to success.

And as the men trickled in, rubbing sleep from their eyes, standing shoulderto-shoulder in straight lines, moving in unison like a single body, I felt a tremendous sense of order.

This was Islam.

Submission, structure, discipline.

From the outside, my life was perfect.

I had a beautiful modest wife who served me with respect.

I had three children who kissed my hand when I came home.

I was a pillar of the community.

People came to me for advice.

They asked me how to deal with their debts, their marriages, their rebellious sons.

I gave them answers from the books I had memorized.

I spoke with authority.

But here is the secret I never told anyone.

Here is the crack in the foundation that I hid under my robes and my turban.

Despite the 6,000 verses in my chest, despite the five prayers a day, despite the respect of the community, dot dot, I was empty.

It started as a small whisper, a nagging feeling in the back of my mind during the night prayers.

I would be standing there reciting the beautiful names of Allah the merciful, the compassionate, the sovereign, and I would feel dot dot dot nothing.

I felt like I was speaking into a void.

I felt like I was sending letters to a king who lived in a castle so high and so fortified that he never looked out the window to see the peasants standing at the gate.

I knew God as a master.

I knew him as a judge.

I knew him as the creator of the universe, but I did not know him as a father.

In Islam, to call God father is a blasphemy.

It is considered lowering his majesty to the level of human biology.

We are his slaves, his servants.

A servant does not sit at the table with the master.

A servant does the work, obeys the orders, and hopes for a reward at the end of the month.

I was a good servant.

I was the best servant.

But I was starving.

I remember one afternoon walking through the park near the city center.

I saw a group of tourists.

They were clearly foreigners, likely Christians.

They were sitting on a bench holding hands.

They were praying, but they weren’t prostrating.

They weren’t reciting Arabic formulas.

They were just dot dot dot talking.

I stopped and pretended to tie my shoes so I could listen.

I heard a woman say, “Father, we thank you for this beautiful day.

We ask you to bless our trip.

Father, the word hit me like a physical blow.

” She spoke to the creator of the universe as if he were sitting right there on the bench next to her.

She spoke with intimacy.

She spoke with peace.

There was no fear in her voice, no performance, no strain to pronounce the words perfectly.

Just a child talking to her father.

I walked away from them with a feeling I couldn’t name.

It was anger.

Yes.

How dare they speak so casually to the Almighty? But underneath the anger was something else.

Something dangerous.

Envy.

I was jealous of them.

I, the imam, the scholar, the hus, the man who held the keys to the mosque.

I was jealous of a tourist in jeans because she had something I did not.

she had connection.

I went back to the mosque that evening and prayed harder.

I recited longer chapters.

I tried to drown out that envy with more religion.

I told myself that feeling empty was just a test.

I told myself that I needed to do more.

That is the trap of religion, isn’t it? When it doesn’t work, you assume it’s because you haven’t done enough.

So, you double your effort.

You build the walls higher.

But you cannot fill a spiritual hole with physical rituals.

You cannot satisfy a hunger for relationship with a diet of rules.

As the year 2023 approached, that feeling of hollowess grew.

It became a physical weight in my chest.

I would look at the faces of the men in the mosque while I preached the Friday sermon, and I would wonder, “Are you empty, too? Are we all just actors in a beautiful play, reciting our lines, hoping the director is watching, but terrified that the theater is actually empty? I pushed those thoughts down.

I buried them deep.

I was Hassan, the Imam.

Doubting was not in my job description.

Doubting was for the weak.

I was strong.

I was the rock for my community.

Or so I thought.

I did not know that the rock was about to be shattered.

I did not know that my meticulously built life, my heritage, my pride, and my theology were about to collide with a force that no book could explain.

It brings us to October 15th, 2023.

It was a Tuesday, an ordinary Tuesday.

The autumn leaves were turning gold in the courtyard of the mosque.

The air was crisp.

I woke up at 4:00 a.

m.

as usual.

I performed my ablution.

I dressed in my robes.

I kissed the forehead of my sleeping wife, not knowing it might be the last time I ever saw her.

I walked to the mosque.

I unlocked the heavy wooden doors with the iron key, the same key I showed you earlier.

I turned on the lights.

I checked the sound system.

Everything was normal.

Everything was routine.

I prepared my heart for the fajger prayer.

The sermon I had prepared for that morning was about patience in the face of trials.

Irony has a cruel sense of humor, doesn’t it? I was about to preach on patience and God was about to teach me about death.

I looked at the clock.

It was time for the adhen.

I walked towards the entrance of the Midet stairs.

The spiral staircase is narrow and steep, made of cold stone.

I had climbed it thousands of times.

My legs knew the rhythm.

Step, turn, step, turn.

As I climbed, I felt a strange sensation in my chest.

A flutter like a bird trapped in a cage.

I ignored it.

I thought it was just indigestion.

Or maybe the cold air, I kept climbing.

I reached the balcony of the minouette.

The city of Bersa lay sleeping below me, a sea of shadows and street lights.

It was beautiful.

I took a deep breath of the cold morning air.

I grabbed the microphone.

I placed my hand over my ear, a gesture of tradition to help focus the voice.

I opened my mouth to say the first words of the call.

A l a hu dot dot double quotes.

The word left my lips.

But before I could say abar, the bird in my chest stopped fluttering.

It stopped completely.

It wasn’t pain at first.

It was silence.

An absolute thundering silence.

Then came the pressure.

It felt like an elephant had stepped on my chest.

The world tilted sideways.

The lights of the city blurred into streaks of neon.

My knees buckled.

I reached out to grab the railing, but my hand wouldn’t obey.

I fell.

I hit the cold stone floor of the balcony.

My turban rolled away.

The microphone dangled from its corb, swaying in the wind, broadcasting the sound of my heavy, ragged breathing to the entire city.

Gasps, wheezing, and then duck.

Nothing.

The darkness didn’t come slowly.

It slammed into me.

One moment I was the imam of Bersa, standing high above the city, calling men to prayer.

The next moment I was a body on a stone floor.

The heart that had beaten for 48 years, the heart that held 6,000 verses, shuddered one last time and went still.

This is where the biography of Hassan Demir should have ended.

This is where the obituary should have been written.

Beloved imam dies of heart failure during fajer prayer.

Survived by wife and three children, buried in the city cemetery.

That would have been a tragic ending, but a normal one, a logical one.

But God is not limited by our logic and death is not the end of the story when the author of life decides to intervene.

What happened next is not written in any medical textbook.

It is not written in the Quran.

And for a long time I was afraid to speak of it because I knew no one would believe me.

But I must speak because while my body lay cooling on that minouret, while the ambulance sirens began to wail in the distance, while the panic spread through the congregation downstairs, dot dot, I was not there.

I had left the building.

If you have ever wondered what happens the moment you close your eyes for the last time, if you have ever feared the great unknown, do not click away.

Because what I am about to tell you is not a theory.

It is a report from the other side.

Stay with me.

The journey is just beginning.

The fall was not like they show in the movies.

There was no slow motion, no flashing of my life before my eyes.

No cinematic music swelling in the background.

It was brutal, fast, and fiercely physical.

Gravity is an unforgiving master, and stone is a hard receiver.

My body struck the floor of the minouet balcony with a sickening thud.

The air was forced out of my lungs in a violent rush, but there was no inhalation to follow it.

My chest, which had been heaving just seconds ago, was now perfectly, terrifyingly still.

I lay there, crumpled against the cold stone railing.

My turban had rolled a few feet away, unraveling slightly in the morning breeze.

My hand, a hand that had gestured with authority for 15 years, lay open and limp, palm facing the sky.

But here is the strangest part.

While my body was a heap of collapsing biology, my consciousness was sharpening.

It was expanding.

I could see the crack in the stone floor just inches from my nose.

I could see a small dried leaf that had blown up here from the courtyard below.

I could see the texture of the dust.

It was hyper real.

Then the perspective shifted.

I was no longer looking at the crack in the stone.

I was looking at tea myself.

I saw a man lying on the balcony.

He looked like me.

He wore my robes.

He had my beard, but he looked like a discarded garment, an empty shell that someone had stepped out of.

I saw the microphone dangling from its cord, swaying back and forth like a pendulum counting down the final seconds of an era.

It was bumping rhythmically against the metal railing.

Thump, thump.

That sound was being broadcast to the entire neighborhood.

Down below, the confusion was starting to ripple through the gathered men.

Imagine the scene.

It is 5:00 a.

m.

The city is quiet.

Hundreds of men are standing in the courtyard and inside the mosque waiting for the adden to finish so they can begin the prayer.

They heard L a hu dot dot and then silence and a crash, then the rhythmic thumping of the microphone against the railing.

I could see them.

I could see the tops of their heads.

I could see the muesen, my assistant, looking up towards the minouette with a face full of confusion.

It quickly turned to horror.

I saw him running.

I saw him shouting, pointing up at the tower.

I wanted to call out to him.

I wanted to say, “I am here.

I am fine.

” But I had no voice.

I had no mouth.

I was a spectator to my own tragedy.

The minutes that followed were a blur of chaotic noise.

I heard the heavy footsteps of men running up the spiral staircase.

They were shouting my name.

Hassan.

Imam Hassan.

The sound echoed off the stone walls of the stairwell, getting louder and louder.

When they burst onto the balcony, their faces were pale.

These were men who respected me, men who looked to me for strength.

Seeing their mom lying broken on the floor, shattered something in their eyes.

They fell to their knees beside my body.

Hands were checking for a pulse.

Ears were pressed against my chest.

“He’s not breathing,” someone shouted.

“Call the ambulance now.

” I watched them frantically trying to pump life back into my chest.

I saw the desperation.

I felt a strange detachment, a sadness, not for myself, but for them.

They were trying to fix a house that the tenant had already vacated.

The ambulance arrived with a cacophony of sirens that tore through the dawn silence.

The blue and red lights washed over the ancient stones of the mosque, creating a surreal discog.

I watched as they loaded my body onto the stretcher.

I watched the paramedics working, sweating, shouting medical terminology.

The fibrillator pads were placed on my chest.

Clear.

My body jerked violently with the shock, but I felt nothing.

No spark, no return.

The line on the monitor remained flat.

A long high-pitched tone that signaled the end.

They rushed me to the hospital.

The ride was a blur of speed and noise, but I was not in the ambulance.

I was hovering, observing, pulled along by a force I couldn’t resist, tethered to that body, but no longer of it.

At the hospital, the scene was even more heartbreaking.

My wife, Fatima, had arrived.

She was still wearing her house clothes, a shawl thrown hastily over her head.

Her face was a mask of sheer terror.

When the doctor came out of the emergency room, shaking his head, removing his gloves, looking at the floor, dot dot, I saw her collapse.

It wasn’t a faint.

It was a crumbling.

It was as if her bones had turned to water.

She fell to the lenolium floor of the hospital corridor, and the whale that tore from her throat is a sound that still haunts me.

It was the sound of a woman whose world has just ended.

My children were there holding her, crying, looking at the doctor with pleading eyes, begging him to say it was a mistake.

I am sorry, the doctor said.

We did everything we could.

Time of death.

5:48 a.

m.

5:48 a.

m.

October 15th, 2023.

That was the official end of Hassan Demir.

That was the stamp on the document.

That was the moment my name moved from the list of the living to the archives of the past.

If you are watching this and you have ever lost someone, if you have ever stood in a hospital corridor and felt that cold wave of finality wash over you, then you know what I am describing.

You know that death feels like a theft.

It feels like something has been stolen that can never be returned.

And if you are afraid of that moment for yourself, if the thought of your own mortality keeps you awake at night, I want you to listen closely.

Do not turn away.

Because I am telling you this not to scare you, but to show you that what we think is the end is actually just a doorway.

But the doorway is not always bright.

Not at first.

After the weeping, after the paperwork, after the police report came the cold.

In Islamic tradition, the burial must happen quickly, usually within 24 hours.

But because my death was sudden and public, falling from a minorette, the authorities required an autopsy.

They needed to rule out foul play.

They needed to be sure it was a heart attack and not a push.

So instead of being taken home to be washed by my family, I was taken to the morg.

The morg is a place of absolute sterile silence.

It smells of antiseptic and old steel.

I watched as they wheeled my body into that room.

It was lined with metal drawers, like filing cabinets for people.

They transferred me from the stretcher to a cold metal tray.

They tied a tag to my big toe.

It had my name, my date of birth, and the time of death.

They pulled a white sheet over my face.

That moment, the covering of the face is the final eraser of identity.

You are no longer a person.

You are a package.

You are evidence.

Then came the sound that signifies the ultimate finality.

The sound of the tray sliding into the refrigeration unit.

The heavy metallic clank of the door latching shut.

Darkness.

Absolute suffocating freezing darkness.

I was alone.

The weeping of my wife was gone.

The sirens were gone.

The prayers of the community were gone.

It was only the hum of the compressor keeping the bodies cold.

And this is where the true terror began.

You see, as an imam, I had preached about death for years.

I had told people exactly what to expect.

I told them about the angels of the grave, Monkar and Nakir, who had come to question the soul.

I told them about the punishment of the grave.

I told them that if they had been good Muslims, if they had prayed and fasted, they would have a window open to paradise.

I waited for the angels.

I waited for the window.

But no angels came.

No window opened.

Instead, the darkness began to change.

It wasn’t just a lack of light anymore.

It became a presence.

It felt thick like oil.

It felt heavy, pressing down on my consciousness.

It was a darkness that wasn’t just around me.

It was trying to get inside me.

I realized with a jolt of horror that my theology was useless here.

My 6,000 verses were silence.

My title of imam held no authority in this realm.

I was alone in the cold naked spirit, stripped of every earthly defense.

I tried to pray.

I tried to recite the shahada.

La ilaha l a l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l a jot dot dot but the words fell dead.

They had no power.

It was as if I was speaking a currency that was not accepted in this country.

Time loses its meaning in the grave.

Was it an hour? Was it 10 hours? I drifted in this icy void, feeling a despair so deep it felt like it was dissolving my very soul.

This was not the peaceful sleep of the righteous.

This was separation.

This was the utter absence of God.

For 48 hours, my body lay in that fridge.

My blood settled.

My muscles stiffened.

My skin turned the color of ash.

To the world outside, a sand demir was decomposing.

My family was preparing a grave plot in the cemetery.

They were choosing a headstone.

But inside that darkness, a cry began to rise up in me.

Not a recited prayer, not a ritual, a raw primal scream from the bottom of my existence.

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