I still remember when I became a true white-clad mubayyida. It was the night when, days after crossing the Oxus River with a few men, Al-Muqanna took the fortress of Nawakit.

That night, to light the way for his men among the steep mountains, he made the moon rise and then ordered him to hide again to keep his few troops hidden during the assault on the fortress. I was there and could see the phenomenon with my own eyes.

The next morning, with the fortress under our control, I dressed entirely in white as one of his most faithful followers.

Years later I witnessed another miracle. It was during the siege of Nasaf. We had run out of supplies and had exhausted the food of all the villages in the region. Nasaf's population continued to face us without faltering, because the city's wealthy merchants had opened their warehouses to feed the people.

"How long will I have to put up with you?" asked Al-Muqanna, fed up with the ineffectiveness of his generals.

Then he came out of his tent located on a hill opposite the besieged city. Exasperated, he removed the veil that always covered his face. Only those closest to him were present. I don't know what happened then. We were all stunned by his unbearable brilliance. I remember that my eyes burned from the intense glare.

When he covered his face again, Nasaf's warehouses were on fire. The piercing scream of terror of its inhabitants reached us. Al-Muqanna ordered the siege to be lifted, for in a few minutes, he said, there would be nothing left to conquer in that city.

I am convinced that he had made fire fall from the sky.

The third miracle I contemplated on the day of his death, but I will leave this one for the end since its strange nature was what induced me to write this story.

I know that many other miracles and supernatural phenomena supposedly performed by the veiled prophet have been spread far and wide. I can only relate what I have seen myself.

"Forgive my boldness, my lord, why must you always keep your face hidden?" I dared to ask him after what had happened at Nasaf.

"The divine spirit that dwells in me," he replied, "makes it too bright to be beheld by mortal eyes. The veil that hides my face actually protects you, my loving followers, from its unbearable radiance."

"Behind your veil," I wanted to know, "is the face of God?"

"God periodically enters the body of a man whom He has chosen as His messenger. Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and Abu Muslim were His previous messengers. I am the newest incarnation of God in this world."

"Why is your veil green and golden?"

"It is a representation of paradise, which my followers will be able to enjoy now and in the hereafter."

"I understand, my lord, that in the hereafter paradise awaits us, but I don't know how we can enjoy it now."

"I love your naiveté, my dear Aram," he said to me. "The notion of paradise is not unique to Islam. Before its arrival in these lands, the Khurramites and their purified form of Zoroastrianism already proposed the communal sharing of property, wealth, women, and children, which we could strip from our enemies and dispose of at will. Doesn't that sound like a little paradise on Earth to you?"

"Undoubtedly, my lord. By your wisdom and teachings, you have captured the hearts of the oppressed."

"That is why, to liberate them, I have declared holy war against the Abbasid caliphate," he replied contentedly. "May Allah be exalted!"

At that moment I thought that the final victory was absolutely inescapable. How wrong I was!

Months later, and almost at the same time, came the death of the caliph and also of his governor in Khorasan. We followers of the veiled prophet saw this as a sign from heaven. So we took advantage of the prevailing confusion to expand and take Samarkand. Then Al-Muqanna minted coins with his name on them and proclaimed himself king of Sogdiya.

The Khaqan, the leader of the Türgesh tribes, allied himself with our prophet, and presented himself to his people as the righteous king who welcomed Maitreya, the Buddha savior of the world who is described as bright as the sun. In doing so, he also recognized Al-Muqanna's divine role.

The mere presence of the prophet aroused among the people both reverence and a revolt instinct against the caliph and foreign domination. Al-Muqanna had come to punish the tyrants and avenge the oppressed. His victory would usher in paradise on earth.

Unfortunately, the apogee of our success was the beginning of the end.

The new caliph proved to be much more astute than his predecessor. On the one hand he used force. He appointed a new governor of Khorasan who reconquered Samarkand and defeated our Turkish allies. On the other, he deviously seduced one of our mubayyida to turn him into a spy, traitor, and murderer.

One night, Parsa, one of the captains of Al-Muqanna's personal guard, approached him while he was sleeping between two of his concubines. Before killing the prophet, he wanted to see his face under the veil. What he saw at that instant drove him mad.

He emitted a piercing scream of terror that awoke one of the concubines who, without thinking, interposed her naked body between the assassin's knife and the prophet. The girl's blood flooded the bed but saved Al-Muqanna's life.

Parsa was tortured, extracting from him a thousand different and contradictory confessions and even more ravings. He was then castrated and dismembered, in the most horrible of deaths.

From that moment on, everything changed. The veneration, the aura of mystery, and the prophet's claims of divinity were replaced by brutality and the demand for absolute loyalty.

"Burn the villages and the fields," Al-Muqanna ordered after one of our raids. "Let no one be left alive."

"My lord, they are just peasants," argued Mehrak, one of his generals.

"Whoever is not with us is against us," the prophet sharply replied. "The fire will purify their souls."

I saw how Mehrak's face darkened, but he carried out the order without complaining, even though it was evident that the bile was souring his throat.

"Do you doubt the wisdom of the prophet?" I asked him as he watched a village burn and his men slit the throats of old men.

"Before, people came by the hundreds to join our cause," he reflected. "Now we are not much different from the Abbasid invader."

"Since the attempt on his life, Al-Muqanna has changed. He's become much more ... distrustful," I justified.

"It's not that, Aram. It's something much deeper. I think Parsa, in some strange way, got to see his true nature and that has made the prophet feel ... how shall I put it ... unmasked."

"What do you mean?"

"According to what Parsa said, what he saw on his deformed face did not reflect the splendor of the divine but a disturbing, inhuman horror from another world."

"Parsa went mad."

"Yes, because of what he discovered."

"Do you doubt that Al-Muqanna is an envoy of God?"

"The idea of hulool, of incarnation of the divine in the human, is in fact anti-Islamic. It obscures the line that divides between God and the world, between the creator and his creation, and reduces Muhammad and all previous prophets to irrelevance."

"Now you have become a theologian?"

"No, but many of Al-Muqanna's teachings are not Islamic. He sees himself as the Buddha Maitreya savior of the world," he said as an example.

"God may have many ways of revealing himself. You have seen his miracles."

"It is said that as a young man he studied magic and other dark arts. It may be that his miracles are only tricks and illusions, the feats of a sorcerer."

"I can't believe you have no faith in what your own eyes have seen. Do you really think the prophet is a mere necromancer?"

"No, I don't think he is a mere sorcerer. I think the prophet is the gateway to our world of an unfathomable horror that took hold of him at some point while he was practicing his strange arts."

"You sound like Parsa after he'd gone mad."

"I think he discovered the truth, but his mind couldn't handle it."

"Then what is the source of his power?"

"It's certainly not God. God is not cruel. His luminous face undoubtedly comes from a supernatural source that through him operates in this world."

"I gather that you believe that source of power to be evil. If you believe that, why do you serve him?"

Mehrak swallowed before answering.

"Out of sheer fear," he acknowledged. "I am terrified of what that being might do to us."

His answer left me petrified. It took me a few moments to reply.

"If many think like you, our cause is lost," I said, not sure what to respond. "We will be very vulnerable to the caliphate's counterattack."

He looked at me as if I had not understood anything. It was not the Abbasids I really had to fear.

Discouragement gradually spread among our ranks. Since Parsa uncovered the face of the prophet, so many strange things were being said about him that now his divine claims did not seem to hold water. Many of our faithful began to abandon us.

This caused Al-Muqanna to start collecting heads, first of deserters and then of anyone who opposed him. He nailed them to pikes marking his way through the regions he ravaged. Those who had once revered him were now terrified at the mere mention of his name.

Mehrak continued to fight like the great warrior he was, but I knew that deep inside he wished, yes, longed for defeat, even sought his own death in battle.

The growing power of the Abbasid armies forced us to retreat into the mountains. But, having lost the Iron Gate mountain pass that controlled the route from Balkh to Kish and Samarkand, we had no choice but to take refuge in the fortress of Nawakit.

Apart from being in a mountainous and inhospitable region, the Nawakit fortress itself was formidable. In fact, it was a fortress within a fortress. It was composed of an outer castle and wall in which the soldiers and officers lived, and an inner fortress where the veiled prophet took refuge with his wives, concubines, and confidants.

During the long months of the siege, I could see things in his character that my blind faith in his person had not let me perceive before.

Al-Muqanna ordered the heads of the captured soldiers of the caliph to be nailed to posts every ten paces on the outer wall. Their bleeding decapitated bodies were also left hanging by their feet over the wall of the rampart. This grim spectacle contributed even more to frighten not only his enemies but also his own troops.

In the face of such brutality, he had built for himself in the inner fortress his own paradise on earth, the one he promised to his followers. To defend it was his utmost and almost his only endeavor.

Shortly before the end, Al-Muqanna sent for me to come into his presence.

"The caliph's troops have maintained the siege even during the harsh winter months," Mehrak was saying, now become supreme commander of our depleted army. "It is evident that they are determined to culminate the assault. Our men are weak and nearly starving."

"You are not suggesting that we surrender?" retorted Al-Muqanna contemptuously.

"Never that, my lord," Farhood, whom the prophet nicknamed the fearless one, dared to say.

"I have seen the fear in your face, Mehrak. I know you have lost faith."

Hearing the enlightened one, the battle-hardened soldier began to sweat. He trembled like a leaf in the wind.

"And you, Farhood, do you have any stratagems to finish off our enemies?"

"If I had your power, my lord, I would perform a great miracle and annihilate the caliph's troops," was his bold reply.

"In you, Farhood, I see an infinite ambition. That prevents you from serving your lord well," Al-Muqanna reproached him. "You are not capable of ridding me of my enemies. You only seek the easy way, a new display of supernatural strength. By this you do not defend your master, you only hope to increase your power." Farhood fell silent. "And you, Aram, my most prudent advisor." That's what he called me. "Come closer! What would you do to rid me of my enemies?"

"There is no strategy that can free us from the clutches that grip us, my lord," I said humbly. "Even if a few men could outwit the siege under cover of night, outside of here no one will help us anymore. We have ravaged all the lands around us."

"Do you reproach me for my scorched earth strategy?"

"No, my lord. I am only telling you the truth. I know that only you can free us."

"At least you are truthful," he acknowledged and meditated for a second in silence. "Let it be then as you have asked."

Hearing his words, I understood that he was making us co-responsible for his actions, whatever they were. At that instant I got goose bumps.

That same afternoon the veiled prophet went to the outer wall, climbed on one of its towers, and removed again the veil that covered his face, unleashing a terrifying power. A bolt of fire swept through the ranks of our attackers, leaving the entire hillside in flames. Then he annihilated one after another of their siege machines.

When Mehrak shouted at him not to scorch our men as well, he left him and all those around him charred, just by looking at them. The outer castle then burst into flames, such was his power, and one of the towers of our wall collapsed. Al-Muqanna wanted not only to destroy the Abbasids but also to take revenge on those who, in his view, had betrayed him.

When he left his tower, the inner fortress was surrounded by an inferno of fire. No one accompanied him to his chambers. No one dared to stand even close to him.

During the night, the fire devoured the rugged promontory where the fortress was located. But there was only bare rock on the mountain, so the flames, despite their supernatural origin, subsided at dawn.

Throughout the morning, the few remaining troops in the outer fortress, eager to abandon their master, surrendered to the caliph's army. Their commander had understood that the magic fire had been a desperate act, so he had not given up his efforts to storm the fortress. He knew he would succeed if he only held the pincer.

I felt the obligation to communicate the news to our prophet. I found him secluded in the forbidden area he had set aside for his harem, his paradise on earth. I hesitated to enter, but none of his guards were with him anymore.

"I thought, Aram, that you too had fled."

"No, my lord. I wanted to inform you that our army has surrendered."

"Farhood has already come to inform me," he gestured to a small mound of ashes where I could see some vestiges of his clothes. A shiver ran through my body. "He wanted me to give him supernatural powers," he laughed.

"We have no way to escape," I dared to say. "I don't even believe that your immense power will be able to free us."

"You speak the truth, as always, Aram."

Beside him were the most beautiful women I had ever seen. I had never before been permitted to gaze upon them. All of them, by some strange enchantment, seemed to have been completely subjected to his will. He did enjoy his Eden on earth.

"I see that my wives have left you speechless. It is because of them that I am here. I wanted to share with them my last moments in this world. This is Rakhsha; her name means shining. Appropriate, don't you think? This one is Sima, moon-faced," he caressed her face. "That one is Ursiya, white lily. This other one is my favorite," he lifted her face gently with a finger under her chin. "Her name is Mehrmush, little piece of sunshine. I was planning to make her my main wife. That's Avisa, clear water. That other one, Yasmin, and that one, well, all those others are no longer with us."

My teeth chattered. I was witnessing an act of collective suicide.

"Do you want to join us? Just drink that potion," he pointed to a small vial on the table. "It's completely painless. I would never make them suffer."

"My lord, I have served you loyally, but ..."

"You value your life more than your love for me, don't you?"

"I am ashamed of myself, my lord. I know you have the power to reap my life as one who plucks a mere leaf, but I want to live."

One of the women fell lifeless on the couch on which she was lying, then the one next to her collapsed on her.

"Their precious lives are fading away," murmured Al-Muqanna. "Next to theirs, your life is worth nothing. It is a pity I cannot take them with me. I don't want to leave anything behind me for the benefit of my enemies. When I leave, not even your ashes will be left."

I fell to my knees and began to weep. I knew my end was imminent.

The four women who were still alive gradually closed their eyes. Then, they lay down one on top of the other in a sleep from which there would be no awakening.

The veiled prophet contemplated all his beautiful wives for a while, as if it pained him to renounce the delights he had enjoyed in this world.

At last, he took off the veil that covered his face. It shone like molten metal in a crucible. My eyes burned just looking at it. So, I bowed my head and closed my eyes with all my might, waiting for the flare that would dissolve my soul.

"You are the only one who has not betrayed me," said Al-Muqanna. "You deserve to behold the end."

I opened my eyes in surprise at his words and saw that a beam of fire consumed the bodies of his wives and concubines. His power was such that after a few moments there were none of them left, not even their ashes.

Only a glowing, bluish will-o'-the-wisp fire that seemed to come out of nowhere remained in mid-air.

"Now," he said to me, "you will see the incarnate divinity disappear in the flames."

"My lord, who are you really?" I heard myself ask in fright.

"I see that Mehrak has sown doubt in you; do you no longer believe me to be God's messenger?"

"Mehrak believed that in you dwells a supernatural being, but that he was not our clement and only God worthy of worship."

"Although he turned out to be a traitor, Mehrak was an intelligent man," Al-Muqanna smiled. "In the universe there are unfathomable forces capable of entering and leaving this world. And now, I am about to leave it."

Suddenly, the cold fire hovering in the air shone with a flash more intense than a thousand flashes of lightning. The glare almost blinded me. Al-Muqanna jumped inside and disappeared in sapphire and turquoise-colored flames.

I stood there stunned, staring at that strange fire until it had burned itself out. I don't know if it was minutes or hours. I only know that when the caliph's soldiers entered the room, they found me still on my knees.

They thought that I had burned the bodies of the veiled prophet and his wives and collaborators, and that I now implored forgiveness for the sacrilege, since their souls were conscious of having suffered an impure practice. Several soldiers even congratulated me because, by burning their corpses without having performed the rites prescribed by our faith, I had made the resurrection of their bodies impossible.

They took me prisoner to Balkh and burned the fortress of Nawakit to the ground. For hours I could see the glow of the fire on the horizon, but in my mind only another fire burned, a bluish fire that floated in the air and glowed like the electrum in which the veiled prophet had miraculously disappeared.

I was imprisoned for two long years in Balkh. I had a lot of time to meditate. At first, I thought I was going to be executed, but after the first month of intense interrogation, I was visited by Hirbod, a mullah, an expert in interpreting Islamic law, whose face I never saw. It was he who led me back to the faith, though not the faith he intended.

"The way Al-Muqanna took his own life," I remember him telling me in our last conversation, which, like all the others, took place entirely in the dark in my cell, "suggests that he saw himself as the Buddha Maitreya entering parinirvana by disappearing into the flames."

"What is parinirvana?" I asked. I knew he wanted to present him as a heretic.

"It is the supreme goal of Buddhist infidels. It's their ultimate nirvana, the liberation they believe they can obtain beyond the physical death of the body once enlightenment has been attained in life."

"Yes, he believed he was the enlightened one," I had to admit, "the successor of the Prophet," I added on purpose, correcting him, "the new incarnation of God in this world."

"The belief that Allah, may He be glorified and exalted, is incarnated in a human being is against Islam," he asserted forcefully. "It's impossible to think that He is one with unclean and abominable things."

"Yes, it has already been explained to me by my friend Mehrak."

"You mean Mehrak, the renegade, that rebel general who died in the assault on the Nawakit fortress?"

"Actually, Al-Muqanna burned him with the fire coming from his face, as he did many others of his collaborators."

"Do you see the dangers of blind faith?" he took the opportunity to chide me. "It only leads to perdition."

There was a long silence in the darkness.

"Perhaps Al-Muqanna is actually the Mahdi," I asserted, knowing the rejection this idea would provoke in Hirbod, "the hidden imam descendant of the Prophet, who lives hidden and who will return to the world as a redeemer."

"The Mahdi is not mentioned in the Koran," the mullah hastened to refute me, "only in some hadiths containing traditions and alleged sayings of the Prophet. Moreover, he will only manifest himself before the Day of Judgment."

"That's right, he will come to rid the world of evil, fill it with justice and equity, and restore the true religion."

"It is nonsense to think that Al-Muqanna is the Mahdi. It is said that his veil concealed horrible features." Hirbod sought to make me, once and for all, disavow the veiled prophet. "He was missing an eye, was bald, and had a face disfigured by leprosy. Allah, may He be glorified and exalted, would not allow a descendant of the true and last Prophet to suffer such deformities. You never saw his face?"

"I could only see an intense flame and then a flash of fire."

"A flash of fire? Do you still believe that Al-Muqanna had two natures, one divine and one human?"

"No, I don't believe that in him there was a divine part. Certainly, our clement and only God didn't dwell within him."

"I am glad to hear that."

"Nevertheless," I insisted, "his power was enormous."

"The Koran mentions twenty-nine times creatures that have been created from smokeless fire before there was any man on earth."

"You mean the jinn?"

"Yes, they are invisible to the human eye, they can take different forms and influence people, spiritually, by suggestion or even possession."

"I have thought about it many times. However, unlike angels, the Koran says that the jinn share the physical world with men. The way Al-Muqanna departed makes me think that he was not of this world."

"You said yourself that he was not a divine being. He can only have been an evil genius who took advantage of men's thirst for retribution and justice to rule both the spiritual and mortal realms," Hirbod asserted in exasperation. "His intent was not merely to overthrow our well-loved caliph, but to enslave mankind."

"I fear we are in the hands of forces too powerful, which are beyond our comprehension," I said dejectedly.

"You fell under their influence. Only Allah, may He be glorified and exalted, can protect us. Against Him these forces can do nothing," he assured me with conviction.

At that moment, the air in the cell began to catch fire of its own accord. I stared at the phenomenon dumbfounded. I am sure, from his silence, that Hirbod was as surprised as I was. A circle of blue fire gradually formed, burning without heat and without being consumed. Within the burning circle there was a glow so intense that it illuminated the whole cell. For an instant I could see the mullah lying on the floor covering his eyes with his arms in fright.

An intense flame with a fiery face emerged from the inflamed circle. I could not believe my eyes; I thought I saw the never-revealed flaming face of Al-Muqanna. I don't know if it was real or if it was just an optical effect fooling my retinas, exhausted by months of darkness.

Then, a powerful beam of fire consumed the mullah as if he were a dry splinter. Only a few miserable ashes remained of him. I was paralyzed. Soon another bolt of fire incinerated the cell door. When I looked back into the circle of will-o'-the-wisp fire, I saw the flaming face smiling at me, as if reminding me to whom I owed my life.

"I have chosen you as my last footprint in this world," I heard a voice whisper to me.

I fell to my knees.

"My lord, who are you really? Are you the Mahdi who will come at the end of time and rule the world?"

"It is you who have said so," the whisper answered me from the circle of fire.

"My faith in you is again unshakable," I assured.

"You will be my representative in this world as long as I remain hidden. You will hear my voice and pass it on to my followers."

After saying this, the smiling flaming face disappeared forever in the flames.

Just as it had happened to me the night Al-Muqanna left this world, I was stunned looking into that strange bluish fire in my cell. Suddenly I understood that I was free if I went through that charred door. On the other side I found the ashes of the one who must have been my jailer.

I ran up the stairs. No one stopped me, no one asked me, no one told me anything. When I wanted to realize it, I was in one of the crowded squares of the city under the morning sun. As if awakening from a dream, I ran towards the outer walls, seeking to get as far away as possible from my prison.

I left Balkh unknowingly through the west gate and walked like a beggar for seven days until I reached Merv. There I was taken in by a Jewish merchant family. Soon after I joined one of their caravans to Damascus.

Many years have passed since then. Al-Muqanna released me to be his representative in the world. I have succeeded in making his legend spread throughout the East, knowing that it defies the very nature of our world, as well as our faith and our strongest beliefs.

Even today, I do not know who the veiled prophet really was, whether a god made flesh, an evil genius, the hidden Mahdi who will open the way at the last hour, or perhaps a demon.

Many revere him, but no one knows what I know, that there are gates, gates that open in the air, of will-o'-the-wisp fire that burns without heat and without being consumed, that allow other beings, made of light and fire, to access our world and subjugate us in a thousand ways.

I often hear his voice in whispers, coming from that circle of fire ... and I feel fear.