Story name: “Al-Asifah” (The Storm).

The night is deep. The snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada stand still, looking up at the stars in the sky. The wind blows in the valley like a gentle breath, but in that breath today there are terrible tears hidden. Because tonight, tonight is the night—when a civilization will be extinguished, when a dream called Andalusia will be buried forever.

That city, Granada—which was the last stronghold of Muslim Andalusia, sleeps restlessly today. History is written on the walls of the city, the call to prayer no longer rises from the minarets, only silence hangs in the air. In a room of the palace, a young man stands—more shame than fear in his eyes. He is Abu Abdullah Muhammad al-Ahmar, whom we know in history as “Boabdil”—the last Muslim ruler of Andalusia.

He knows that tomorrow, before sunrise, he will have to hand over the keys of Granada to the Catholic Queen Isabel and King Ferdinand. This is the city that Abu Yusuf, Abd al-Rahman, and later the Nasrid rulers built into a fortress of knowledge, where philosophers like Ibn Rushd, poets and soldiers like Zahir al-Din, and mystics like Rumi once raised their voices in praise of God.

But today? Today, the city is burdened only by the weight of silenced memories.

On the other side of the city, in a small hut on a hill outside the city, sits another man—al-Qahtani, an old scholar who was once the Khatib of the Alhambra Palace, an advisor to the royal court. Now a lonely, neglected, forgotten man.

He is immersed in prostration. His shoulders are shaking with tears, his forehead is covered with dirt. He is praying, “Oh God! This land once roared in your name. Why is it so silent today? Why are your soldiers silent today?”

Behind him sits his grandson—Ziyad, a teenager, with fire in his eyes, not tears. He said, “Grandpa, won’t we fight? Won’t we fight against them?”

The old man said calmly, “Oh Ziyad, you can’t win with the sword alone. For a nation that has defeated its soul, the sword is just a metal burden. We have lost books, lost mosques, lost knowledge—and then we have lost faith. So the fall is not just external, it comes from the depths of the heart.”

The next day, that sad day in history—January 2, 1492. Boabdil came out of the palace of Granada dressed in white. With him were some of his generals, some ministers. In his hand was the key to the city. Standing in the distance were Queen Isabella, Ferdinand, and their priests—who would hold the sword of the future Christian rule.

Boabdil held out the key. There was no sound, only the wind stopped.

After handing over the key, he set off for the mountain road. When he looked back at Granada for the last time, tears welled up in his eyes. His mother, the elderly Aisha, said, “You weep now, for the city that you could not defend as a man would.”

That place is still known in history as “El Último Suspiro del Moro”—the last breath of the Muslim.

Al-Qahtani sat in his hut and sounded the call to prayer. The call echoed in the mountains, but did not reach the city, because the city was then under siege. The young Ziad looked at the city, where the church bells were now ringing. The question in his eyes was—when will this defeat be avenged?

Al-Qahtani said slowly, “The path to recovery is not through revenge, but through knowledge, faith, and self-purification. We have lost Andalusia, but if we lose our minds, the entire Ummah will lose itself.”

Ziyad understood that the fall of Andalusia was not just the fall of a state. It was the fall of a time, a civilization, a set of values. Under the rubble of that fall lie millions of tears, millions of nightmares—but within it is also hidden a call, a ray of light that says—“Wake up, Muslim, come back again... Come back to your light that you have lost.”

This was a storm, “Al-Asifah,” that destroyed palaces, burned books, but left some souls for the future—those who wait for that new dawn, when a child will once again say in his mother’s arms, “Allahu Akbar.”