The Last Jinn of Malabar

Where Malabar drinks the monsoon rain,
And tides remember loss and pain,
Where ancient ports in silence sleep,
A buried oath was hidden deep.

Behind an old and weathered wall,
Where twilight heard the prayer-call fall,
A nameless boy with searching eyes
Dreamed of worlds beyond the skies.

He held a shovel, worn and plain,
Its iron kissed the sodden plain,
Then suddenly through mud and stone
There rang a sharp metallic tone.

He knelt and clawed the dripping ground,
Until a strange old lamp was found,
Its body carved with moons long dead,
And words no living tongue had read.

His companions laughed in careless flame,
“Rub it! Fortune knows your name!”
They mocked the dark with youthful grin,
Unaware what slept within.

He wiped the lamp with trembling sleeve,
And all the wind forgot to breathe,
The palms stood still, the crows were mute,
The sea itself grew resolute.

A thread of smoke began to climb,
Like sorrow rising out of time,
It coiled and widened, fierce and tall,
A shadow towering over all.

Two burning eyes of ember-red
Awoke where mortal fear had fled,
A voice like thunder locked in clay
Spoke words the dusk could not delay.

“At last…” it groaned through fire and night,
“I wake again to claim my right.
I am the last of those who burned,
The final flame that has returned.”

The nameless boy stood pale with dread,
Yet still he raised his shaking head,
“What are you, lord of ash and scar?”
It answered slow, “A fallen star.”

“Five hundred years the waves have rolled
Since men betrayed my house for gold,
A king was drowned, a harbor slain,
And fire was shackled down in chain.”

The village lamps began to shake,
The banyan roots were left awake,
Red lightning split the western foam,
As if old wrath itself came home.

“I did no crime,” the young one cried,
The jinn replied, “Yet blood is tied.
The debts of fathers, buried thin,
Return through every son and kin.”

Then back it flowed in smoke and spark,
Returning to its brass-bound dark,
The winds returned, the leaves could sway,
But peace had already died that day.

Now through Malabar’s moonlit din,
Still walks the boy who woke the jinn,
While tides repeat through wave and foam:

“What ancient fire will next come home?”   

MUHAMMED SHAMIL KP

DARUL ULOOM DA'WA COLLEGE THOOTHA