The cemetery caretaker opened the door. The smell of death almost drove them back to the café again, for the dead have their dignity, and it was nighttime. Yet, Khalf's stubbornness and his insistence to continue the jesting turned it serious and their gathering: utterly harmonious and enjoyable, just like every day in the café facing the cemetery. Even passersby might mistake them for drunkards, as their laughter reaches the walls of the tombs.

What happened was totally unexpected from Khalf. He didn't need to prove that his heart was hard as a stone and that he doesn't tremble for anything in this world, even Azrael himself. They all saw him during the fever days that struck his entire household. He alone lifted them, one by one, refusing any assistance. It was a remarkable day when he lifted his daughters and handed them over to the morgue. His gaze silenced the women's screams of grief for those who had died. In the evening, he would laugh as if nothing had happened. Since then, they nicknamed him "Father of the Dead Heart". So why would he get angry with Hassan, "the short scrawny one" who was always on edge? The first to run during a clearance raid, throwing his clothes into his shop with a strength they didn't know where he got, as if a devil was inside him. On clearance day, and there were many, Khalf liked to pick on Hassan.

You coward, enough with the fear.

Fear, no more than what happens to you. Imagine, guys, one of these gets frightened and criticizes the fool!

Me? Afraid...me?!

Dare to enter the cemetery now, dare.

And he kept repeating "dare, dare," rising from his chair, his hand on his waist as if he was genuinely challenging. Khalf himself was laughing, though there was some tension in his cheeks. When their laughter reached that point, Hassan, spontaneously making them slap their thighs before their feet reached the ground and their eyes on the enduring Khalf, despite his face buried in bitterness, interjected.

Dare to enter till the last marble tomb. Khalf’s abrupt standing and puffing startled Hassan into curling up in his seat like a mouse, yet his tongue wouldn’t stop.

He dares! That's talk.

Hassan died in his own skin and they died of laughter.

Let’s go.

Real signs of anger appeared on Khalf's face, biting their laughter and turning it into curious silence. They tried to calm him down but he insisted. They actually brought a sledgehammer and chisel to mark it, indulging in a hilarious night. The moments of crossing the street to the cemetery gate were filled with suppressed laughter accompanying gently pulling Khalf's robe to stop him and at the same time winking at Hassan to fan the flames.

Let’s see...water reveals the diver.

Their approach to the gate revived their laughter at the cemetery guard. One of the jokes they would pull when their late-night discussions ran dry. His eyes covered with glasses that make you see his eyes buried in the middle of his skull, his body like skeletons of the dead, as if he had been buried in a sinner's grave, was tormented and escaped with the last breath. Some jokingly said that his weakness came from his intercourse with dead women; the dead woman drains the body. Despite his familiarity with them, as soon as he heard why they had come, he began to talk about the dead who wake up every night, becoming alive, their actions strange, forming circles of strange chatter mixed with bitter cries. The arrival of a righteous man's body to the cemetery does not let him sleep, for the dead celebrate.

The guard's words increased his determination to enter. The guard even frightened him with the torment that takes place in those sealed graves: squeezing the person in it until the ribs distort and "...... and...... ", he said everything in detail, until his looks became a pit of torment, snakes, and worms...live worms eating the flesh. Yet, he insisted, opened the door, left the guard outside with them, and closed the door behind him.

The voices remained the same; he could hear them from behind the door as if they were with him, laughing to himself at their cowardice. For there was nothing here to fear at all, a cemetery and its inhabitants were dead. "Hmm, hmm," his movements towards the inside were confident, with all his senses he detached his ear from them. The more he wanted to distance himself from the door, the deeper he went. The distance in his head, he knew it precisely, he had covered it many times in the morning. "You fool, I'll go in and come back, I've counted the steps15,25.." How many? He forgot the steps he had taken. Where exactly is their sound? That is not important now. The important thing is how far we've gotten in the count. His tongue counted, and his ear was with the sound. Their voice died in the silence of the darkness he was in. If only one of them would curse him now, damn him; so that he doesn't keep going in like this. Just one curse, tying him to the start of the return. "One sound, ohhh."

He had covered the distance several times and the target was in front of his eyes. "Haaaa" What is in front of his eyes? A single point like the eye of a needle, flashing. He rubbed his eyes, the sparkle was inside the eye in the darkness of the ogre's belly. His sight was almost escaping due to his excessive gaze forward. "The target was here". Something touched his shoulder, he quickly turned around, he turned around himself, the ghosts in the darkness were black: a dark flicker he could not see, looking for nothing in nothingness, his directions were lost, there was no longer a behind him or a front, woe to him in the dark silence, for what is more ugly than to be sighted in a blind atmosphere. Will he sit here in the same non-place until morning? Or should he scream and call out to them? Their entry is laughable and there's no need to be afraid, but where does he go? He gathered his strength, pulled hard on the crowbar and chisel. For the first time, he realized that silence has a deeper silence. Outside, he did not know trembling, he could not make his body shudder like this. The body full of blood and life is more merciful, at least he can see it.

If only he could see anything here, if all those under the ground came out at once, or one by one, he would fight them and end them. How many of them are here? "By the Prophet's religion," dead, thousands upon thousands of years ago, of all types and colors, countless. If only he could see them, rather than have them surround him like this as a non-tactile envelope, audible without sound, viewable without boundaries before his sight. As much as he was drawn to completing the path, he yearned to return, the first return, there was no hope in retreating, for their number was indeed large, countless. Their black eyes were coming out of every grave, can one grave contain eyes like this? Without lashes or eyelids, spherical black eyes, balls, balls, merciless, they entered him, questioned him, accused him, and fought him. He closed his eyes. The blind have hard lives, but what is harder is not seeing anything while your eyes are open, certainly those eyes are mounted on bodies, surely surely.

He lifted the crowbar, swung it, knocked down chests, tore bodies, ended moments of nothingness that he was in. Where are the bodies? Where is his body? It melted into the darkness and became a piece of it, and the eyes were circles in cylindrical rows, they cornered him in their midst, they drew his eye to them, they moved with him and around him. He dropped the crowbar on the eyes, black blood flowed in front of his eyes, the void fell into the void, thousands upon thousands of eyes surrounded his neck, he poked, crushed, viscous fluids unfeelable between his hands, underneath him thousands of hands pulled him into the ground, the whole place was full of pits, dark deep pits, he ran over skulls with tongues, cracked and shattered bones, terrified, he tried to run to the end, he bumped into something huge. "Oooooh" It's not important what happened to his head, what's important is that he arrived and that's it, he would plant the mark, and he must return, he must return.

He didn't feel the violent impact on his hand, he was stunned to hear the sound of the clashes between the crowbar and the chisel. He returned to a reality of life he almost forgot. "Bang, bang," until you hear the sound. He stopped after he was assured of planting the mark, something grabbed his cloak, his heart fell at the edge of the cloak, in the part that was tightly gripped. His nerves and marrow gathered in one point at the start of the grip, his heart fled into his head and mixed with his brain, making a dough. The grip pulled the dough and all his veins and threw them all at once into the bottom of the grave, the grave of the dead, and the dead man screamed and a grip..

They stood outside for a long time and decided to go in. The graves in the light of the "club" seemed like silver boxes floating above dark clouds. The graves smiled, stealing the lights from the ground and pulling their eyes towards them. They smiled unconsciously. Their faces met at the end of the smiles. One of them broke the astonishment with his voice.

Here he is.

He was panting, coming in pale astonishment, his hand clutching the crowbar, and the chisel stuck at the end of the cloak swaying.