72 Virgins

Through the thick white smoke, you can hear loud automatic gunfire and explosions. Slowly, the smoke thins and armed child soldiers in military jackets with Arab headscarves come into view.

An elderly instructor shouts "Allahu Akbar!" and the children loudly repeat "Allahu Akbar!" after him. Among the children, we also see a screaming Ahmed up close, holding a Kalashnikov and wearing a vest with explosives.

As child soldiers sit in the background cleaning weapons, Ahmed passes a school for children of rich parents. When he sees the instructor playing ball with his two well-dressed sons on the schools playground, he approaches them. The instructor sees him, walks up to him and rudely asks, "What are you doing here?! Go practice throwing grenades right now!"

Sunlight spills from the high mountains across the rocky landscape. Today is Ahmed's big day, the one he has been preparing for. Today, as the last son in the family of the Shehids, he will join his father and brothers in paradise and receive a glorious reward from god. Today he will become a hero, a martyr and a man.

His mother said to him in a solemn voice, in the cool of the morning, before setting out on her holy journey: "Ahmed, my youngest son, do your duty to Allah and follow the path of glory by which your father and brothers went to Paradise."

He looked into her proud eyes one last time as she tightened the straps of his explosive vest and set off towards the city.

As he walked along the stone paths that wound down the steep hills, he thought about his instructor's promises of a life in paradise. Allah had promised royal life in eternal paradise to all the heroes who sacrifice their lives for the Most High, punish the unbelieving and arrogant strangers, who by their shameless behavior belittle the Immaculate One, slander His holy Name and insult His exalted Honor, glorify Him with a vengeance and make Him famous. All the heroic martyrs will be given a celestial body, beautiful, fit and strong, a glittering palace with gardens of paradise, and 72 virgins who will grant them all their wishes.

Ahmed has never dressed in beautiful clothes, sat at a royal table, eaten the dishes of paradise or drunk sweet nectar. He has never been with a woman or slept on a soft bed. Today he will be king and his concubines will call him King Ahmed. "The beauties of paradise are waiting for me, one more beautiful than the other", he thought as he sped towards the city, which in the distance was growing from cold darkness to bright morning, to put on his royal crown as soon as possible.

After a long and arduous journey, Ahmed arrived in Kabul's crowded Mujahideen bazaar, panting, dusty and sweating. Among the locals were many richly dressed foreigners buying fruit and vegetables for a dime.

Ahmed stood among them in an olive green jacket, his finger on the trigger in his pocket. He shifted uneasily, waiting for Allah's sign to fly into the sky. He looked around him, silently repeating the martyr's prayer: "Great and Almighty Allah, King of the World, Lord of Life and Death, thank You for choosing me as Your soldier and allowing me to humbly serve You. Guide me on the path of glory, so that I may find peace and happiness in Paradise."

As he repeated "Allah is great" a third time, he was instantly transported by a powerful explosion into a large, bright and luxurious harem room with pleasant music and intoxicating scents.

Ahmed lies on a large, round, red velvet bed, looking around in amazement. On the walls were paintings of scenes from paradise life, and through the windows, surrounded by white curtains, he could see the gardens of paradise with their beautiful flowers and fountains. In a large painting on the wall opposite him, he saw himself in royal robes and with a crown on his head, and around him stood, sat and knelt the beauties themselves. "I am in paradise, at last!" he smiled with satisfaction.

Through the many open doors, the beautiful girls slowly began to come to him, dressed in white light clothes, with long black hair and diamond necklaces. One more beautiful than the other. They danced around him, looking at him seductively and descending to him on the soft bed. They began to caress him, hug him and kiss him tenderly. Ahmed smiled broadly and rejoiced in his reward as the girls slowly began to undress him. He closed his eyes and gave in to the heavenly pleasures.

The music grew faster and louder, and he felt the girls grabbing and squeezing him harder and harder. He opened his eyes to see what was happening.

The palace of paradise had turned into a dark, musty and smelly basement, the windows and curtains were gone, the beautiful paintings had disappeared and in their place were big moldy black stains. Where his royal painting had hung before, there was now a grotesque black bloody smear of blackness that ran down the wall. Cockroaches were coming down from the ceiling and crawling up the walls.

Ahmed, horrified in the semi-darkness, noticed that the girls had begun to change from beauties in white to grim monsters with pointed teeth, black eyes and long claws. Beautiful white clothes became black and tattered rags. The infernal demonesses smelled of putrid rot, blackness covered their eyes and their skin turned snake-like. Green pus was oozing from their burst eyeballs. They grew more and more savage and bloodthirsty, growling and snarling menacingly, grabbing him roughly and squeezing him hard. Ahmed tried to wriggle out of their grasp and stand up, but he could not, for they were too many and held him too tightly.

The increasingly blaring heavy metal music frightened him even more as the demonesses rampaged around him, tearing off the scraps of his clothes and shrieking bestially. They began to tear out tufts of his hair, shoving bloody claws all over his body and ripping off chunks of his flesh. They surrounded him and covered him up, so that it went dark.

Ahmed was screaming in excruciating pain. In mortal fear and despair, he screamed out loud “Allah, help me!”, opened his eyes wide and was surprised to see that he was standing in the marketplace again.

People turned to see why he was screaming. He looked scornfully at the well-dressed strangers, his eyes were filled with blackness, and he pulled the trigger with all his might. Darkness and distant diabolical echoes of the demonesses.