Where is saif ul malook

Especially my mother! You know how jittery she gets in your presence. Seeing that Badr was recalcitrant, Saif had tried again, in his most conciliatory tones. Can you do that for me? Besides, you might get it into your head to fly back to Koh Kaaf, or even Paristan one day! It was as if to say that Saif did not trust her; that he considered her fickle, an unruly child who had to be disciplined and placated.

However, she said nothing of this to him, and merely nodded. Anything you say. And so, some months passed. While Saif was busy dispensing his princely duties, Badr would be attending balls and garden parties arranged by her mother-in-law the Queen, dressed in voluminous, human-style gowns, with her hair elaborately braided and coiffed in the human fashion, and her feet bound in jeweled sandals.

Badr had no knowledge of these subjects, nor was she interested — she would have preferred to sing rather than talk, dance rather than walk, wear the least amount of layers the weather permitted, and let her hair fly loose in the wind. As for fancy foods, the meal she liked best was a hearty chunk of game venison preferably raw , with a side of wild herbs, downed with good, strong grape liqueur.

Yet another was bathing under the full moon in the nude, in the closest available water body — which meant the fountain in the central Palace courtyard. At this Saif had to put his foot down — his people were not ready, he said, to accept that kind of free-spirited behavior from their future Queen.

She could not do without it. Supplies were running low, and Saif was pressed to make an urgent trip to the southern woodlands to procure the next batch, under the guise of a sport hunting expedition. The family had been traveling in Asia for several months and thus had missed the royal wedding. They came now to offer their presents and felicitations to the happy couple; and to see for themselves this mysterious Fairy that Saif had brought back with him from the Himalayas.

The eldest of the three cousins, Safiyya, was particularly curious about Badr — you see, she had hoped to marry Saif herself one day. This young princess was exceptionally beautiful, not to mention exceedingly clever and proud to match.

Deep in her heart, she could never forgive Saif for choosing another woman over her; or the other woman for taking what was rightfully hers.

My heart is burning to see this piece of moonlight! Safiyya, her sisters and mother turned their heads towards the commanding voice, and saw standing before them a tall, plain-looking girl. Her black hair was tied back in a severe bun, her skin was sallow, her eyes colorless and cold, and the rich robes she wore hung awkwardly over her thin frame.

The contrast with Safiyya — petite and amply figured, with a rosy complexion, glossy brown curls, dark, mischievous eyes set in a heart-shaped face and a vivacious laugh — could not have been greater. Then where is your true beauty? The Queen stuttered nervously.

Let us see what the fuss is about once and for all! The Queen had no choice but to comply. While she went to fetch the wings, word spread through the Palace that the Fairy Badr Jamal was about to demonstrate her flying ability. Everybody wanted to witness the spectacle of a flying Fairy. What if she escapes? Badr stood on a raised platform at the end of the hall. The Queen handed her the parcel. With that, Badr unwrapped the muslin parcel. What happened next is difficult to describe.

The women and children who witnessed it could not stop raving about it till the end of their days, and the memory of what they saw passed onto legend. The bulky dress she was wearing fell to the ground in a heap, the innumerable pins in her hair sprang out, her tight sandals came flying off. And there she was, the Fairy Queen Badr-ul-Jamal, free, hovering above their dumbfounded faces in a dazzling halo of light.

Her face glowed white like the moon, framed by clouds of black hair that shone like the midnight sky. Her golden eyes flashed like the rays of a rising sun, and every movement of her long, slender limbs bespoke grace, as though she were swimming through the air, through the flowing, translucent garment that draped her body. And her wings? They were like living creatures in their own right, two iridescent chimeras filigreed with the brightest of silver, radiating all the colors of the universe.

She was mesmerizing. She was unreal. She was the most beautiful sight that they had ever seen, and would ever see. It was more powerful, more melodic. Neither you, nor Prince Saif. You judged me for my beauty, my uniqueness, and bade me hide it; then you judged me for my lack of it.

General commotion followed. There were shouts and gasps, and people jostling each other to get closer to the Fairy Queen. But before anybody realized what was going on, Badr transformed herself into a white dove and flew straight out of the hall through a tiny crack in the roshandan , a small skylight in the corner of the ceiling that had somehow escaped attention. Now, you may wonder, what was Prince Saif up to at the moment Badr Jamal made her escape from the Palace in the shape of a white dove?

In fact, he was resting beneath the shade of an ebony tree deep in the woodlands of Nubia, after a fruitful but exhausting deer hunt. Eyes half-closed, stretched out on the soft green grass, he was thinking sweet thoughts about his beloved Fairy Queen, when a white dove came and alighted on a branch above him. So, he quietly got to his feet, picked up a net that lay amongst his hunting paraphernalia, and flung it over the bird. But the net, as if repelled by an invisible force, bounced straight back at him, while the dove sat merrily on her perch unperturbed.

Saif tried a second time to ensnare the bird, then a third, with the same perplexing result. You can never own me. You can never possess me. And I will never leave your side till as long as you live. With these words, Badr Jamal fluttered her snowy white wings and was off, leaving Saif in a state of utter discombobulation. What had happened in his absence? All that was irrelevant. He knew what he had to do. Let her go, Saif. She is happier with her own kind. Please, just forget about her! There is no dearth of beautiful ladies here in Egypt.

Think, Saif, destiny has afforded you a second chance at a happy, normal life. He was an obstinate fellow, and he truly did love Badr. Just as he had found his way to the magical lake in Kaghan Valley, just as he had completed the day penitence, the chilla, and escaped from the Ogre and the Flood with Badr in his arms, so he would bring her back from the deepest, darkest dungeons of Paristan if he had to.

Many times he cursed himself for forgetting to carry his Sulemani topi , the magic cap bequeathed to him by the old buzurg during his first quest, which had the power to transport its wearer to any place on earth in the twinkling of an eye. At length, Saif reached Peshawar, a bustling frontier town and the historic gateway to the Indian subcontinent.

Merchants from all corners of the Silk Route thronged its narrow streets, hawking their varied wares in loud voices — silk, cashmere, cotton, spices, dry fruit, wine, carpets, woodwork, decorative objects of marble, ivory and jade, gemstones, weapons, secrets and stories — there was nothing you could not find in the legendary markets of Peshawar.

Looking around the crowded little shop for a place to sit, he spotted an empty stool next to an old man with a flowing white beard, who sat sipping his tea and fingering a rosary. The old man looked up at Saif. Their eyes met, and Saif had the sensation that he knew him from somewhere before; that this was not a chance encounter.

Quickly, Prince Saif related to his new friend the objective of his journey: to reach the mythical land of Paristan which, according to legend, lay somewhere in these parts , and recover his beloved Fairy Queen and true wife, Badr Jamal. My dear lad! Because Paristan has no physical existence! You will not find it on any map, you will not see any signboards pointing the way, no gates or city walls to saunter through.

On the whole, it is entirely impossible for you to reach there in your present state. The good news is that I can help you.

Were you ever in Egypt some years back? It was true. A few hours later, Prince Saif found himself riding with a caravan of merchants towards Tattoo, a small village in the kingdom of Gilgit, perched on the craggy slopes of the magnificent Karakoram mountains. The merchants, heading for China via the Khunjerab Pass, had agreed to drop Saif off at the village in exchange for his horse, a handsome Arabian steed that would fetch a weighty price in the horse fairs of the Mongolian steppe.

Saif parted with the animal with a heavy heart, but he actually had no further use for it. His real destination was 23 miles further off Tattoo, where no horse or mule tracks led; a place called Joot, today famous by its English appellation, Fairy Meadows.

The locals are wary of venturing there at all because of all the stories; shepherds who went to graze their flocks and never returned; explorers, bandits, naturalists and mystics, attracted to the place by its beauty and its solitude, and never seen again. It is enchanted, they say, the abode of witches and jinns, as perilous as it is beautiful. He stood in the middle of a vast green meadow, facing the awesome, ice-covered Nanga Parbat.

Dusk was approaching, and there was not a soul in sight. All was silent, except for the gentle hum of the evening breeze amongst the pines. Saif pulled out from his satchel the tattered woolen cloak. Buildings, roads, entire cities, will simply vanish. Meanwhile, you yourself will be rendered invisible to all.

As for the wooden staff, the old man had said he had bought it from a wandering Jewish mendicant, who claimed that the staff contained a tiny fragment of the miraculous staff of Moses.

Placed in the right hands, it had the power to unlock or open any kind of barrier — gates, doors, chains — both magical and mundane.

But Saif hesitated. What if all of this was a lie? What if the old man had tricked him? And now, there he was, alone in that desolate spot with no food, no shelter, no money, not even his horse to help him retrace his steps and make the long journey home…. By this time it was almost completely dark. A silver slipper of a moon had begun to glimmer above the jagged peaks of the Karakoram.

Taking a deep breath, he grasped the wooden staff and wrapped the woolen cloak around him…. What did he see? Sometimes, there are sights so wondrous, events so singular, that they are better left imagined. Meanwhile, in Paristan — where Prince Saif had snuck into at that very moment, aided by his invisibility cloak and the magic staff — Badr Jamal felt a deep shiver run through her body.

I can feel it! My Prince has come to get me! But nobody heard her hysterical cries. What had happened was this: living away from home for so long, Badr Jamal had forgotten what her father, the king of Paristan, was really like — cruel, cold, and sinfully proud of his race.

But the reception she received was far from what she had expected. So that when Badr Jamal showed up at the castle gates — not the innocent child who had disappeared years ago as she played with her friends in the woods, but a tall, beautiful, fully-grown woman — the king her father did not shout, or weep for joy.

He did not run to embrace her, or send up a prayer of thanks to the gods. No daughter of mine would dare dishonor her race by lying with a khaki. Be gone! And what if Saif never came? What if she were to languish in this dungeon for the rest of her days? As he navigated the precipitous paths of Paristan on his way to the castle, Badr writhed in torment, screaming as if she had lost her mind.

She was making such a racket that the prison guards grew alarmed and ran to notify the king. The king descended to the dungeon to investigate, followed by his minions. The whole kingdom knew of what Badr had done.

The fairy folk were an open-minded lot, but this was one transgression they could absolutely not tolerate. If all their females — or males for that matter — were to make off with human folk, that would mean the end of the fairy race; for it was a known fact that fairy-human unions only produced human children. So if the king did not act firmly in the case of his own daughter, his people would take him for a pushover, a weakling, and lose respect for him.

Now, unbeknownst to the king, the ministers and prison guards, Prince Saif had already infiltrated the castle, unseen under his magic cloak, throwing open all the gates, locks and bolts that lay in his way with a single tap of the Moses staff. There is no way that a magic-less man, a mere khaki , can find the portal to Paristan, let alone penetrate the magically protected gates of the city and make his way here to the dungeons undetected. He possesses a magic far greater than you, or I, or Deo Safed.

Prince Saif, with a good sense of the dramatic, had tapped the chains with his magic staff at just the right moment. Pandemonium went up in the dungeon. Badr Jamal is free! But how can it be? The king could not believe his eyes. This was unprecedented. This was serious magic, not one that any ordinary man could wield.

I give you my word, I will not bring him any harm. He cut a striking figure, handsome as ever, with a grit and wisdom about him that impressed all who were present. Imagine my shock, then, when I found her a prisoner here, treated worse than an animal would be in my own kingdom.

I am enraged. And, whether you give us your blessings or not, I am taking her away. How could a man be so bold, so fearless to speak thus to the King of Paristan? He, who had hundreds of thousands of jinn, ogres, sprites and fairies under his command, whose magic could strike down the Prince in an instant, and blight the fortune of his family for generations to come? Now, Prince Saif did not know all of this, and it was just as well. This man may not be a man at all; he may be a powerful wizard, or at any rate, under the protection of some great mage, who will certainly wreak vengeance on me if any harm were to befall him.

So the King gave the couple his blessings — which Saif and Badr were loath to receive — and married them in a typically rambunctious fairy ceremony, held after twilight in the gardens of the castle. In spite of himself, Prince Saif had to admit that the fairy folk knew how to throw a party.

When the time came for their departure, the Fairy King, now all smiles and flattery, presented Prince Saif with numerous gifts, including a buraq , a magnificent winged horse that could travel at the speed of a falcon. Henceforth, Saif never asked Badr to put away her wings. He never told her off for bathing in the moonlight, never demanded that she attend the boring court luncheons his mother loved to organize.

Badr was free to fly where she willed, but she always returned to pass the night with Saif. His year reign was said to be one of the most prosperous and peaceful the kingdom had seen.

But the truth is, Saif never used the Solomon cap, the invisibility cloak and the staff of Moses again. It was as if the old men — or man, because Saif was convinced they were one and the same person — had never existed. The couple had three beautiful children, two daughters and a son. Unfortunately, Saif met with an untimely death, in a battle with the Mongols in Syria. Badr was devastated, and could not bear to pass another day in the palace without him.

But, for the sake of her children, she continued to live there. And so the years passed, her children grew up, were married and had children of their own, adorable little tots whom Badr cherished and loved with all of her heart. But even they could not fill the empty space inside, the constant yearning she carried for Saif, her one true love, and for Paristan, her homeland. One night, without telling a soul, Badr rose from bed, gathered her fairy wings and a few mementos of her children and grandchildren — a toy, a piece of clothing, a pocket portrait — and left the palace.

It was the night of the full moon, chowdveen ka chaand. Flying through the still, eerie night, she first headed towards the Royal Cemetery, were Saif was buried some 30 years ago. Alighting on his white marble sepulcher, Badr uttered the following words. As she spoke, the marble tomb began to crack open, as if an invisible hand were pounding it with a giant pickaxe. The skeleton hovered over to where Badr Jamal stood, and collapsed in a heap at her feet. Badr carefully collected the bones and wrapped them in a piece of cloth, which she fastened to her back along with the other odds and ends she carried.

Then she took off, without looking back, leaving the vandalized grave to magically repair itself as if nothing had happened. Flying towards Paristan, Badr Jamal had tears in her eyes; she knew she would never return to Egypt again. She would never see her children or grandchildren again. But at least she had recovered some part of her beloved, something she could touch and feel and remember him by.

And that gave her consolation. Badr passed the rest of her days in Paristan, among her own people — among her brothers and sisters and childhood friends, in that strange and fantastical land where the beasts spoke and the trees walked and the sun changed color everyday. She never aged, never displayed so much as a wrinkle on her luminous, moon-like face; for in Paristan, nobody ages from the outside, remaining in the prime of their youth till the day they die.

The rest of the bones she stored in a gilded chest in her bedroom. Thus Badr Jamal lived for another years, until finally, her time also came. There she was, floating on her back in the dark, velvety waters, looking up at the spectacular, star-studded night and a radiant moon that bathed the mountains below in a soothing silver light. In that moment, Badr was perfectly happy. She was at peace.

All of a sudden, there was a flash of light — a blue fire that burst forth from her person — and she was gone. Nothing but ashes remained, floating on the blue, murmuring water.

But we hope that it does, so Badr -ul- Jamal could be reunited with her beloved Saif, and they could look down together at this strange, fantastical drama we call life. You have told the story so beautifully that i was unable to stop reading it. May Allah bless you. Proud to be a resident of beautiful and awesome country Pakistan.

So lovely story. I liked it. But was it really true that Fairies, Giants and Jinns existed in the true story? Was there really a prince Saif-ul-Malook and fairy princess Badr-ul-Jamal?

Thank you thank you thank you. I used to open your blog every few weeks only to be disappointed again and again. I had almost lost hope, I thought you were too busy. Hey Manal, absolutely loved the story and your retelling of it. Google search landed me on your article. Reading this story has increased my yearning so much almost as much as Saif himself ;. But being from India, I know it is going to be difficult.

But happen it will. If only I can find that buzurg ;. Thank you for your kind words! And one day you will definitely get to visit, and hear the story from the storytellers at Saif ul Malook themselves :. Hi Manal. Somehow I won the prize. My initial question was about the depth of the lake, as there were so many different stories, that I had to go into it in more detail for myself. Thank God. You are commenting using your WordPress.

You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. It is a sight to behold.

Lake Saif-ul-Malook in summertime. The Lake Saif-ul-Malook — a long shot. A frozen Lake Saif-ul-Malook under the moon. Lake Saif ul Malook is a famous tourist resort, acknowledge for the associated story of a Persian blue blood Saif ul Malook.

The Saif Ul malook lake with its majestic and hypnotic natural beauty, pleasant atmosphere and associated tale and history, attracts thousands of tourists annually from all round the country throughout the summer. The lake saif ul malook is additionally known for being surround of enormous size trout fish, that weigh up to 7 seven kilograms. Lake Saif ul Malook additionally provides a fabulous read of Malika Parbat, that is that the highest peak of Kaghan depression.

Lake Saif ul Malook is one of the most elevated high lake of Pakistan. It is situated at a height of 3, meters 10, feet above ocean level. There are many controversies concerning the depth of Lake Saif ul Malook. However, a team that recently conducted a survey on all alpine lakes of Northern Areas of Asian country told that the depth of Lake Saif ul Maloo fifty feet. If we tend to take a glance at figures given higher than, the one 50 feet provided by the team that conducted survey appears to be additional realistic, as if we tend to take into account the earth science of the world close the lake, it might be marvel of nature for a lake to be The patrician therefore started his journey to seek out his beloved fairy Badi ul Jamal.

He was uninformed in his restless journey till he met a Devish holy man , WHO told him however he will notice her. Devish additionally told him that he had to travel through several exams before he may notice and marry Badi ul Jamal, as a result of she was a fairy and patrician was human.

The patrician then starts his journey for the not possible within the name of his love. LOG IN. Log into your account.