In Attar's Mosibat-Nameh, the tale of Harut and Marut suspended upside down in the well of Babylon serves as a powerful Sufi allegory for the agony of spiritual separation and the veil of the ego. Despite being only a finger's breadth away from clear, life-giving water, the fallen angels are entirely unable to drink and are consumed by burning thirst. In Sufi cosmology, this represents the condition of the human soul: although the divine presence is closer to the soul than its own jugular vein, the soul remains tormented by spiritual thirst, cut off from the divine source by the weight of its earthly transgressions and the veil of its own selfhood.