Rahena

Imraan held out the map before him, and it rolled out along the table for everyone to see. He pointed to each of the sections that now had official roots of the rebellion. In Miristan, in Faisalgard, and Arassan.

Imraan traced his finger along the edge of the map near where one of the branches of the Royal Khazan Road began from the north. “This is where we will be attacking from the northeastern side.” Then he pointed towards the south end of the road, which was mere miles away from the central quarters of Ifsharan. “It could be dangerous, but we cannot let them drive us back close to the city. That will be Salman’s strategy, so afterwards he can use it to deride us. People in the city will not be harmed. Understood?”

Five of the men present had come from different parts of Ifsharan, who had joined Imraan many years ago. Two were brothers, many orphans of the Emir’s regime like Maryam and Omar, or older men who had fought in the battle against the Altharin earlier and grown weary of the Emir’s rule.

“We could move in closer to the road before we attack, so that the fight is not brought to the city, but I don’t know how far they would let us through. Shayfahan guards will be swarming the area. It is the Royal Khazan Road. They will be armed, especially with everything brewing lately, they will be on alert even if we take them by surprise.”

“How many more days?” asked Nasim ibn Khaled, one of the recruits Waqar Marouf had gathered.

“Few more days to recruit, and then for the forces to be mobilized and trained properly across the other locations.”

“And then we will avenge, by Sakina’s name,” Nasim ibn Khaled said. Murmurs ran along the room.

Imraan flinched, and said nothing.

When the others dispersed among themselves in the room, I went to Imraan as he was rolling up the leather map again into its scroll.

“Sakina Ilman. You knew her closely.”

Imraan held the scroll map to his chest. “We grew up together since we were children. I knew her so early in our lives, from such a young age, that I do not even remember the first time I met her.” He closed his eyes. “I do not know if she would see me as despicable a man as the people themselves see me.” He looked out towards the window. “What will I prove to be once the casualties of this war start rolling in? Because men will die, Rahena.”

“Damnit, Imraan, stop it,” I gripped him by the shoulders and looked him in the eyes. “Humans can’t live long under a yoke — they are compelled to break it. Do you hear me?”

Imraan stared at me as if I had just slapped him awake. I let go of his shoulders.

“I’ve seen it,” I whispered. “I’ve heard of the stories of my own homeland, of the Bayruni fighters. It is worse to live in chains, than to die fighting to break those chains.”

The room had emptied out, and the chatter along with it. Imraan said, “Promise me that you won’t…leave again.”

“Leave again?” I asked.

“That you won’t just wander off again when you have the visions. It could be dangerous.”

“Sometimes I want to get away from it all,” I said. “From the voices. And I keep thinking — if I was away from everything, if I went away, maybe it will all stop in my head.”

Imraan took my hands in his. “Rahena, please tell me you won’t do it. Don’t do something idiotic. If it happens, seek me out, wherever I am.”

I pulled my hands back and cursed inwardly. What was I supposed to do with the gaze with which he looked at me? — not the wary, the fearful, distrustful gaze I had so feared and known and avoided. It was something else, and a part of me was terrified to know what.

“Yes,” I nodded, although I did not know if I would.

***

Sleep became refuge.

But soon, even in sleep, I saw them. Thousands of miles away, in another land, I was a father. I ran with my children across a barren land, running from a burning house where I’d watched my other children burn, while soldiers razed over my home to build new land, and a king rode through the valleys nearby waving and smiling at the people, proclaiming peace and progress.

For whom? I wanted to ask him. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shout it into his face: For whom?

To succumb to sleep was to sink into someone else’s soul.

So I resisted sleep, downing three cups of coffee in the evenings; and after everyone had gone off to bed, I lit a candle and sat up in the library. Then slowly, the world would awake, and the house would awake, and the days would continue, blurring into one another and my body would begin to break down, succumbing to rest during the daytime and I would jerk awake every few moments once again. Time floated around me, unmoored, free of gravity.

It was the unseen, the invisible, hidden in the cover of alleys, underneath roofs, behind closed doors and walls, and across lands, and facades of gold and glory, across oceans and deserts; hidden behind reasonings and rationalizations of Nature, and God and Science, and thin veneers of smiles and waves, underneath the cover of language: articulate, glorified, beautified, justified.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Violence did not need to bleed. Sometimes it laughed. Other times it wore a gown of logic, of progress and evolution, and words. Such beautiful words.

Without sleep, the days became one long day. They all melded into each other. An endless repetition of sunrises and sunsets and whispers in my head. Time floated beyond, it radiated in a sphere echoing around me, growing further and further away — unreachable and unfathomable.

Adnan

In the hall of Cypress House, Adnan sat back with his eyes closed. He could hear people talking behind him, and soft laughter.

The servant man who had opened the door and told him to wait in the hall still had not returned. So Adnan waited. There was another door on the opposite end that led outside, a deep jeweled sea-green door, with a bronze handle. It was slightly ajar, but he could not tell where it led to. A sheen of moonlight glowed upon it, and the night swirled outside. Cicadas chirped somewhere.

He could hear a crackling fire in the next room.

Then the silhouette of a man came down the hall across from him, looking hesitant. It was Imraan al-Hunayn.

“Adnan,” Imraan whispered. His eyes took in Adnan as he would a ghost, an apparition. As if Adnan, too, was of the grave at which Imraan had last seen him.

Imraan’s mouth twitched into a smile, and he embraced him tightly. “You have come.”

“I did not have much choice, did I?”

Imraan’s face grew solemn. “No, I suppose you did not.”

The children were banished to bed with Adnan’s arrival. Tariq — whom Adnan assumed was their father — had taken the children up to bed and came back down to join the others. But Adnan saw the older girl, Maryam, return. She tiptoed down the stairs, and watched him with shrewd eyes from down the hall. Adnan did not give her away to the rest of the adults. Soon, he saw her fall asleep at the stairs, her head against the railing.

In the firelight, it was strange to tell them of the day his father died. Adnan had not told anyone how it had happened. Even when the elders of the town had asked when they were preparing for his burial, he had not said a word of it. It was a small janazah, because Adnan and Nanu Mihreen did not think it ideal for all of Ifsharan to arise at the word of the death of Sakina Ilman’s husband. But the word had spread.

“Try some of these roasted nuts. I made them myself with my own spices,” Imraan offered him a bowl.

Surayyah snorted. “The only thing you know how to do is eat them.”

“Hey, I helped,” Imraan countered, shrugging. “That constitutes the same thing.”

Adnan tasted a spiced cashew, and his mouth filled with the flavors of citrusy, zesty spices.

“I suppose you are here now because of the atrocity that occurred that Jummah day,” said Al-Ghazan.

Adnan continued, “Yes. It was in front of my house. We saw Shayfahan soldiers cutting people down while they were running.”

The man named Tariq recited a prayer, shaking his head.

“And then they officially declared your mother a traitor,” the woman named Rahena called from the other side. She sat next to the fireplace apart from them, her hands folded on her knees, her hood pulled down as if the light was blinding to her. Her eyes were rimmed in shadows instead of kohl. The woman named Surayyah sat next to her, sharp eyes peering out over her veil.

They all sat on the floor by the fire, where a majlis was spread with a carpet and cushions around them.

Across the realm, across Ifsharan, they are hearing that there was no massacre, that it is a lie forged by the rebellion to slander the Shayfahan’s name. After the massacre, they hid the bodies, loaded them onto carts, erased all vestiges that the massacre had ever occurred, and then sent Minstrels to announce that there had never been a massacre. Imraan, we saw them piling up

“Yes. They had never officially denounced my mother, until now.” Adnan laughed. They stared at him. “Do you not think it funny?” he asked. “Even in death, my mother is a threat to the Emir. Even in death, her identity, her work, her intentions, are manipulated, distorted. The living write and rewrite her, however it pleases them.”

Everyone averted his eyes, the fragility of grief too uncomfortable to witness. He was sick of it, and he no longer cared. Imraan was the only one who did not look away from him — Adnan was grateful to him for that.

“The Emir has targeted my family long enough. He has taken both my parents. The very legacy of my mother continues to be a thorn in his side for him. And it is putting my family in danger. Since we have officially been denounced as traitors, many dissociate themselves from us; of course, it’s affected our apothecary. And I don’t blame them, because their alternative is death. My Nanu Mihreen does not sleep, I know, because she thinks the Shayfahan will come.” Adnan spread his arms to them. “I need your help. My family is in danger.”

“Adnan,” Imraan began. “It is not just your family he is going after. To Salman, you are the threat.”

Adnan paused.

“The whole realm of Khardin is in love with Sakina. Salman knows that if the people were ever given a choice, they would choose someone of Sakina’s family, her own son, to rule. Particularly now that they have created a legend of your…talents. People whisper they want to see you as leader. And to Salman, that simply cannot be.”

Adnan sat, staring at Imraan.

“Imraan is right, Adnan,” Al-Ghazan said. “Salman is not just hunting your family – he is hunting you.”

Imraan flicked a walnut shell into the fire. “Al-Ghazan heard that in the Emir’s Council, the night before last, he asked his advisers how to kill Sakina’s son without the people rising up against him. So the only reason he has not yet done so is because he knows that it may pose a threat to him.”

Tariq’s outrageous growl followed: “That despicable scum.”

Al-Ghazan continued, “Apparently the Council told him that he needs to wait until making such a move, as it would not be smart after killing your father.”

“Why do you know him so closely?” Adnan said.

“I have been in his court since I was a young man with my father, but I assure you, Adnan son of Sakina, I despise the Emir as much as you,” Al-Ghazan told him. “But he does not know that, due to his own blinded arrogance,” he finished disgustedly. “His own conceit blinds him from the reality that any of his subjects could be anything but loyal to him even if he takes everything away from them.”

“But why does he see me as a threat?” Adnan asked. “What does he think I’m going to do, take his throne?” He laughed. “By Ardth, I would rather spend my days with some chai and tavla at Zaidan’s.”

Imraan looked him grimly in the eyes. “It does not matter what you want, Adnan. It does not matter if you really want the power, if you even care — sometimes all that matters is the volatile whims of one man’s ego. That, unfortunately, has is all that had determined the fates of violence.”

Adnan was holding the bowl in his hands and he felt the urge to crush it with his fingers, he could grip it tightly until it shattered and his skin bled.

You become something that you are not, in that moment. It forces you to become something you are not — forces you into a body that is not yours, into a voice that is not yours. Then what was he to do? To become? Was he to be a man that he was not? To become an act of force, pushing against himself? A lethal wave, carried on by tides that he was not the master of?

No, he told himself, he would not be.

“When I meet Salman,” Adnan said. “I want to face him myself.”