Deema served Sara some lentils with rice and a goat cauliflower curry. Sara was talking up a storm about school and classes and friends.
Sara had finished a plate and was reaching for seconds. Deema was glad to see her enjoy her cooking. It didn’t happen every time, her daughter was a budding critic and she had strong opinions about what she liked.
“I’m having a hard time with Spanish! The conjugation is annoying and it’s just so different. I wish I could learn it just by listening to songs, it would be so much more fun. As it is, there are SO many pronouns and I have to memorize all these words… ”
Deema smiled, her mind flashing back to her own time learning Spanish and she remembered a neat factoid. “Did you know many Spanish words come from Arabic? Pillow, rice, shirt, oh and ojala comes from inshallah for if God wills!”
Sara took that change of direction and ran with it. “Yes and olive and oil and saffron. Oh and”. It was so easy to smile when Sara was around. Her daughter’s unsullied zest for knowledge and her excitement to share it was contagious. She was still going on. “And funny you should mention inshallah. You know how it came about, right? That chapter of the Book supposed to be read every Friday.” Sara paused expectantly.
“Oh, remind me, dear,”
Sara being Sara went on a tangent. “It has a lot of stories in it. The men in the cave, the man in green who did stuff for God all over, the traveller who traveled from one end of the world to the other and locked up Gog and Magog, oh and the meta commentary about never saying you’ll do something without saying Inshallah because it’s not up to you, see.” Deema kept listening but her smile slid off her face. The man in green?
Sara was still talking. “So the people came to the Prophet ﷺ and asked him three questions and he ﷺ said I’ll tell you tomorrow but he didn’t say Inshallah! And so the next day…”
Deema’s brain was working furiously. It couldn’t be this obvious…. She gave her daughter a kiss and told her she had some work to do.
----------------------------------------
It was tenuous, but it had to be shared. But Daniel wasn’t picking up. She had called him 5 times already and he didn’t pick up even once or even message her. She would’ve messaged him what she wanted to tell him, but she didn’t want to say it over text, or email, or any other typically recordable means of communication. It felt off to her even to help the CNCA, dangerous, even, but they had hired her. They deserved this much. She tried a few times again before going to sleep, every time unsuccessfully, thinking about what she had only recently learnt – how Ruritani draft enforcers had fallen down stairs, some from just three stairs, to their deaths before the government gave up on the draft and signed the peace and autonomy treaty. And how the protests by the Ruritani had essentially held the ministers for environment and defence hostage for 4 days. And How the ministerial hostage taking and the deaths of the enforcers were hand-waved away during the chaos of the time and their reality kept secret.. And how there were rumblings of magic, and destiny, the hand of God, and green. She couldn’t believe it, but the coincidences were adding up. Sara had reminded her of the old story of a man in green tasked by God to solve problems. In his story, he sabotaged ships, killed transgressors or transgressors-to-be, and rebuilt a wall to protect the inheritance of two orphans. He acted as God willed and knew more about the unseen and the unknown than even the prophets of the time. The pattern fit. How could she have been so blind?
At 4 am, her phone rang. She grabbed around for her phone. It was Daniel. Finally. She was fully awake in less time than it took her to pick up the call.
“Ms. Hayat. Sorry to have woken you up. We have a situation.” Deema jumped in. “Oh, yes we do. If this is matter is indeed related to the independent actor we talked about – then we can expect significant deaths the next time round. This is not my professional opinion, but I would suggest getting amulets for all of your people and increase security for them – if you have any large groups either here or in the colonies. Anyone one group of people for a training or conference, like doctors, logistics personnel, or ”
Daniel cut her off. When he did, his voice was faint and damning.“151 reserve pilots of the Colonial Air Force and 25 local trainers and support staff have perished in the past 24 hours.”
WHAT. Deema’s heart stopped. 151 pilots in one day? And 25 others?
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“The pilots were all in the motherland. Some for training, some for vacations, some for rotations. But all suddenly developed blood clots, which rapidly became pulmonary embolisms, and they just died.” He paused for a second. “How did you know this time would be far deadlier? What more do you know? What aren’t you telling me? Why didn’t you text me?”
“Why didn’t you pick up my calls?” She fired right back. She didn’t want to respond to the other questions.
He sighed. “It has been a busy few days. But this.. this changes everything.”
“What do you know so far? Have they released any information”
“well, you can’t hide this for too long, but no. They haven’t released any information. We just know that almost every single reserve pilot developed deep vein thrombosis, then a blood clot, and then died. But. You need to tell me what you know. How did you know?”
Deema was silent for a few seconds. “I can’t tell you here. Meet me downtown at the 24/7 Babby’s. You know which one.”
He did. Deema put on a hoodie, it was cold this time of the morning, and left. The night tram service was a life saver. She couldn’t get over it. 176 people, dead in a night. Pilots, too. They tempted death every day and then they got wasted by a supernatural entity. She did a quick scan of the major trends on Yin. Her feed was mostly cat videos, investment advice, some rightful vitriol against the new colonist propagandists and their vile exhortations, kettlebell tips, and some of those same vile exhortations. One post that made her stare blankly into the screen, sight unseeing as it repeated endlessly. An indigene man, his zip-tied hand starting three inches from his non-existent elbow the only recognizable thing left of him after a colonist’s tank crushed him to white and red and yellow pulp and parchment paper. The propagandist sharing the post was proud, proud to be a pancaker.
She reached maybe 3 minutes before Daniel and ordered a tea. Her mind was still in shock. She had always known the colonists to be callous and brutal but this was even more violent than the bulldozer crushing that brave young woman all those years ago. She paused. In all these years, she had never seen that woman’s final fate. She was a heroine, abstract in her goodness and purity. She wondered if everyone’s body was just parchment holding red and yellow. She pondered if all of the colonists were just pancakers or aspired to be.
She saw Daniel. He made a beeline right to her. His eyes were bloodshot and raw. He sat down without asking her. Tell me, tell me now, he said, waving away a waiter.
“Before I begin, I want to let you know this will be end of my involvement with the CNCA, and by extension, you, Daniel.” She felt much better and safer after having said that. More at peace. She wished she had the guts to just up and leave, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t going to tell him about the man in green though. As far as she was concerned, she needed to limit her collaboration with the CNCA before she ran the risk of becoming a statistic, too.
Before he could say anything, Deema pushed her cup away. “Ok so this has a pattern. I didn’t have all the information before but this has happened before. There are powerful forces at play. Hidden, unknown, and supernatural forces. Each time a country or a body politic transgresses beyond certain limits, these, ah, unexplained deaths and injuries pile up. And in each case, they escalate until the parties involved make peace.”
Make peace, she scoffed to herself. That’s when typically the transgressors give up their attempts to dominate or crush their opponents.
The waiter was back, and this time it was Deema who waved him away. “The Ruritani mass ankle injury event was not enough to make the Ruritani government change course, it’s only when 61 of their draft enforcers died in one day in mysterious circumstances while on their job, after thousands of people protested and countered their heavy handed ‘mobilization’, and the rest of the enforcers developed a phobia of doing their jobs, and the military refused to follow their orders to invade the breakaway self-governed republics that the government backed down and signed the treaty.” She took a breath.
“I don’t know you that well, Daniel. All I know about you is you came to me to find out the link between these deaths 7 deaths, and then those 16, and now these 176. I’ll tell you now. These were a ladder. The first 7 were just random grunts, those who were the foot soldiers or the foot soldiers to be for the colonial army. The 16 were those that incite others to evil. These last 151 and 25 – if they even are limited to these – are the latest escalation, and an invitation to change course and make peace.”
His wan face turned even more ashen. She saw fear in his eyes. “Escalation by who? Who is it who is killing us?”
She took a deep breath. “I do not know for certain. But if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. I would be very careful being an open colonist or a supporter of the colonists, Daniel. This is a warning. It is too clean to be the work of amateurs. It’s either insanely well-trained killers going around escalating the number of their assassinations that leave no trace and occur across thousands of miles or.” She paused. Not everyone believed, but.
“It could be the work of the angels. Or of the friends of God. All I know is, I don’t want to be associated with you. Good luck, Daniel.” I hope you become less of a fascist, she said to herself. And if you don’t, may God take you before you transgress beyond his limits.
She stood up. “Good-bye,” She picked up her almost untouched tea and nodded twice at him. He made some gurgling noises as if he wanted to say something but he remained silent. She left.