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SABLES, a novel

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FIRST TEN PAGES

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The desert air catches some wicked wind, and the storm cloud rolls in, and the lightning and thunder --- those brilliant, bombastic flashes! --- scorch some unfortunate sand dune.

Right then, after the first flash and crash --- I hear the voice. Not outside in the world, but in me. Inside my head.

Bazi! Araz nehood! 

It is loud and sudden and --- terrifying. My body tenses. My mind stresses. 

I’m up now, out of bed. In the darkness.

Another flash and crash --- another phantom cry! My heart throws itself against the cage.

Fadluck bazi! Araz nehood!

The voice speaks without my command. Am I crazy? Is this how insanity begins, with a cry in the night?

I’m outside my tent now, under the night sky. Looking up at this massive, massive storm cloud.

Ri araz? Diza bazi! Ri araz?

A demon! Is there a demon inside me? Am I possessed?

Araze! Fadluck.

No, it’s a man’s voice --- scared and tragic and painful. Crying out. Crying what? Something I can’t understand. Gibberish.

Fadluck, bazi! Araz nehood.

Not gibberish --- it’s a foreign language. So I’m not crazy, am I? An insane person can’t talk crazy to themselves in an unknown foreign language, right?

Fadluck, bazi. Araze!

I know this word! Fadluck! That’s the word for please. This is Sudish, the local dialect, isn’t it?

Fadluck, bazi.

Who is this voice? Who is this voice speaking --- pleading --- Sudish in my head?

Fadluck, b…

The cloud is passing. The voice is fading.

Fad…

The wicked wind pushes the storm cloud onwards, across the desert --- to where? to the mountains? --- and the voice is carried away.

Silence --- and frightening mystery --- descend in its place.

I look around for others. There are none.

I’m standing alone in the dark of a desert night under a scatter of stars.

***

“A cloud talked to me last night.”

I’m sitting in the cafeteria of my employer, UNAMS --- the United Nations Assistance Mission to Sadun. The place is filled with a colorful collection of well-dressed international bureaucrats, green-camouflaged peacekeeper soldiers, and beige-collared humanitarians with rolled-up sleeves like myself. All of us came from different countries for different wants --- career, money, adventure --- and here we are, in Sadun. It’s a desert country. It’s a wartorn country. For the past few years, it’s been something more important --- home.

Across from me sits Bandara, a Sri Lankan. He’s a soldier with big biceps and an even wider smile.

“A cloud? Like a cloud in the sky?” He’s confused. His English isn’t very good and thinks he misunderstood me.

“Yes, a cloud in the sky talked to me. In Sudish.”

Bandara laughs loudly.

“So even the clouds here are Sudish. What did it say?”

“I don’t know. I don’t speak Sudish. I only recognized one word … Fadluck, or please.”

“A polite Sudish cloud! Now I know you’re lying. No one is polite in Sadun. What else did this cloud say?”

“I don’t remember all the words. It was quite scary, actually.”

“Tabeeb, I think you had a nightmare.” 

Bandara calls me not by name, but by title. Tabeeb is the Sri Lankan word for doctor. I’m a paramedic nurse, actually. But to Bandara, any medical education confers the prestigious title of tabeeb. It’s a sign of respect. Of status.

“I was wide awake. Standing outside my tent. The voice was as clear to me as yours is right now.”

“Did anyone else hear it?”

“No, just me. Inside my head.”

“Tabeeb, now I am thinking you are going crazy.”

“I wish. That would make it easier to explain, right? Mental illness is real. It’s a medical condition. It’s scientifically proven. But a storm cloud talking in Sudish? That’s … crazy … I know. But that’s what happened.”

“You need to see Munna, the teacher.”

“Why?”

“So you can learn Sudish and talk back to it.”

***

Munna is a crafty bastard. I’m sitting in his cramped, dirty office. He calls it a library. Walls are covered with gold diplomas printed on computer paper. The school names are misspelled. 

“Welcome tabeeb! I’ll teach you fifty words in Sudish. That’s all you need.”

“Do I get to pick the words?”

“Of course. Any words you want to learn. But afterwards, you bring me a gift. Deal?”

“What kind of gift do you want?”

“Oh you know…”

“I can’t read your mind, Munna. Tell me what kind of gift.”

“My library is rich for books, tabeeb, but it is poor for art. How about a sculpture? A glass sculpture. Something small and modest, that you can hold in your hand. With something special inside.”

“Like a lantern?”

“Well yes … or maybe …”

“A bottle of … whiskey?”

“Ah! What a gift that would be. What a gift. But you decide. I cannot impose.”

“Deal.”

“Wonderful! So tell me what you want to learn.”

“Simple things. Like the phrase … Who are you? How do you say this in Sudish?”

“Khen inta.”

“Kh-en int-a.”

“Yes, khen inta. It’s a little rude, though. You should say … shoo ismak … what is your name.”

“Sh-oo is-mak.”

“Perfect pronounciation, tabeeb! Are you sure your father wasn’t Sudish?” 

“He spoke French, but he wasn’t born in France.”

“We’re all flowers planted somewhere in the dirt, aren’t we? I speak Sudish and English, but my first tongue is the language spoken in my native land. Only my tribe speaks it. It’s a secret language between us. If I tell you tallu, or hello, and you don’t reply by saying rillo, then I know you are a stranger.”

“I think they can tell I’m stranger just by looking at me, Munna.

“Not if you cover yourself, as you should.”

“I’m fine as I am. What does bazi mean?”

“Bazi? How did you come across this word?”

“I overheard it and was curious. What does it mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s not Sudish. How did you hear it?”

“Fadluck, bazi. Fadluck, bazi. Like this.”

“Ah, bazi! Yes, I know it. Bazi means father. It’s the language of the Vizi tribe, from the mountains. “

“So fadluck, bazi means … please, father?”

“Yes, tabeeb.”

“What about araz … araz nehood?”

“Nehood is door … araz … I’m not familiar. Maybe it means …shut, or close … but not quite. Stronger than that. Lock … I think. Yes, that’s it. Araz means … lock.”

“So … araz nehood … means lock the door?”

“Yes. Where did you overhear these words, tabeeb? People from the Vizi tribe are very rare. Very rare! I’ve never met one of them before, and I’ve traveled all of Sadun.”

“In the market, maybe. I can’t remember. The words stuck with me.”

“What else? You have forty three words left to learn.”

“Are you counting?”

“Of course! I’m a teacher. I’m grading you.”

“Don’t bullshit me. You’re a businessman, Munna. Tell me the word for … money.”

Munna reclines in his chair and grins broadly, like a snake coiled comfortably inside its pit.

“Mia.”

***

Clouds never visit the desert. The dry, dusty air on the fringes of the dunes --- where the trees grow short, and the bushes turn from green to gold --- suffocate them.  

But once a year, usually in August, the sea summons its stormy battalions and sends clouds charging inland. Most fragile puffs perish quickly. The braver ones go farther.

It’s sunset now. The sky turns from blue to beige and the hot, nasty sun never really sets. It just gets close enough to the horizon’s hazel finish line to blur itself out of existence. The race is never won.

I’m standing on the mudwall, the highest point of the UNMAS camp. On one side of the wall is the camp --- orderly streets, perfectly square buildings, and solemn electric lights. On the other side is the city --- a tangled net of jagged roads, concrete polygons, and flickering, wire-dangling bulbs of incandescent light.

There are people --- or are they prophets? --- who can predict the weather. The rest of us just look skyward. And wait.

I wait for my cloud to return. I’ve been waiting for days now --- ten of them --- without seeing a single speck of white. My head is filled with new Sudish words alongside fresh new doubts.

The voice has yet to return. So has the cloud. At first, I doubted if one was connected to the other, but days without a disturbance --- or a cloud --- makes me anxious for another encounter. 

Will the storm cloud come again? And if it does, will I hear the voice again? One occurrence is a bad dream. A random hallucination.  A salt deficiency in the body, or a hot fever gone awry. Another encounter with a talking cloud would make it real --- and scary --- again.

My friend Altan joins me on the mudwall. He’s no weatherman, but he’s the next best thing --- an environmental scientist.

“Tabeeb! Are you looking for your cloud again?”

“You know about my cloud, huh? Bandara has a big mouth.”

“The camp’s too small … and more importantly, too boring! The story of ‘Tabeeb and the Talking Cloud’ is primetime gossip. I hear they’re going to make it into a Broadway show.”

“I’ll be sure to give you one of the lead roles. Like the village drunk, or harlot, or idiot. Or maybe all three?”

“How about the cloud? I’ve got the perfect voice for drama … Tabeeb, this is me, the cloud in the sky … I’ve floated all this way through and desert and am mighty thirsty … Fadluck, tabeeb … Give me a beer! … Fadluck … A beer!”

“Aha, sold. You got the part.”

“Awesome. What does it pay?”

I roll my fingers into a big empty circle --- a big fat egg.

“Nothing, huh? Well maybe I’ll stick with my day job.”

“Wise decision. So how goes the weather research?”

///Dialogue to be written///Altan teaches you about the rarity of water in Sadun, and how the loss of rainwater is breaking the environment and by extension, the people of Sadun.///

***

“I’m your bodyguard for today, tabeeb.”

Bandara folds his giant body into the passenger seat of the white UNMAS Land Cruiser vehicle. I’m in the driver’s seat, gripping the wheel.

“Do you even know where we’re going?”

“No. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll protect you whenever we go.”

“We’re going to a clinic so I can help sick children.”

“And I’ll protect you from the children.”

“With what? I don’t see a gun. Or a knife.”

“With these.”

Bandara flexes his mountainous arms.

I reach over him and fasten his seatbelt.

“Put those away and buckle up. The most dangerous thing out there is the traffic.”

Traffic in the city is absolute anarchy. Cars, trucks, buses, carts, donkeys, bicycles, goats --- generally, anything with wheels or hooves --- rush forward through narrow dirt passageways at full speed until --- a stoppage! --- something, or someone, obstructs them and suddenly everything convulses --- like a patient in seizure --- with furious horning and yelling.

My driving skills are well-honed. Strategic decisions to mount two wheels on a high curb to pass a slow bus, or slowly nose through a parade of goats blocking the road, are critically important. The only rule is --- keep moving.

Messy, open air markets line each side of the road. People and products dangle from their storefronts, crammed and cramped and close enough to brush up against the passing traffic.

Then, out of nowhere, some small object rolls into the road.  Something else follows --- a person running after it.

Bandara shouts.

“Tabeeb!”

I slam the brakes.

Suddenly, without warning --- the voice returns.

Eh! 

The vehicle squeals and shudders to a stop.

I look to the sky. It’s empty. Clear blue. No cloud.

The voice is frantic again, but different. Scared, but not fearfully so.

Kuwayes! Ana kuwayes.

A hand grips the hood of the car, and a man hoists himself up. Not a man, a teenager. He’s tall and slender and very angry. I almost ran him over, didn’t I? The young man holds an orange fruit. It’s what rolled into the road, what he was chasing. 

The teen looks at me through the windshield with mean, spiteful eyes.

Shoo bastard UNAMS.

Did I just hear that --- inside my head? 

Bandara reaches over and honks the horn.

“Hey! Get out of the way!” 

Shoo bastard UNAMS. They don’t own this place.

The young man scowls and runs away, down a side street.

The voice --- it’s the teen. His thoughts in your head. Clear and loud. Unmistakable!

“Bandara…”

“…did you hear what that boy said?”

“What? He didn’t say anything.”

I’m so sure of it. The voice. The boy. It’s connected, somehow. 

Months of waiting, of wondering about my insanity, and now I have a clue. Something that will lead to an answer --- if I can chase it down.

“I need to talk to that boy.”

“Tabeeb ... It’s not our fault. He wasn’t hurt.”

I shift the vehicle into park and kick open the door.

“Stay with the car. I’m going after him.”

“I’m your bodyguard. I’m staying with you!”

Bandara and I run down the side alley, pushing through its cramped spaces and legions of churning bodies, all of them carrying something or riding something or doing something that gets in your way --- a bag, a bicycle, a box, a baby --- all of it in your way! Moving forward is a fight against the jungle, against a streaming, colorful current of humanity.

Far ahead, barely visible through the masses of shifting faces is --- the boy. He’s striding confidently through the same human jungle, bending and dancing around its ever-shifting obstructions. He’s quick. Agile. It’s impressive.

Bandara is big and I am a bit clumsy.

“Hurry, Bandara. We’re losing him.”

The narrow side street ends and opens to a large dirt parking lot. Dozens of dumpster trucks --- twenty, maybe fifty --- are loaded full of men. Hundreds of men, all standing in their massive beds --- like little fish in the jaws of a whale --- pulling each other up while the trucks lurch into motion and haul away their payloads of men. They kick up dust and cloud the air with a swirl of brown haze. 

The scene is dizzy with men and motion. 

“Where’s our boy? Bandara, do you see him?”

“No, tabeeb. These trucks are going to the fields. He must be in one them.”

“Which one?”

I’m straining my neck frantically. Where’s the voice? If I read this boy’s mind before, why can’t I read it now? 

*Where are you, boy? Where are you? Answer me!

No one returns my call. 

The haze thickens and blinds me. The roar of trucks deafens all other sounds. 

Then suddenly a truck appears from the haze --- right in front of me! ready to crash and kill me! --- until Bandara’s thick arm pulls me safely aside. The truck thunders by.  

The noises yield to silence. The dirt haze lifts away. The trucks are all gone, gone way with their laborers to the fields. Only a maze of deep divots --- tire treads in the dirt --- remain.

“Bandara, how can we find him now?”

“We can’t. There’s dozens of trucks and they’re all going in different directions. It’s impossible.”

“For us, yes. But maybe not for Tomson.”

***

Tomson works in an obscure office tucked in a far corner of the camp. He’s the man that knows everything that happens and everyone that inhabits this dusty plot of the world --- or at least he says he knows.

I knock twice on his closed office door. It reads HUMAN RESOURCES when it should read SPY CHIEF. You hear the sound of someone shredding papers. Then the door opens.

“Tabeeb, I’ve been expecting you. Please come in. Have a seat.”

Tomson’s desk is empty, save for a stack of folders on one side that read PERSONNEL FILES. In the corner of his office sits a shredder next to a large dog --- a regal and intimidating German Shepard --- that lounges on a red Victorian cushion and watches me silently. 

“Thanks Tomson. Did Bandara tell you I was coming?”

“I heard about your little accident in town. You almost ran over a boy. That would have been very bad for us, you know. The locals already dislike us because we can’t protect them. We need them to like us, tabeeb. Running over local boys doesn’t help them like us.”

“That’s why I need your help to find him. The boy.”

“Why?”

“To apologize.”

“That’s horseshit. Why do you really want to find this boy?”

“Ok, fine. It’s because I’m cheap.”

“Cheap?”

“Yes. Because my car is dented from the accident and I need his statement with a police report to get it fixed. You know the damn bureaucracy here, Tomson. If I can’t find this kid and get him to sign some napkin with a police stamp, then the Camp Administration will fault me alone and I’ll have to pay all for the damages.”

Tomson sits back in his chair. I’m lying, of course, but he’s buying it.

“Come on, Tomson. My salary is peanuts and I can’t afford to pay out of my own pocket for this little mishap.”

Tomson is skeptical. So is the dog. 

“Tabeeb. This is worth my time … Why?”

“Have you even seen the form? The Form B-200 for car accidents? It’s ten pages. I even have to draw a diagram of the accident! Draw it twice, mind you, because there are no copy machines and I need to submit duplicate copies. It’s absurd. Do you want me to sit around the camp all day filling out forms, or do you want me out there helping people and getting them to like us?”

Tomson snatches a folder from his pile and opens it to me. It contains a series of satellite photos of a village. In one aerial photo, hundreds of tiny white homes are clustered together alongside cattle and gardens. In another photo, the homes are black and charred --- burnt to the ground. Something bad has happened, but it’s difficult to really understand the badness of it. There’s no blood or people or suffering visible from the satellite’s eye. Just happy little homes in one picture, and burnt ones in the next.

“Look here, tabeeb. This village was healthy and stabile. It had a wise governing council, well-organized gardens to grow food, and collectively-owned cattle that yielded milk and meat. It was … civilized. But now look at it. It’s a graveyard. Do you know why?”

“Because UNMAS didn’t protect it from the militias?”

“That would be the simple answer. But the right answer is more than just that. We didn’t protect them because we can only protect ten villages per day. The militias are smart and target the unprotected ones. The villages can’t protect themselves without UNMAS, so they are burnt to the ground. Centuries of history and families and traditions, all burnt to the ground. And we can find and kill the militias, of course. I’ve done that for the last five years. But they always spawn again. There’s some villainous tribe out there … some master militia, a Monster … that continues to spawn more militants and devour villages. And until we can find that Monster, until we can find it and kill it, all of these villages will eventually become graveyards. We can’t let this country become a cemetery, tabeeb. Even you can’t raise the dead.”

“That’s all very interesting, Tomson, but I’m just trying to fix my car. Are you going to help me or not?”

Tomson opens a desk drawn and throws a biscuit treat in front of his dog. An untrained canine would leap forward to eat it. Tomson’s dog is better trained. It restrains itself and doesn’t move.

“People are simple. They’re routine. Once you find out their routine, you can find them. That’s my advice.”

“I don’t understand how this helps me, Tomson.”

“What was this boy doing when you saw him?”

“He was going to one of the trucks to work in the fields. I didn’t see which one.”

“So he’s a day laborer. Did he have any tools with him that could give you a hint as to which field he works in? A shovel for the irrigation canals, or a pick for the rock quarries?”

“No, all he had was an orange.”

“There you go. That’s his routine. He’s just like you or me … He gets his breakfast before going to work. Find out where he bought his orange before you almost ran him over. I bet you he’ll be there again tomorrow at the same place, same time, buying another orange.”

“Tomson, you’re brilliant.”

“It’s not about having smarts, tabeeb. It’s about proper application of them. Not just intelligence. Trained intelligence.”

Tomson snaps his fingers, and the dog leaps forward to snatch its treat.

***

Bandara and I are lounging in pink and green plastic chairs leaning against the sidewalk of a narrow street. A tea lady brings us a silver platter with sugar tin, two hot cups of water, and a box of tea bags. I choose the Black Gold. Bandara goes for the Emerald Mint. They’re both horribly bitter. I add two spoonfuls of sugar to dull the mucky aftertaste.

“How long are we going to wait, tabeeb?”

“For a while. Relax. We’re having tea.”

“This tea is terrible.”

“It’s fine. Just add more sugar.”

Across the street, a young boy squats in front of a shoebox full of bright shiny oranges. One gets dusty from the plume of a passing car. The boy vigorously polishes it back into color with a white handkerchief. 

“Do you think this is the right fruit vendor?”

“I walked around the whole area. This is the only orange seller. It’s the right one. He’ll come. I know it.”

Bandara raises his glass and rattles it in the direction of the tea lady.

“Sugar! More sugar!”

Then suddenly --- I see him. 

The same boy from the accident scene, tall and rugged, walks up to the orange seller and trades an ounce of coinage for a pound of citrus.

“Bandara! There he is!”

“Ok, tabeeb. What do we do now? Grab him?”

“No. Let’s follow him.”

The boy juggles the orange between his hands and saunters down the street. As he approaches the roadway, he looks both up and down the street before crossing the road. The boy is cautious. He remembers.

The boy moves on. Bandara and I follow him. 

***

Memory. Some things we remember, some things we forget. What do we remember? People. Places. Happy moments. Things that hurt us. 

We remember the things that hurt us. This boy, he remembers this street. This road. Because it hurt him.

Bazi. Araz nehood. Father. Lock the door. That’s the first thing he said to me, in my head. It’s a memory, a hurtful memory. A memory of what? What was on the other side of that door?

It wasn’t the cloud talking to me. It was the boy. He doesn’t know I can hear his thoughts, or else he would hear me following him. 

But I can hear him now. In my head.

Mmhm. Ya’la.

He’s nervous. The memory of this street --- it scares him.

Mmhm. Ya’la. Azin. Ya’la.

He’s humming. Talking to himself. Saying, “Come on, Azin. Come on.” 

Azin! That’s his name, isn’t it? 

I call to him.

=Azin. Do you hear me?

I don’t speak it. I think it.

He keeps walking. He’s deaf to me.

Bandara and I are close behind him now. We can almost touch him.

My nerves pulse. The proximity between us is --- tense. A spike of adrenaline electrifies my body. Lightning.

=Azin!

The boy stops, instantly.

=Azin! Do you hear me? 

He turns.

=Do you hear me? I’m talking to you.

He hears.

Us, the two of us, stand across from each other in scary, stunning amazement.

Bandara stands silently back, confused.

=Azin, do you know who I am?

It’s you! It’s you! Praise and honor, it’s you!

=You speak English?

Yes. I speak in verses, as you taught me!

=As I taught you?

I remember. I remember them all! The verses. That you taught me.

The boy steps forward.

I’ve waited all my life for you. I’ve been training for you. I’m ready. Has the time come? Tell me the time has come!

=Azin. What time?

The Time of Righteousness. The Time of Reckoning. The Time of Revenge.

The orange drops from his hand into the dirt.

=Who am I, Azin? Who do you think I am?

The boy --- he kneels at your feet.

You are The Sinister. And I am what you taught me to be. I am --- Your Sword.

***

This book is a classic Western revenge story --- with a twist.  The two main characters can read each other’s minds.

Your Squire, The Sword

The Confrontation of Village and Master Militia

The Sinister vs The Monster

The Rainstorm

The Ending

***

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