The Night that Everything was Lost

A man tries to outrun his sins and his guilt, but ends up being killed by what he was unwilling to accept.

The Night That Everything was Lost

 

The night had been one of silence and serenity, filling the empty streets of his beloved city with enough darkness to hide its secrets. He traversed them alone, his shoulders slumped and his saunter poignant but his pace undaunted. Somehow he knew what he was going to find, and yet for some reason he refused to believe. He stared at the gravel beneath his feet with such focus that his eyes began to dry out and tears streamed down his cheeks, and the entire way home he kept muttering to himself that it wasn’t to be.

When he finally came upon the street of his residency he was overcome with that horrifying feeling of dread that had been bubbling beneath the surface of his emotions for what felt like years. The air around him seemed to change into that of hell, ripping at his skin with its tenacious claws of devilish heat.  The ground beneath him seemed to shift, and the world around him began to spin and contort itself into overwhelming shapes that shook his heart. It took all of his might to keep his feet moving at a steady pace until he finally stood upon the front steps of his house.

For some odd reason he felt as though he should knock, as though he might be interrupting something. He felt as if behind that door there was no longer the place he had called home for nearly a year now, but a whole new world entirely. That small, wooden entrance was no longer a gateway to his place of peace and security, but instead now a gateway to hell.

He finally summoned up the courage to reach a shaky hand forward and turn the knob o f the door, pushing it open and revealing to himself nothing but a dark and empty living room. The emptiness of the place reverberated through his being as though possessing it and a voice inside of him was telling him that his family was gone; left somewhere.

That was when he heard the crying.

It was high and it was pitiful, ringing through the halls of the house like the incessant toll of a church bell.  It struck at his heart and he instantly went running for the back door.

Stop, his mind told him. Don’t go running out there like an idiot. You know what’s happening. You know all too well. Be smart about this.

He went up to the kitchen window, and peered out into the backyard. The dim light of the moon was cast down upon the people outside, alighting the sad scene with its pale white glow.

He couldn’t believe what he was seeing… He just couldn’t.

He rushed outside as fast as he could, slamming the back door behind him. One of the men looked up instantly; the other too turned their heads nonchalantly, then glared at him with hate.

More screaming. More crying.

“It’s another one,” one of the men whispered to the others, not taking his eyes off of Ali for a second. “I thought there were only three.”

“No, there are four,” answered one. “We were waiting for this one. Wouldn’t want him to be unable to say goodbye to his sweetie pie, now would we?”

The other two chuckled maniacally at this. Ali felt like throwing up.

Her face was contorted into a terrified grimace. Her body lay crumbled on the ground in an agonized mess. Her voice begged him to go; to leave. But, he could never do that. Not to her; his love.

“Why?” was all he was able to choke out. Stuttered and stammered, the word came out weak, but it came out none the less.

“We think you know why,” snapped back one of the men, shifting his gun around in his arms casually. “They all seem to know why; they just don’t want to accept it.”

At this Ali did not argue, for it was true, he did know why.

Her eyes looked up at them, wide and glassy, pleading for mercy from some unknown entity. She was begging for her life.

“Let her go,” Ali demanded weakly.

The three men laughed at his request. “You’re a funny man,” one of them snapped, hoisting his gun onto his shoulder. “But neither of you get to go.”

Ali put his hands in the air in surrender, and slowly made his way over to his wife. He knelt down beside her and gently kissed the side of her head, tears streaking down his cheeks and into her hair as he did so. “I love you,” he whispered into her ear. “I have always loved you.”

“Shut-up!” Shouted one of the men who came up to Ali and violently jammed his gun to the side of his head. “Dead people cannot talk.”

The thought of her dead was too much for him to bear. The image of her lifeless body lying on the ground like those of his mother and father chilled him to the bone and made his stomach churn. Her shaky breaths called out her fear to him, and it was a fear that he would not stand to witness any longer.

Ali turned his head slowly so as to look the man in the eye. His face was mean and distorted with hatred, his large nose scrunched up and his dark eyes beady like the devil’s. It was a face that Ali could look at no longer.  He shot up from where he knelt so as to look the man squarely in the eye.

You can do this, Ali.

He straightened his back and licked his dry lips.

No more being a coward, tonight you will be a man and fight for the woman you love.

“No more of this,” He growled under his breath, cracking his knuckles. “You will not hurt her.”

Now, go for this. Give him what he deserves and do what you know is right.

He lunged forward, his hands reaching for the gun in the man’s hands. There was the distant sound of gunfire, the momentary crying of a woman, and then all was silent and white. Ali lay on the ground with no gun in his hand, and looked about helplessly as small white feathers floated down from the air and landed across his yard. They were soft to the touch and brushed against his skin with a daunting grace. He felt the sorrowful sensation of tears streaming down his face as he watched the body of his poor wife being covered in a blanket of cowardly white.

 

~

 

He awoke with a startle, sitting up atop the shifting sand that sat beneath him. The hot desert air blew his matted black hair from his shoulders and filled his lungs with its nauseating warmth. The sun burned like a fire above him, causing driblets of sweat to roll down his face and fall lifelessly into the sand.

He knew where he was and yet he didn’t have a clue. He was exactly where he had been the day before and the day before that and yet he had been traveling the entire time.

“Oh, dear Allah,” he mumbled under his breath as he his eyes scanned the endless dunes of the Sahara. The vastness of it was daunting and horrifying, filling his heart with the same sort of wonder he held when he first saw the endless Mediteranean.

Remember how she reached over and held your hand?

Ali shook his head and forced himself to his feet, begging himself to forget it; to forget everything.

Remember what she whispered in your ear? Remember?

His legs were shaky and his head was spinning. His throat was as dry as the ground beneath him. He knew he didn’t have much longer.

She told you she had never seen something so beautiful.

At that he fell to the ground in agonized defeat, his face drowning in the sand. He tried to get up; with all of his might he tried, but the most he could get was his face out of the sand.

It was as he was fading off into the darkness that before him emerged the city he had once called home. In his ears erupted the familiar sound of commotion and conversation, and instead of smelling nothing but the dry emptiness of desert he smelt the tantalizing aroma of freshly baked Khubz. His lips suddenly curved up into a smile �"an expression that seemed unnaturally foreign to him- and he began to close his eyes.

 

~

 

 

“Wake up, Ali,” a familiar voice called to him from the depths of the darkness. “Wake up.”

Her voice seemed so close he could nearly see her face. He tried to fight off the shadows that held him down in the obscurity, but he was unable to break free. He tried to call out to the woman that he needed help, he needed help so badly.

“Ali, darling, wake up.” This time the voice seemed closer, and Ali felt a nudge on his shoulder. The darkness remained for what felt like an eternity until it finally succumbed and gave way to life. Around him appeared a dimly lit hut with walls made of sandstone, and before him knelt a small Arabian woman with large eyes that were as dark as night. She smiled down at him that smile he had come to love so dearly, and her long, black hair trailed down her shoulders like a drapery of silk.

“It’s you,” was all that he was capable of saying, his voice rasping as though it were made of sandpaper. His throat ached and felt as dry as the desert outside, but he pushed his pain away in order to enjoy the beauty that sat before him. He had nearly forgotten how she had looked. It had almost eluded him how her eyes appeared as big as the moon and how her lips curved into the shape of a blooming rose. “I… I have missed you.”

“And I you,” she whispered back to him as she rested her hand gently on his forehead. Her hands were as hot as the air around them, yet they still were able to send a chill down his spine. “I have been away for so long; I was worried you wouldn’t be here when I came back.”

Ali grabbed her hand in his and kissed it softly, her skin so supple it felt as if nothing was even there. “I nearly wasn’t, my lovely Shanze, but I am now, and all is good again.”

For a long moment the two of them just sat there, staring into each other’s eyes, forgetting all else. The world seemed to melt away around them as they reminisced without saying a word. It wasn’t until another woman came bustling in that their concentration was finally broken.

“Is he better?” Asked the small woman as she rushed in. Her face beamed as she looked down at her son, and it seemed in just a split second she had her arms around him and was nearly suffocating him in her embrace.  “Oh, Ali, I have missed you so much,” she murmured in a quivering voice that made it sound as if she were crying. “We never should have left you like that. We should have stayed with you for always.”

Ali wrapped his arms around her too, trying to hold back tears. “It is okay, mother. I should have… I should have…”

His mother shushed him and released him from her embrace. “Do not worry about it, my son. You did what you had to do, you had no other option. Never would we blame you for our departure.” Her eyes looked dead to him. When he was a child they seemed endless and full of all the life in the world, but now they seemed like nothing more than dark stones… Fake…

“I need water,” he stated suddenly, forcing himself to look away from his mother and break that deadly trance.

“Well, of course!” His wife exclaimed as she jumped up from his side and started bustling around the hut for a glass. “How negligent are we? Fawning over you without even asking if you needed anything!”

His mother laughed. “You should be happy we left, son.”

Ali shook his head. “Never. Never would I be happy for that.”

Shanze came running back in with a glass in her hand, falling to her knees next to her husband. She handed him the glass and patted him on the head. “There you are, my dear. You surely must be thirsty after that long trek in the desert! Why would you do such a thing, anyway?”

“I needed to get away.” The glass was cold beneath his finger tips. He could feel the condensation running down his hand. “I needed to escape all of the pain.” He raised the glass to his lips and tipped it up. For a second he was sure he felt that cool sensation of water running down his throat, but he remained parched. He looked at the glass for a long second, assuring himself that there was indeed water within, and then tipped it back up again. Nothing. His throat remained raspy and dry.

“What is wrong with this glass?” He asked of the women. “I get nothing from it. Is this some kind of trick?”

Shanze opened her mouth to answer him, but before she could produce any words their conversation was interrupted by the distinct sound of gunfire outside. Their heads turned sharply towards the door and the women began to shake.

“Oh, no,” his mother mumbled as she grabbed her daughter-in-law by the elbow. “They’re here.”

“I thought he said they wouldn’t reach our town for several days yet?” Demanded Shanze.

“I thought so too.”

Then the door burst open, in stepping a large man with a turban wrapped tightly around his face. In his hands he held a machine gun, and his eyes glared at all of them with endless hate. Without a word he raised the gun and began to fire.  As he did so waves of red broke through the soft mud of the hut and flooded the floor. It hit Ali hard, and his mouth filled with the thick water that felt like nothing more than sand. The waves knocked out the weak legs of the bed beneath him and Ali fell to the ground with a soft thud, the red water now rushing over him endlessly.

The women screamed and crumbled to the floor, praying to their God to save them. Ali was immobilized with fear and could do nothing but simply sit there as the man shot.

And then everything went black.

 

~

 

He remembered being mad at her, and yet for the life of him he couldn’t remember why. He reminisced of that day as though a ghost traveling back in time, watching him perform the acts of that fateful morning over and over again as though rehearsing for a play. He had been storming through the house, slamming things and swearing under his breath. Shanze followed a ways behind him, her deep eyes wide with concern, and her hands holding each other with fear.

“Where is it?” Ali shouted, slamming the drawer of the end table he had been searching through and throwing his hands in the air. “Where in the hell could it have gone?”

“Why do you need it so urgently?” His wife asked of him, playing nervously with the dark fabric of her khimar. “You act as if your father is going to die today.”

Ali winced at the thought and continued his search. Why did the probability of his father’s death suddenly seem so imminent? The moment his feet touched the floor that morning he had felt the incessant need to locate the only gift he had received from his father on the day of his 18^th birthday. And, he wasn’t going to rest until that pouch of silk sat safely in his hands and he could gaze within at the glimmering emerald that should lay within. “I know that it was inside of my night stand,” He grumbled as he turned to all of the kitchen drawers. “I know for a fact that was where I left it last.”

“Ali, darling, why don’t you give it a rest?” Shanze took a step closer. “You have to be to work soon. I’m sure it will turn up-”

“I need it now!” Ali had screamed at her, spinning around vehemently and glowering at her. “That’s worth a lot of money, and It was one of the few gifts I ever received from my father. If he found out I lost it… Oh, dear, If he found out I lost it….” Ali’s hands gripped his head and he sank into the nearest dining room chair. He lowered his face so that he was staring at the ground, and he just sat there in silence for what felt like an eternity.

Shanze quietly made her way over to her husband and tentatively placed a fragile hand on his back. “Darling, I’m sure it will turn up eventually.” She massaged his shoulders tenderly and twirled her fingers through his thick, black hair. “Besides,” she whispered. “Nothing can be lost forever.”

Ali slowly raised his head to look up at his beautiful wife with confused eyes. “Why, sure they can. Everyone has something they lose and can never find again.”

“Well, of course. But, eventually ever thing is rediscovered by someone.” She smiled and kissed him serenely on the cheek. “As I said, nothing can be lost forever.”

 

~

 

He forced his eyes open even though it hurt more than anything had before. His eyelashes fought the sticky sand that tried to hold them together, and eventually they gave way to the blinding light that sailed across the endless desert. He opened his mouth to take in a deep gulp of air and a dry pain reverberated through his throat. He coughed and sputtered, pushing himself to his knees as he did so.

Then, he felt a light tap on his shoulder. He slowly turned his head, his matted hair flying in his face. With wide eyes he stared at the face of a man he rarely ever got to see. He blinked several times and the old man did not disappear.

“Hello, son” the man greeted, showing off his rotting teeth as he smiled and held out a hand to Ali. “I have missed you.”

Ali felt himself gulping back his boyhood tears as he acquiesced to the help his father offered and heaved himself to his feet. He stared with disbelief at his father without saying a word. He stood there trying to conjure the few childhood memories he had of that man but found it nearly impossible. He gazed at his father’s face that seemed to hold more wrinkles and his eyes that seemed to hold less soul and wondered where all of the years have gone. He opened his mouth to say something; to say anything, but found that he couldn’t. All that escaped his dry lips was a soft crack as a lone tear trickled down his face.

“You still have that emerald I gave to you many years ago, correct?” The old man asked with a joking grin. He patted his son lovingly on the shoulder and laughed. “Oh, don’t worry, I know you would never lose it. But, don’t you go selling it either. You see, save it until you finally give us grandchildren and then use it to pay for their college. They will not be like you or I. They will get an education. They will need it, you know. Times will be different then. I guarantee it.”

It took a moment for Ali to break from his guilty trance and he nodded his head. “Yes, sir.”

His father laughed again and grabbed him by the elbow. “There are some people here who have asked to see you,” His father announced quietly, turning around to lead his son to a small garden that lay like an oasis off in the distance. “So you will come and sit with us and talk. It has been so long since we have talked.”

Ali let out a deep breath of exhaustion as they neared the garden. In the center of the many shrubs sat a lone white table with two men sitting at one side. Above them twined grape vines upon an archway, and on either side were orange trees. Flowers bloomed all about, filling the area with a rainbow of colors. And, at the corner sat a small pond filled with koi. Ali felt the aching desire to run for it and gulp down the water within by the mouthful.

As his father led him towards a small white chair that was waiting for him at the table, Ali noticed his mother and wife picking berries from a nearby bush. He tried to call out to them but he found his voice to be lost. His father smacked him on the shoulder and shook his head. “Do not disturb them,” he whispered. “Besides, you have other people you must talk to first.”

Ali sat down at the table and faced the two visitors. They both stared back at him with beady black eyes, and Ali instantly felt a surge of rage rush through his veins. Their long, black beards were moist with their sweat, and their thick hands gripped eagerly at the guns at their sides. They both wore matching black turbans. They both had mocking smirks glued to their faces.

Ali felt a sudden blow to the back of his head and turned around to glare at his father.

The old man furrowed his eyebrows at his son and motioned to the two men. “Don’t be rude,” he whispered angrily.

Ali looked over to his mother and wife, hoping that one of them would recognize the men and get him away from them, but they both remained fixated on their chore. He grudgingly turned back to the men as his father had said to, but he refused to utter a word. He simply glowered at the two of them, waiting for them to back down.

“Would you like some tea, gentleman?” His father asked without waiting for an answer, setting down three cups and filling them with the inviting, steaming liquid. Before leaving with the teapot he shot his son an angry look and stormed off.

Ali glanced momentarily down at the tea with an aching desire, but refused to move. The presence of the two men struck him with a mixture of rage and fear that rendered him immobile.

“We’re sorry we took them from you,” one of them grumbled as he grabbed the glass of tea and took a long gulp of it. Ali watched with envy and could almost feel the sensation of the warm liquid rushing down his throat himself. “But, you understand why we had to do it, do you not?”

Ali’s eyes wavered for a second as he looked down at the ground. The words of his father rang through his head… “I don’t care who the man thinks he is; he has no right to run this country treating us like a bunch of dogs. I refuse to have my rights stolen by somebody who thinks he is our leader. That man deserves to rule nothing more than his own s**t.” Ali shuddered at the ignorance of the statement and returned his gaze back at the two men. “Never speak poorly of our leader lest anyone find out,” his friend had told him. ”I hear they stick people in jail for that kind of thing. Even kill them sometimes, if they feel like it.”…

“You took all from me,” he growled at them, fighting back tears. “You left me with nothing to live for and nothing to hope for. It is because of you that I set out into this desert to find something in this land of nothing.”

“As I said, it was only orders.” The man’s face held no pity and no remorse; it was as emotionless as ever. His beady eyes glared back at Ali relentlessly, and his fingers drummed against the butt of his machine gun rhythmically as if simply to remind Ali of his sins. “They disobeyed, and we can’t let people who have disobeyed go on unpunished.”

He remembered how they had looked like as he stood inside that empty house, peering through the kitchen window into the darkness. The bodies of his parents lying lifelessly on the grass. His beautiful Shanze collapsed on the ground, her frail body convulsing with vigorous sobs and fits of agony… He had felt a slight inclination to run out there and be with his wife. He had felt like it was his duty to sit with her and tell her he loved her… That he had always loved her. And, a small part of him refused to believe the fact that instead of running out there to be with his family he had turned from the kitchen window and ran out of the house in a pathetic fit of panic. Part of him refused to believe that this desert was only a desert instead of the vast sands of hell; that he was still alive instead of dead from that night that everything was lost. Part of him dreamed that he was a hero that was hailed instead of the selfish sinner who ran away.

Ali closed his eyes and looked away. If only I hadn’t been such a coward, he thought. If only I had stayed and fought for them instead of running off like a scared little boy. Even if I had died at least I would have died with dignity. Now I may live, but I live only in shame. “You left me with nothing and yet with so much,” he whispered, his voice shaking. “Every day I crumbled beneath my guilt, and it is because of you.”

The two of them glanced at each other quickly and shrugged, standing up after doing so. “As I said,” replied one of them, finishing up his cup of tea before standing up. “It was what had to be done. I was only doing the work of our beloved leader. “

Ali watched in aggravated disbelief as the two men stalked off, their hands never leaving the guns at their sides as they did so. Eventually they walked off into the hazy desert and out of Ali’s sight. He shook his head as he turned to his family, expecting some sort of reaction but receiving none. His mother and wife continued their berry-picking, and his father was now gazing off blankly in the distance.

Ali sighed and turned back to his tea. It stared back at him enticingly; begging him to take a sip. He reached forward with shaky hands and cradled it gently in his grasp, feeling a wave of excitement rush through him as he imagined the warm tingle of the tea running down his throat. He closed his eyes and raised the cup to his mouth, preparing himself for the fantastic sensation. When he received nothing from it he tipped his head far back and brought the cup with it, shaking it as if to get the last droplet from it. Right before he lowered the cup to inquire as to why he got no tea from it his mouth was filled with a handful of sand and he sent the cup flying as he leaned forward urgently to cough it all out. He began spluttering and gagging as small granules of sand weaseled their way down his throat. Tears rushed like rivers down his cheeks.

“Father,” Ali demanded through coughing fits, wiping away at the sand stuck to his face. “What happened, father? How did you turn my tea to sand?” Ali opened his eyes in anticipation of his father’s reply but when he looked around himself he was unable to find anyone. The garden that had surrounded him was now gone, and the people he had called his family were gone with it. He stood alone in the endless dunes of the Sahara, staring blankly into the sunset with tear-filled eyes. In between his fingers flowed the sand he had poured into his mouth, and nowhere was the cup that he had thought he had tossed to the side. The garden and family that he had come to love in his youth was instead replaced by the vast desert and deprived loneliness that he had come to know in his maturity.

His dehydration was taking its toll and he felt himself crumbling helplessly to the ground. He wondered hopelessly why he had ever truly set out into the Sahara in the first place. He asked himself what his intentions truly were. And yet, he had no real answer. He had set out on impulse, without a second thought. He had brought nothing with him except for his guilt and his shame. He had been an idiot, an ignorant, shameful idiot. And yet he didn’t regret a bit of it.

Exhaustion finally got the best of him as he sprawled out of the ground like a cat. He lay like that for a long time, murmuring little nothings to himself as memories rolled across his vision like short movies. Whether his murmurings were meant for God or for some unseen mirage, even he didn’t know. He was far past the line of insanity, nearing the line of the deceased. As he lay there in the sand during his last precious moments of life he found himself incapable of even remembering his own name.

Then she came to him, and his sanity seemed to return to him for just another moment longer. She kneeled down next to him and brushed his hair out of his face with her long, delicate fingers. Her smile was as bright as the brilliant moon of the night, and her deep eyes gazed down at him with absolute, adoring love. Her lips pursed as she leaned forward and kissed him gently on the forehead. “Nothing can be lost forever, darling,” she whispered in his ear. “Nothing can.”

“Oh, Shanze, my desert rose,” he murmured, reaching a hand forward to brush against her cheek. “Rid me of this suffering.”

 

 

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

You are a amazing writer. You make the characters come alive and their situations come alive to the reader.
"Her lips pursed as she leaned forward and kissed him gently on the forehead. “Nothing can be lost forever, darling,” she whispered in his ear. “Nothing can.”
“Oh, Shanze, my desert rose,” he murmured, reaching a hand forward to brush against her cheek. “Rid me of this suffering.”
I liked the above lines. Last hope and reach. Thank you Megan for sharing the amazing story.
Coyote

[A. Amos]

You're a great story teller and I enjoyed the whole read looking forward to read more...