The Boy of the Desert Pt. 3

I knew calling it a weekly story would be a bad idea. But, ah well, life happens. Now, on to the the sand.

            After what seemed an eternity, the wind slowly ebbed and the coarse grains of sand stopped trying to wear Azad down to bone. The sun was low in the sky. In his rock hole, the boy realized he was exhausted. And, without even trying, he fell into a deep sleep.

Azad dreamed of ruins carved from stone. Ancient places, worn down by centuries of sand. He also dreamed of a single, white rabbit.

When he awoke, the sun was just rising above the horizon. His head was filled with fading memories of places he didn’t know. He collected himself, and stepped out of the alcove to stretch.  He had a thick layer of sand in his clothes and was desperately wishing for a bath. At least he had some water to clear his dusty throat.

“What do I do now?” Azad asked no one in particular. He was, despite his willingness to voice it aloud, lost. The tracks he had spent all of the previous day following were long gone. Meaning his father’s camel was too. And He was ill prepared to spend more than a day or two in the desert. Azad was miserable.

With no real direction to take, he sat down in defeat.

“Ow!” he yelped.

Azad had sat down on the mystery piece of jewelry from yesterday. Taking it out of his dusty robes, the boy took the time to examine it in the sunlight. The necklace itself was made of two shapes of translucent stones, one square and the other triangular, strung together on a golden chain.

The square stones were red and seemed to be on fire when the light hit them right. The triangular stones had a yellow cast to them, almost like amber. Azad then studied the central reflective piece of glass. It was azure, the color of the sea. And on its surface were etched images.

“Huh, I didn’t see these yesterday.” He spoke aloud, to nobody in particular. He then thought that of course he hadn’t, he’d been running for his life from the sandstorm.

On the lower part of the glass disk were two outlines of what looked to be mountains. In between these was the likeness of a tree, from the roots to the branches. A circle was in the very center of the tree. The upper part of the disk had three images. On the left, what appeared to be a crescent moon and on the right, the sun.

It was what was in the center that sent new chills down his spine. The head of a rabbit. He bolted up to his feet and scanned around the rocks again, looking for the white rabbit he knew was following him. Haunting him even.

Questions bloomed in his mind. What was going on here? Why a rabbit? What did this have to do with father’s camel? Why had I not just stayed home? Why is my stomach growling?

“Ah, at least I can answer that last one.” Azad said to himself. Maybe eating would help calm him enough to think of a way home, or to find El Deloua, preferably both. He hoped it would take his mind off of what had become a frightening, confusing and mystifying situation.

Finding his satchel (glad he had not lost it in the blinding sand) with the few remaining pieces of bread and goat meat, Azad set about dusting off bits of grit and chewing his way through the rest. Twenty minutes later, his stomach placated, the boy decided to go back and look at the tree where he had first seen the necklace.  

He did not realize he had run so far and it took him another ten minutes to get back to the desert tree. Standing in front of it, hands on his hips, Azad stared. Hoping something would occur to him. Then an idea did strike.

“This is the tree!” He exclaimed loudly. “And over there and there are the mountains.”

The scene from the necklace disk was now before him. Looking up, he saw the faint crescent of the moon to his left. And the sun was now to his right. The whole thing was coming together before his eyes. But where was the rabbit?

Azad was not sure if he actually wanted to see it again, or where all of this was leading. But within him, a desire for adventure welled up. He had never truly thought of himself outside of his family life. Away from the camels and his siblings. If he could figure out what all of this meant, his father would for sure notice him.

He turned his attention back to the tree. A flash of white beyond it caught his attention. The rabbit? Whatever it was had gone in a straight line from the tree, between the mountains and between the sun and moon to a valley beyond. Now why hadn’t he seen the valley before now?

Sighing, the boy said “If I want to know what is going on, I better follow. The blasted camel can find its own way home.”

Azad then set out, not knowing that what he would find would be life altering.

A rough sketch of the necklace

The Boy of the Desert Pt. 2

 Sorry, I know it's late. I was just being both lazy and writersblocky. Now on the the sand.

The Boy of the Desert

            The thing with camels is that they can run very, very fast. El Deloua was exceptionally good at running and was in fact the fastest racing camel in the area. So, Azad was in for a long trek. And he knew it.

            “The dumb thing is already out of sight.” Azad grumbled. The deserts rolling dunes made it hard going and hard to see anything that may lie in the valleys between them. So all he could do was follow its trail of deep tracks.

            The sun rose higher and the day grew hotter. Azad, being of the desert people, was dressed well enough to handle it. He worried however, that the day would get too hot, even for him.

Several hours and many kilometers later, he crested a large dune and gasped. It seemed the whole world had turned to sand. The gritty waves marched on from horizon to horizon. And still no sign of El Deloua; even his trail was fading in the dry winds.

 Azad was worried, and was starting to get hot. He took a small swig from his canteen, being careful not to spill any. It was his only source of water and if he lost it, it could be his death. He began to wonder if this was such a great idea.

Just as he was about to head on down, a flash of light caught his eye in the distance. He couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to be a mirror, or shiny piece of metal. It struck him it might be one of the decorations on his father’s camel. So, he followed in its direction.

At the top of each dune, Azad could pinpoint the shiny object and correct his bearings. It seemed to never move. He suspected it wasn’t El Deloua after all (because of its stationary nature) and wondered aloud what it really was. “It might be an old car that got lost and left in the sand. Or maybe some trash left by a tourist.” But the few remaining tracks led in that direction and in view of that he kept going towards it.

After an hour of doing this, and 4 hours since he left home, Azad stopped in the shade of large mound of sand and had a small lunch. He put some of the cured goat meat inside of the flatbread and savored the taste. The food made him feel better and revived his faith that he would find the “blasted camel” soon.

Making sure he still had ample water and food, he started out again, climbing the nearest dune and looking for the glint of light. It seemed as far away as when he had first seen it. The random thought of “I wonder if it moves when I can’t see it.” passed through his head.

Looking again, eyes straining against the glare of the sun, he could see what appeared to be mountains of rock behind the elusive shine.  Spurred on by curiosity, the boy continued on. He knew of a few mountains in his part of the eastern desert and had always wanted to see them first hand.

The dunes gradually flattened out into a vast empty plain. He could now watch the mysterious sparkle continuously and he finally was getting closer to it. The mountains got closer and larger and the shine grew brighter with every step.

Azad passed through a wide pass between two low hills and saw a lone scrub tree directly between them. As he approached it he saw the shine was coming from within its branches. “What is this?” he asked out loud.

Standing directly under the tree he saw a round, flat disk of glass attached to a necklace of colorful stones he had never seen before. How had he seen this small thing all those kilometers back? The question of it having moved crossed his mind again and he began to feel he was being watched. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He started glancing around nervously and thought he saw a streak of white fur dash between some rocks.

Azad heard a loud rushing of wind stir up behind him. Already unnerved, he whirled around to face whatever it was. What he saw nearly made him scream in terror. A dark wall of windblown sand almost a kilometer high had come in across the desert. A sandstorm.

He did what any sensible child would do. He ran as fast as his legs would carry him. He angled towards the rock around the bases of the mountains, hoping it would shelter him from the choking sand coming ever more quickly towards him. As he ran he remembered to wrap his keffiyeh headdress around his face to keep the sand out of his nose and mouth.

Two odd things happened just as the front end of the storm hit the boy. First, the strange necklace struck him in the back of the head, blown by the strong wind. And, when he bent to pick it up, it caught the last ray of sunlight and reflected into a hidden alcove in the rock. Azad now had a place to hide away.

He crawled in and wrapped up as much as he could in his clothes. The wind was fierce and sand was still getting in, but not near as much as if he had been stranded outside. This did little to comfort the boy. “This camel better be alive when I find it.” Azad moaned. “Because I sure want to kill it.”

The Boy of the Desert Pt. 1

The Boy of the Desert

Azad was a boy of the desert. From the moment of his birth (and very likely to the day of his death) he was surrounded by the arid beauty of the eastern desert of Jordan. He lived with his Father, mother and seven brothers in several of the traditional tents of the badawī; his people. Azad helped his father and brothers tend to their large herd of both trade and racing camels. He was proud to help in the family business and always was trying to impress his father. Therein lay the trouble.

Azad was the fourth of eight sons and was no different from any middle child anywhere else in the world; he tended to fade into the background. Which could be both good and bad; on one hand Azad rarely was in trouble, but on the other it was hard to get recognition for his hard work. His days started early, before dawn, with watering or otherwise brushing down the camels. He worked with his twin brothers Farid and Marid.

They were aptly named. Farid, meaning unique, was very much so in the ways he could conjure up ways of getting into trouble. And Marid, meaning rebellious, seemed to try to live up to it with every living breath; always having to do the opposite of what he was told. Which is why both were sick and asleep this morning. Marid had been told by his mother to not smoke his uncle’s hookah, which meant he really wanted to do it and Farid had the idea of stealing it and having a grand time in the desert. It only took a few puffs and the twins were sick for the night and well into the next day. When they got through throwing up, their father was going to really teach them a lesson.

So Azad was alone today in the pre-dawn cool that only a desert can have. He pumped gallons of water from the family well into his buckets and transferred them to the various troughs around the camp. It is heavy work, but Azad knew his father appreciated him doing it.

There was one particular camel, kept apart from the others, that was his father’s favorite. It was a thoroughbred, supposedly descended from a royal bloodline, and was to be hand fed, massaged and brushed with a fine brush every day. It was named El Deloua, for it was indeed a “spoiled child”. It was secured in a small pen on the outskirts of the camp.

As Azad approached the enclosure, still an hour before the sun rose above the horizon, he heard a commotion start. Something had startled El Deloua and the camel had started to protest loudly and was now trying to shatter the wooden posts of its corral with its huge feet. Breaking into a run and dropping his load of food, Azad arrived just in time to see El Deloua tear the fence down and bolt into the surrounding sand dunes.

His first thought was “Father is going to kill me.” His second was to look in the pen to see what had scared the camel so. In the back corner was a small white rabbit; which was odd, because rabbits, white or any other color, don’t live within a thousand miles of Azads family camp. He took this as bad sign.

Azad decided he would rather face the heat of the desert during the day than his father’s anger at losing his most treasured possession. So he gathered a few pieces of flat bread and a small sack of cured goat meat into a satchel and slung it and a canteen of water onto his shoulder. He stood at the edge of the camp, looked back once and sighed. “It is going to be a long day.” He then set out following the fresh tracks into the desert.