Prologue: Questions

2320 Monday, 18 May 1931 // 30 Ḏū al-Ḥijjah, 1349

As Ghassan choked on his breath, he could barely feel the frothing in his lungs as they slowly ceased functioning. A figure sitting across from him nonchalantly turned another page of the book held in his hands.

"You have quite an aptitude for prose, friend," the figure mused, as Ghassan's legs ceased their struggle. He had been trying to knock over the coffee table by his leg to reach the telephone, but the contents of the smashed glass beside him had made his movements jerky and now, finally, unresponsive.

It was a strange sensation to slowly lose the feeling of one's body from the feet up.

The pain from what he had drunk was intense, but his brain refused to yield to it and free him from the agony, so instead he turned his mind in his final moments to the concrete - what he knew.

He couldn't think of Safia, because he didn't wish his final moments to be those of sorrow, so instead he chose to turn to his memories.

What did he need to remember? He squinted as his eyes narrowed in the effort to bring the images back to life. For his own satisfaction, figuring out how this had happened was akin to a pointless scream into the void of nothingness that now enveloped him, but his final act would be that one last yell of defiance.

2100 Wednesday, 07 January 1931 // 17 Shaʿbān, 1349

Fariq Ghassan was not an old man, but by Allah, did his body need reminding of that fact sometimes.

A wiry-framed, lean 60-year old with a thick, well-manicured moustache and elegant, aquiline nose, Ghassan was the very model of the Elan that had seen the Iranian Intermezzo end in a decisive victory for Persians over the Turkic Mamluk warlords who had plagued the Abbasid court.

His family had hailed from Khorasan many, many years ago, before they had relocated to Baghdad during the golden years of the Zurayid dynasty 900 years ago. Baghdad hadn’t diminished since, but it hadn’t grown like Tarablus, Cairo or Dimashq had, either. Baghdad was the academic centre of the United Federal Republic of Arabia, a thriving university town, but no longer the capital of a Caliphate, nor had it even been a capital at all, for many hundreds of years.

That suited Ghassan just fine. The city’s pleasant parks and canals were an idyllic location to spend his sunset years, after having spent 42 years in the service of the UFRA. And after a lifetime of fighting, peace and quiet were his greatest priority.

Ghassan was not an old man, but today had made him feel every day of those years, all at once; The end of his last day as a soldier, he grunted to himself, sipping his Arak, another tonic for his aches.

The empty platitudes of his former colleagues rang hollow in his ears as he reclined for what felt like the first time in a decade into his low-seated majlis sofa by the fire. The winter months could be bitterly cold, and he felt the blaze licking it from his joints.

“The Lion of Sharq Hangs Up His Claws” read the headline of the unopened newspaper on the coffee table before him. He looked over to the one claw he still possessed, his Shamshir, hanging currently in the hallway. One last keepsake of a lifetime as a warrior, a purely decorative weapon in this day and age, but beneath the sapphire scabbard, he knew it’s keen edge all too well. Even now, his hand flexed around the armrest of his chair, impatient without the heft of the finely balanced sword in his hand.

But the sword had been hung up for a reason.

He'd retired before he had to, because his next campaign would require even more of him than any before. His memoirs, an unfinished draft lying still on his desk, would take up the remainder of his life’s focus, he had sworn, now that Safia had left for her own career in the military.

“War is a Racket” his memoir's title boldly proclaimed. He smiled, letting the mirth of wondering what his former colleagues would think of this publication wash over him. They would be furious and curious: One of the UFRA’s greatest heroes, an outspoken critic of the very same military he had served.

The irony was more delicious than the sweetest of fruits, more inebriating than the heaviest of wines.

He had fought so hard for so long. Had seen men and women cut down in the primes of their lives and even before. Villages torched, cities razed. All for the interests of bankers who controlled the purse strings of the nation, the financiers of oil barons who fuelled the war machine, the merchants of weaponry and destruction that turned a profit from their tools of misery.

He had been an eager participant in it all, and he did not neglect to damn himself along with the whole apparatus of this bestial monstrosity that inhaled naive recruits and exhaled death and crippled veterans. His memoirs would be his last work, because he had lived too long awaiting a moral judgement that had never come. Now, in his retirement years, he saw that the only judgement to be rendered had to be his own, and he found himself woefully wanting.

He closed his eyes and remembered the heat of villages burning by his hand for the crime of being in the way of oil pipelines. Of children orphaned by his men, crying out for their parents. Of those parents killed for the crime of taking up arms for their communities.

Ghassan knew that his judgement would not lead him to heaven. But he could at least try to correct the mistake. He had tried these last 10 years, as an instructor at the Ghilman Academy in Abassiya, passing on his knowledge not only of strategy and tactics, but of the morality behind why wars were worth fighting.

He had hoped that the new generation would understand that there are some battles that are not worth fighting, on behalf of people who should not be fought for. Alas, the fervour he no longer possessed, stripped of the hard-headed stubbornness of youth, was abundant in the orphans he had taught at the academy. Many had since thrown themselves headlong into the myriad conflicts of the UFRA, and he cursed his naivety for hoping they wouldn’t blindly accept their own self-justification or that of the military.

And now, that foolish hope had even deprived him of his own daughter.

“If you leave that door for the academy, you are no longer my daughter.”

Safia had stood in the doorway, her eyes flecked with sorrow, shocked by his turn of anger and the words he had spoken, as her own sudden fury rose to confront his.

He willed his past self to say something different, something that hadn’t been said with venom but love. To make her understand that he was saying it from care, not from anger.

I fought so that you wouldn’t need to take this path. You are all I have left of your mother. Please, don’t give yourself to a life of bloodshed. You are all I have left.

The unspoken words rose in his throat now, unbidden, and he choked them down with more Arak, the taste suddenly as bitter as his regret. She had slammed the door, emphatically, turning her head as she did so. He knew she had done so in order that he wouldn’t have the satisfaction of seeing her tears. It had been two years since that day, and they had spoken barely a handful of times since.

His memoirs were one last roll of the dice, not just for her, but for all the young fools who thought that they were serving their nation and its’ people, rather than filling the pockets of businessmen with money, or the lapels of Officers with medals.

It sickened him.

The clawing guilt that the work needed to be finished returned in force, drawing him towards the writing desk in the corner. He had turned on the lamp two hours ago to write, before giving up and letting his thoughts drift to their current dark path.

The knock at the door startled him. It was almost a third to midnight, and he wasn’t expecting company. He would however, welcome it, given his current mood. He needed the distraction.

The door opened to reveal a man a good head taller than him, well-built and courteously smiling.

“My apologies, Ghassan. I didn’t get a chance to say a proper goodbye to you at the function tonight, and I wanted to thank you.”

He beckoned the man inside.

“It’s good to see you, Daud. I’m not one for pageantry and shows, so I left as soon as it was polite. Apologies, I didn’t mean to ruffle your feathers.”

Daud shot him a winning look.

“No feathers ruffled, old man.” Daud presented him a box with carved inlay, mother of pearl framing lustreware, the golden veneer over simple pottery speaking volumes about the man who offered it. “Just a present from myself.”

Despite himself, Ghassan took a cursory glance inside the box. A semi-automatic pistol, with ivory grips; a gaudy, tacky display of finery on a deadly but utilitarian tool.

He forced himself to smile.

“It’s very thoughtful, Daud.”

“Not at all. I wouldn’t want to see you without a weapon to practice with on the range.”

Ghassan set the box aside on the coffee table, exhaling.

“I’m not sure I will be seeing much of any ranges anymore, Daud. I have my memoirs to complete.”

“Oh?” Daud’s expression was quizzical, but his eyes were those of a fox eyeing a chicken. Raw, untamed ambition lay within the brown pools of his irises, and Ghassan suddenly felt a fool for letting Daud into his home.

“I don’t see how my skills with a pistol are of any use to anyone anymore.”

“Practice makes perfect, old man. You once told me that.”

He nodded, but then Ghassan had said a great many things in his life, not all of which he still stood by.

“Besides,” Daud continued, a conspiratorial tone in his voice. “You may have hung up your Shamshir, but that doesn’t mean you may not have use of it again.”

Daud produced the sword, within its sapphire-lined scabbard, from the hallway. Ghassan realised he must have purloined it before entering the sitting room with him.

“All you need do,” Daud muttered, his hand emphatically holding the shamshir hilt-first towards Ghassan, “Is take it again when the time comes.”

Ghassan ran his fingers over his chin, contemplative, before he gingerly took the sword from Daud’s hands and placed it standing beside his chair, then straightening up to his fullest height, trying to judge Daud’s intent in these frank few moments.

“Just what do you have in mind, Daud?”

2345 Monday, 18 May 1931 // 30 Ḏū al-Ḥijjah, 1349

The figure stood over Ghassan's finally limp corpse and closed the book they had been reading.

"A true shame. I would have loved to have read more of your works, my friend. I hope you don't mind if I hold onto this."

The figure closed the old man's eyes, said a small prayer over him, and walked out into the rain, the book clasped firmly under their arm.