And all across the firmament, light burst forth with resplendent justice. Chaos that begot death was illuminated into oblivion, and goodness broke forth on the land again.
John sat up quickly. Had he been sleeping? His head throbbed. Too much rakija. He looked down at the half-empty bottle gifted him a couple of weeks ago. Was he in the Balkans just a couple of weeks ago? The vast desert expanse that dominated the horizon made the rugged hills of East and Southern Europe feel completely inapposite. A different world entirely.
The sun was flirting with the heavens, glimmering red and unabated on the line of visibility. The cloudless sky against the uninterrupted North African sand created two distinct blocks of color: indigo and amber, both warming in the coming light.
He stretched and reached for his Lonely Planet. Kasserine: check. Gafsa: check. His finger followed the highlighted black line southward on the map, dirtied with the grime of his unwashed hands. Right, Tozer was next. He closed the book and put it in his bag. The gilded spine of a book in his bag caught his eye. He pulled it out gingerly. He moved his hand over the cover and inhaled deeply. He opened it and thumbed to the page that had that day’s date scrawled on the top right corner. Her delicate handwriting brought tears to his eyes.
“My Love,” it started. “This marks the start of week 48 since we last held each other, last looked into each other’s gaze. I hope you’re bearing up well and nowhere near Annapolis. Remember, travel is good for the soul. It forces you to consider things in a way you didn’t know you could, or should…” He closed the book and wiped his eyes. He put the book back in his bag and zipped it up.
He stood and crawled through a square in the roof down a steep, wooden ladder into a cool room. The walls were hidden behind stacks of rolled-up rugs that lined the perimeter of the room from floor to ceiling. The floor was also covered with overlapping tapestries of red and black, white and blue. Geometric puzzles, or were they reflections? Memories? John padded across the room through a narrow gap in the stacks of rugs into a white plastered opening like a silo pierced with a steel, spiral staircase. At the base of the stairs, he turned quickly at the ceramic clinking that came from the kitchen behind him.
“Sabah al Khir,” he heard the soft, kind voice of Maha.
“Good morning,” he replied. She turned with a hand on her hips, eyebrows raised and lips pursed.
“In Arabic?”
“Saba al…noor?”
“Mumtaz,” she replied, her smile beaming with a mix of pride and mocking. “Coffee?”
“Yes please. Aishik…?”
“Very good! Like real Tunisian." She stirred boiling water into the Nescafe crystals that instantly dissolved into dark liquid. She put two full scoops of sugar into the small mug and stirred. “Do you need a ride to…where you going next?”
“Tozer, and no, I’m fine, thank you. I’ll just take the bus.”
“Nonsense. Kabil will take you.”
“I don’t want to impose…”
“Uskut, stop that,” she interrupted.
An hour later, he was on the road. The pavement rose and fell in a black vein through the harsh landscape, vibrating with heat as the sun began to climb. The road cut through the increasingly sparse plains with a wall of dramatic sandstone rising up in the West.
“Don’t go that way,” Kabil cut into his thoughts.
“Why not?” He simply clicked his tongue and raised his head signifying the conversation was over. John turned his gaze back westward and wondered at the imposing shelf of rock that emerged from the dusty ground like a bulwark driven into the earth by some ancient deity.
They pulled off the road into one of several small, single-roomed concrete structures that clumped together as a forced oasis on the otherwise empty road. Kabil eased to a stop. The cloud of dust they stirred up continued into the air after they’d halted. John rose from the car. He heard the click of Kabil’s lighter as he lit another cigarette and walked toward the faded green, metal door. John followed.
The air was stifling in the room. There was a narrow wooden bar on the far wall with what looked like an espresso machine from the 1920s. There was a defunct, clear-plastic-doored refrigerator with a worn Coca-Cola sign on the front. Opposite the bar were two tilted tables each with two plastic yard chairs. One of the four chairs was occupied by an old man, red and white kaffiya wrapped around his head, sipping on a coffee and smoking a cigarette, sweating in the heat and looking out of the sole, 1’ x 2’ window.
“Deux chai,” Kabil said, raising his hand in what looked like a peace sign as he ordered a tea for himself and John.
“Is there a bathroom?” John whispered to Kabil, not wanting to disturb this otherwise post-apocalyptic scene. Kabil nodded around back.
John stepped out of the structure adorned solely with “cafe” in Arabic script hand-painted at an unintentional angle on the front of the hovel. He shuffled around the cafe to find little more than an outdoor closet with a tiled floor that slanted to a hole in the ground. There was a pink plastic pitcher of water with a brown film on top.
After relieving himself with as little contact as possible with anything in the outhouse, John walked back toward the cafe entrance. When he poked his head inside, he didn’t see Kabil. He walked quickly to the other side of the cafe where they’d parked and didn’t see the car. John groaned audibly with his hands on his head turning around to see if Kabil had simply moved the car.
Just as he started walking to the back of the cafe, he heard the sound of a revved engine and saw a car quickly pull in front of him with a screeching halt in the dust. Two men with guns jumped out of the car. Their faces were covered with black ski masks and they were shouting at John in Arabic. One grabbed his arm and John instinctively tried to shrug him off. At this, the man swung the butt of his AK-47 into John’s head.
Everything went dark.
This is the first in a multi-part series called Abduction. I hope you enjoyed it. Please come back next time for the next installment. In the meantime, if you haven’t already, subscribe! All you have to do is click this button:
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What an engaging beginning to an interesting story, especially knowing what’s coming in part 2. 👏