Return Of The Ark

Part 20: Sardinia Island, Porto Cervo

Day 2, around 12.00

The automated messages from her men in the field in the last two hours seemed to have lifted her spirits. Everything was going exactly as she wanted. The men arranged by her right-hand man had successfully completed the first phase of their mission without any problems. She was enjoying the beautiful Mediterranean sunshine when there was a knock on her bedroom door.

"Any requests, ma'am?" said handsome Alfonso.

To show that he was a very good servant, he would come every hour and ask if she had a request. But Sureyya knew very well that he actually came as a nurse to check if she was well.

Wasn't that why her right-hand man had hired him?

"The weather is beautiful today, Alfonso. So,... Can you make me a strong Turkish coffee?"

"Coffee? But you know it's forbidden."

"Yes, but,...Consider this a dying woman's last wish."

"Please, don't say such things. You are very well today, and rest assured you will get better. Besides, you have a promise to me. When you get better, you'll marry me and I'll become a very rich man."

Alfonso also knew that Sureyya would not recover. It was just a sweet game they played between each other.

"Please don't hurt me today."

She said it in such a sweet voice that Alfonso couldn't resist. Anything out of line was grounds for deducting his money.

"But no more, okay?" said Alfonso.

They both noticed that his last words came out in a shaky voice. As Alfonso hurried out of the room, he noticed that his eyes also got watery eyes. It was the first time he had seen this dying woman so peaceful and happy.

However, what made Sureyya so happy and peaceful was that she was getting closer to her revenge step by step. For the first time in years, it was as if she didn't feel any pain. Then she immersed herself in her memories, closing her eyes and turning her pale face to the sun.

***

She was very young when they had to flee Iran. His father was a well-known physics professor in his country. This reputation also brought him to be the top bureaucrat in the ministry of education during the Shah period. He was regarded as the future minister of education. He was authoritarian but paternal. He skillfully balanced these two opposite poles.

Sureyya vaguely remembered the Shah and his palace. What the good days they were! Her father would always take her mother to the invitations and cocktails at the palace. Once they even allowed the children to come and her father took her along. She remembers the palace very clearly even today. But then the revolution happened, and everything changed. They came to America and suffered for years. Although they were relieved when her father barely found a job in a university, she had never seen her parents smile again like they did in Iran. She remembered that they had both lost a lot of weight and that her mother would look at old photographs and cry all the time.

Sureyya blamed religion for what she had experienced and what had happened to them, and therefore she had always been indifferent to it. Her parents were people of faith. She never remembered her mother missing prayers. She had always learned what she knew about religion from her mother. But what her mother taught her and the religion she had encountered as a child were not very similar. The Islamic revolution in Iran had uprooted them from their homes and countries. She had seen her father and mother be beaten and this religion gave them trouble even in America. Seeing this indifference of her mother Sureyya to Islam, she was being saddened and tried to teach her as much as she could. Before her mother died, she had asked her to be a little more understanding about religion, almost had made a will.

Years later, she had everything. She was rich woman now. Sureyya, who inherited creative intelligence from her father's side and commercial intelligence from her mother's side — father of her mother was a great merchant — combined these two very cleverly and had a very good life with the company she founded. She had named her company after her beloved father: 'RTC - Reza Technology Company'. It was the biggest technology company in the world.

As she grew older and matured, her mother's last request had begun to come her mind slowly. She hadn't seemed to hate religion as much as she had used to. She remembered her mother always telling her, "When you get a little closer, religion will get much more closer to you, you'll see." Sureyya started to take an interest in religion little by little.

One morning she woke up with an incredible pain. At first, she thought it was a cramp, but no matter what she did, it wouldn't go away. The tests at the hospital showed that she had pancreatic cancer. Just when everything was going well and she was feeling very happy, just as she was starting to turn to religion, everything was turned upside down again. She was praying to God to cure him of this disease, but every time she went for checking it up, she was told that it was getting worse. She was beginning to feel the same anger against religion that she had felt when she was a child. She was realizing that it was growing day by day. It had become such that she began to think that God Himself was the cause of all the evil that had happened to her. Just as he had darkened her life when she was young, he was continuing to darken her life even now, when she was trying to approach Him.

***

"Are you alright? You seem restless..." Alfonso's soft voice startled her.

"I'm fine, thanks. I remembered an old friend and that's why I'm like that. Don't worry. "

"I brought your coffee. A foamy Turkish coffee just the way you like it."