Emissary (Book 1)

Revelation

Two fates still hold us fast,
A future and a past;
Two vessels' vast embrace
Surrounds us—time and space...

And when we ask what end
Our maker did intend,
Some answering voice is heard
That utters no plain word.

As I laid on the beach outside the gates of Acre I read these words. They were the words of the famous poet, Abu Alaa-al-Maarri written more than fifty years ago in a little town a few miles south of Aleppo. His words resonated in my mind as they mingled with the sound of the Muezzin and the bells of a church spilling over the walls of the city. They were both trying to entice their followers to their embrace. But not Abu Alaa. For he said:

They all err—Moslems, Jews,
Christians, and Magians:
There are two kinds of humans:
The intelligent without religion,
The religious without intellect.

At that point in my life I was looking for answers. Answers I thought I could find in a book somewhere. Unfortunately I did not. I wasn't asking for much. I just wanted someone to tell me the answer to one, "WHAT END DID OUR MAKER INTEND OF ME?" All I heard were words that made no sense. I was almost sixteen years old and I was already a lost soul.

After I returned from Jerusalem having left my best friend Peter, as well as four of my closest colleagues to die. I was devastated. I thought my life was at its end. Every time I closed my eyes I would dream of their faces and how they all died because of me. The worst thing of all was that I did not even have the chance to say my farewells nor give them the proper burial that they deserved. I wondered what had become of their bodies. Were they fed to the lions? Were they thrown in a ditch somewhere to rot? I wanted to go back. But I could not. I did not have the courage to do what they did. I was a coward, a hypocrite... They put their faiths in my hands and I led them to their slaughter, all of them.

After I handed Sumaiya over to her father, I turned around and walked away. For days and days I aimlessly walked not knowing where to go. First I headed south towards Egypt. Half way along the road I stopped. I realized I did not want to go back to Cairo. I could not face the rest of my colleagues at the school. I did not want to see anyone or anything that would remind me of my friends. The first thing every one was going to ask me was, "Where is Peter?" I could not tell them what I did. So I decided to go elsewhere. I thought of going north, or maybe east towards Baghdad until I realized I had to cross the desert, face a thousand armies that were fighting over control of this land. I had to claw my way to a land I knew nothing about. I was done with fighting. So I turned around one more time. Finally I thought of going west, home, to the land of my mothers. But where was that? I was half Arab and half Greek. I could take a ship and sail west, towards the Greek isles or maybe to the lands of the Franks, to Peters home. Would I be welcomed in those places? Probably not. I did not belong to any of these lands. I would be a stranger, an outsider, shunned wherever I went. I did not have a home.

For days I walked and walked until my legs could not hold me any longer. Finally I fell down, unconscious, shivering from a fever I concocted due to exhaustion and malnutrition. I slept for days until my fever finally broke. I woke up to the grumble of my stomach asking to be fed. I looked around surprised to find myself almost at the same place I started from. I could see the high walls surrounding the port city that I so desperately wanted to get away from, Acre. What I did not realize was that I was still covered with blood which had dried up on my clothes since I left Jerusalem. I smelled like a lamp at a slaughterhouse, and my stomach grumbled even more. I found an old abandoned hut, on the beach a few miles outside the city, where I decided to stay, clean myself up then go look for food.

Acre was a strange place. This whole land, east of the White Sea, was a strange place. Some say it is the center of the world. They even call it the Middle Lands of the East, next to the Middle Sea or the Mediterranean. It certainly was a melting pot of races from all over the world and Acre was a perfect example of that cauldron of heads. As I walked inside the city I could hear Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew, Persian, Kurdish, French, Greek, Armenian... as well as a whole other tongues and dialects I could not identify. Ships from as far as the lands of the Moors dotted the horizon. Some wanted to trade, few were bringing in pilgrims to the holy lands, both the Christian as well as the Muslim holy sights, but most were trying to whisk them away. Many were trying to leave this place. It was an uncertain time. Come to think of it! When was it ever a certain time in this land of uncertainty?!