The Unpredictable

by Tom Avito

  “As-salām ‘alaykum, stranger!” Said the man who had just walked out of the house to his right.

  “Wa ‘alaykum as-salām, Sayyid.”

  He’d noticed the door opening when the dog had started barking. He’d remained cool and collected and waited.

  “What brings you here to Shahrak, stranger?” The old man added, standing in his doorway.

  “I’ve come to buy Ghom and Tabriz[14] , Sayyid,” Nino replied.

  “You won’t find that here, then. There’s only a few forgotten souls here, the most you can buy is a good goat,” the old man added.

  “Thank you shaykh[15], I can do without. I’m headed north but I need some water and something to eat,” Nino continued, stepping closer.

  The old man called the dog back to his side. The man’s thinness was clear despite the heavy burnous’ vain attempts to conceal it. His long white beard and his wrinkly face, grooved by an endless series of wrinkles, bore witness to the passing of time and the hardships of life. However, the black eyes, sparkling and lively, were those of a young person and bore witness to the man’s clarity of mind and presence.

  “Come, stranger, be my guest,” said the old man, climbing down the two steps onto the ground and making his way to a large bin from which he drew a bucket full of turbid water.

  “Give your animal a drink, then follow me, I’ll be glad to share my food with you,” he continued, stepping back into the house.

  He ate two pieces of dry bread and a lump of stale goat cheese. He had trouble swallowing, but it was crucial for him to ingest calories if he wanted to keep his strength up. He drank a glass of water to wash down the food, hoping to himself that it didn’t come from the same bin as the dromedary’s water, then offered the old man 10 euros to thank him for his hospitality and asked whether he could take some of the remaining food with him. The man picked up the bill and turned it over in his hands, tilting it and raising it towards the light; then he looked away from it and his pitch-black eyes, sparkling with pure joy, met Nino’s.

  “Thank you, stranger. Allah is great, he has brought you on my path today.”

  “Thank you, old man, for your hospitality.”

  “You are a very generous man, stranger.”

  “I’d be grateful if you could also give me some water for the rest of the trip, shaykh,” Nino asked, certain that the man would indulge him.

  The old man walked away to go fetch a container, but the sound of his footsteps was suddenly covered by the rumble of a combustion engine rapidly approaching. Nino jumped out of his chair and moved to the window. His fears were well-founded: two black off-road vehicles had arrived at full speed before stopping at the end of the dirt road, at what seemed to be the village’s main crossroads.

  “Old man, who are these people? They’re armed to the teeth,” he asked, though he could well imagine the reason for their presence.

  The hunters had come, they were there to get them, blinded by the smell of their fleeting preys that were now closer and ready to be caught. The Wharzes weren’t that far away; he hoped they hadn’t left the ruined building and stepped outside, otherwise they would have been doomed. Alone, they didn’t stand a chance at surviving. All in all, if Bagheli’s men were still roaming, foaming at the mouth, it most probably meant that Alexander and Nicholas were still safe and sound. He had to reach them as soon as possible and get away from Shahrak.

  “I don’t know, stranger, but this does not bode well. When they come armed, their intentions are never reassuring,” the man wisely stated.

  Nino picked up the cell phone and tried in vain to get the line. The reception signal was low, but it was there. He wrote an SMS to the House’s number hoping that a short moment of active connection could be enough to send it:

  “I’m in Shahrak Bakhtiari with Gehirn and the child. Help us. Hermes.”

  “Shaykh, I need two carpets, I’ll pay you good money for them,” Nino said, pulling out his wallet from an opening in the dirty burnous.

  “I have no Ghom nor Tabriz to sell, sayyid,” the old man replied regretfully

  “Old man, I’m not interested in precious carpets, I just need two long and thick rugs. But I need them now, I have to go!”

  He took out the remaining bills and placed them on the table. Almost one hundred euros and a few dollars were enough to win over the Iranian’s hesitations and the man ran into the adjacent room with unexpected deftness.

  When the two off-roads moved away, he left the house from the rear exit and headed back east. He brought with him a big, worn dusty carpet and a thick wool blanket. He’d rolled them up and placed them on the dromedary’s back, over a small plastic container with a few liters of water and a pouch holding the stale bread and goat cheese. He wished he could jump onto the animal and gallop towards the Wharzes’ hiding place, but refrained and walked slowly instead, almost dragging the dromedary by its reins. His lazy, slow pace would have made him look like a poor travelling merchant in the eyes of even the most careful observer. He was worried to death, his eyes inspecting the terse horizon for any pursuers or for signs of the Wharzes’ presence in the ruined house that he was slowly approaching. The other dromedary, that should have been still tied outside the house, wasn’t there anymore. His anxiety increased, and so did his remorse for leaving them alone. He approached the building, fingers crossed, and stepped inside the opening where the door had once been.

  “Gehirn,” he called out, hoping for an answer.

  “We’re here!” A voice replied.

  As soon as the engine noises had preceded the black off-road vehicles coming from the east, Alexander and Nicholas had found shelter behind the wall of one of the rooms, where they’d also pushed the dromedary. Luck had been with them and the vehicles had only driven around the building without stopping, before heading at a high speed towards the center of the village.

  “Good job, you did great,” he repeated, thanking God for saving father and child.

  “I brought some water and food.”

  He handed them the plastic jug and helped Nicholas lift it up so that he could drink. The Wharzes had been very sensible and lucky, while the Minotaur’s men had been inexplicably careless, neglecting to check inside the dwelling. Just as well, after all Lady Luck still owed the Wharzes big time.

  “We gotta get out of here right away! It’s too dangerous, we can’t waste any more time.”

  “Now, right away?” Alexander asked, as if he were convinced that those four run-down walls could hide them like a Medieval stronghold.

  “Yes.”

  “But they’ve left,” the German persisted.

  “They could come back any moment now. We can’t risk it. You’ve been very lucky,” Nino added, moving towards his dromedary.

  He removed the carpet and the blanket from the animal’s back and lay them on the floor, lifting up a big cloud of dust.

  “Your trip will be really uncomfortable for a few kilometers,” he told the scientist, as the child focused on devouring a piece of goat cheese.

  “It’s not like we’ve been travelling first class so far,” Alexander ironically pointed out.

  “You’re right, but it will be worse now! I’ll roll you up in these carpets and help you lie down on your belly on the dromedary’s hump. It’s only until we make it far enough from this place, four or five kilometers to say the least, so that we’ll be out of the field of vision of those watching us from the village.”

  “That’s insane! We’ll never be able to breathe in there!” Alexander added. For someone like him, with his obsessive compulsive disorder, everything became unbearable. Anxieties and difficulties grew proportionally to the lack of organization, to the impossibility to stick to the usual routines.

  “You sure will. It’s necessary: if someone were to notice two men and a child leaving the village, we’d all be as good as dead. It’s just a stupid attempt to fool them, and frankly I can only hope that it works!”

  CHAPTER 16

  Shahr
ak Bakhtiari (Iran), 01/17/2012 2:00 P.M.

  -“Interests vs. Souls” –

  His left hand, heavily sweating, held the thin leather reins with which he led the animal at his slow walking pace. The second dromedary, with its load of souls, was bound to his own and obligingly followed them. The chances of making it out of that hellhole were getting slimmer and slimmer, their pursuers were closer than ever, he felt their presence looming over the Wharzes’ lives and his own. He could feel their proximity in the air, like a prey sniffing its hunter’s traces in a sudden gust of wind. If anyone had become suspicious in seeing him leaving the village with two dromedaries, one of them carrying a heavy burden, they would have been able to reach him quickly and at that point all of his hopes would have collapsed, making way to utter despair.

  He wondered what Sara was doing in that moment. It was two in the afternoon. He pictured her lying in bed, sweetly stroking her stomach, honoring the new life that was taking form inside of her. It wouldn’t have been bad to be by her side, to caress her hair, hold her, cuddle her then kiss her with all the passion that was burning inside of him. It felt as if centuries had gone by since the last time they’d made love. The memories that rushed back to him now were intense, laden with emotions but somewhat out of focus, eroded by the speed of the passing time, less vivid than other memories that were much further in the past. They looked like old yellowed and scratched films rolling at a high speed.

  “Yes, it works like a bellows,” he thought. “It expands and contracts proportionally to unhappiness.”

  It was the umpteenth validation of his belief that time wasn’t a fixed and defined measurement, but rather expanded and contracted based on emotions. Not the time on the clock, but the inner time, when in dark moments the future loses its momentum and the past and present seem to slow down. How often do we complain that happy moments seem to run by faster, while tough, woeful times seem to last forever?

  Alexander’s moan broke the silence.

  “Just a few more hundred meters, then I’ll let you out! Hold on,” he encouraged them, turning around to look at the distance that was now between them and the last houses in the village.

  They couldn’t resist much longer. He had no choice, he had to free them from that position and allow them to breathe normally. It would be easy to identify the outlines of Alexander and the child from a distance, he knew it, but he couldn’t risk it anymore. Their hopes of making it would be destroyed if one of them had been sick or had trouble breathing.

  He walked over to the dromedary and easily picked up the bundle that contained Nicholas. He placed it on the ground, unrolled it and released Nicholas from the coils that had wrapped him for that short, endless trip. The child, free at last, stretched out his arms and inhaled deeply.

  “Are you okay, Nicholas?” Nino asked, seeing the child’s dazed expression.

  “At last! I couldn’t take it anymore. I was choking,” the kid exclaimed.

  Reassured, he walked away and headed towards the other burden that was still on the dromedary’s back. He could hear the professor’s voice mumbling resentfully.

  The weight of the large rolled-up carpet that concealed Alexander was quite different from the one he’d lifted before; it took all his strength to hoist it onto his shoulders.

  He spun around as Nicholas watched. For a moment he swayed, then he managed to push on the quadriceps of his bent legs and regain his balance. The skyline of the village of Shahrak Bakhtiari ahead of him proved the distance between them and their closest menace.

  The view changed in a fraction of a second: the clear sky was overturned by two flashes that started out bright as lightning but turned red in an infinitesimal fraction of time. A first pillar of fire rose in the center of the village, and almost simultaneously another one, of the same magnitude, a short distance away.

  He knew what was coming, it was a matter of seconds. Instinctively he dropped Alexander, still wrapped in the carpet, and threw himself over Nicholas, shielding him with his own body. The earth shook, the two terrible roars and the shockwave hit them with all their might, carrying dust and debris. His hands that were protecting his head were hit by a thousand tiny needles, as he enclosed the screaming child in his shell. He’d lived through it before, first the smashing expansion of the detonation, then the wave of depression that turns you inside out, and the infinite fragments that seem to hit you in a constant and endless hailstorm. Being at a certain distance from the place of the explosion is the only chance of surviving in those circumstances. Once again, in their misfortune, lady luck had kissed them.

  Two enormous mushroom clouds rose above the explosions. Although they were at a sufficient distance from the epicenter, they’d been hit by a devastating shockwave. Nino slowly moved his hands away from his head and lifted himself from young Nicholas’s body, unmoving under the weight of his own, hoping that he’d find he was still in one piece. He wasn’t able to think, he was only trying to figure out whether or not they were still in the world of the living.

  “Nicholas!” He screamed, seeing the child remain motionless on the ground.

  “Stop, stop!” repeated the child as soon as he caught sight of him.

  He moved closer, put his arms around him and tried to soothe him. “It’s alright, little man. It’s all over!”

  “Daddy, where’s daddy?” Nicholas cried out, still panicking.

  “Come, he’s here, let’s free him together.”

  They took a few steps and crouched down to unwind the carpet that still held Alexander captive. He couldn’t hear any sounds from the inside and he started to worry. He rolled it over as quickly as possible, freeing the man from the rough, worn fabric.

  “Professor! Shit… come on, come to!” Nino urged him, smacking him on the cheeks.

  After a few seconds in which the fear of losing him drenched the other two, Wharz imperceptibly moved his eyelids, then slowly came to, bewildered and disoriented, breathing irregularly but luckily alive.

  “What happened? Where are we?” Alexander asked, as his son threw himself into his arms.

  “We’re outside the village, two explosions completely wiped Shahrak Bakhtiari away, that is all that’s left!” Nino pointed.

  He was kneeling by the professor, who was holding his crying son tight. He observed that terrifying scene of destruction and tried to set his mind straight. A few seconds had been enough to overturn reality once again, to complicate a situation that had already been complex, and he tried and failed to make sense of what was happening. He needed to reposition the events, to place them in chronological order and maybe, at a deeper analysis, the reason for it all would emerge from the tangle of interests and involvements.

  He stepped away as if wishing to observe the facts from a different angle and discover aspects that were previously hidden. The usual relentless wind and Nicholas’s sobbing cries were the soundtrack to his thoughts as the tiles of the unintelligible mosaic of events moved quickly in his mind, trying to find their place.

  “Shit!” He exclaimed, as if his conscience had suddenly set the answer in front of him.

  He rummaged in his pocket, pulled out the cell phone he had used to send the SMS to the “house” a few hours earlier and flung it onto the ground. He picked up a rock and hit it repeatedly, smashing it up with demonic wrath.

  “Get up! We have to leave, soon they’ll come from all directions to try and figure out what happened.”

  He yanked on Alexander’s arm and picked up Nicholas, intending to place him on one of the dromedaries, who had luckily remained close to them. He was infuriated.

  “Hey, calm down! Please, I don’t think I can stand,” said Alexander.

  “Get moving, professor! If we stay here any longer, we’ll be pulverized. We have to reach the border as soon as possible, come on!”

  They started moving again, heading slightly more south in order to avoid the only road that led to what had once been the village of Shahrak Bakhtiari. It was best to avoid the
ordinary route that headed west, as it would surely be patrolled.

  A few more hours of light would expose them dangerously to the sight of any pursuer, then a welcome darkness would conceal their movements, making their escape safer, though much slower.

  NOTE VI

  The old man in Shahrak Bakhtiari didn’t know that he would be taking the few dollars he’d gained that day with him for eternity. Moons, seasons, years, decades had passed over his skin and slid over his eyes, his whitened hair and his emotions, smoothed over by time, untainted by the evilness of the world. Then, that day fate. had seen him off for his last journey. We’d been the ones to take him there, our fleeting presence had been enough to sentence him, and who knew how many more souls in that timeless village, to death.

  I wondered if this made any sense, if it was all worth jeopardizing the lives of so many people, in addition to my own and the Wharzes’. What right did we have to claim that our own existences were more important than the ones that had just been wiped off the face of the earth? Why were we so presumptuous as to believe that we had to survive to the detriment of other unknowing, innocent lives? We were leaving a trail of death and destruction behind us, and this ate at my soul. Why did our lives, mine and the Wharzes’, mean “death” for so many others? What was happening had nothing to do with my intentions and surely with the Wharzes’ too, we were driven by a pure, simple survival instinct that unfortunately created devastating side effects.

  But I was blaming myself for things that weren’t my fault and I reached the conclusion that those events did not reflect my own behavior but other people’s precise wills; they were independent from my actions. All I was doing was desperately attempting to help myself and the Wharzes avoid the Minotaur’s jaws.

  Luckily, I’d made it so far!