The Great Old Black Book

         
         

The Great Old Black Book

          Ibrahim stared out into the vast empty darkness, he couldn't see anything. It was one of these terrible nights when there was no moon or any stars, as usual it filled him with despair. The Banat A'was howled in the distant darkness, hunting amongst the slopes between the dunes of cold sand, their primal sounds brought ancient fear into Ibrahim's heart. Despair and fear mingled and as is often is the case they forged a sturdy sort of resolve, what will happen will happen he thought. All the while he felt for the book sitting on his chest, heavy, unmoving, suffocating. Like the demon of legend 'Al Gathoum' who crushed the ribs of his victims in the middle of the night. Ibrahim found the weight reassuring.
          He remembered "Don't fear." is what the prophet said in those old days to his companion as they hid in the cave "God is indeed with us."
          Eventually, Ibrahim slept. He didn't dream. He hadn't had a dream in so long and was nothing short of glad for it. Dreams were one of the few superstitions he shared with the majority of the people of these foreign, distant lands. They weren't mere memories but visions of the world of the unknown, that realm known as "Ghyb" in the faith. It was the land of the missing, of the unresolved, of the simply unknowable, a realm accessible only to God. To glimpse into that realm was to only fear dread, he was glad he didn't have any dreams anymore. He didn't care to know the future or to remember the past, only the present mattered so the Black Book has declared.


          Right before dawn Ibrahim woke up. It was better to move while it was cold and cool yet. He washed himself with some sand and started praying towards the golden red horizon. At times like these there were no thoughts in his head, they were not for thinking, not for worry, they were there for him to observe the world he was made in with all its faults and short comings and beautiful imperfection.
          After prayer he had a sip of water and no food. The road was long and the Maghreb was far behind.
          He went to his camel which was resting lazily a few feet away. He gently patted it's blond neck, early morning always made Ibrahim feel better about life and the world. Even a beast such as this was worthy of the all love mankind could give. Ibrahim mounted and the beast arose.
          The desert stretched like a sea of gold, an ocean that reminded him of his lost home. The desert and the sea, aren't they one and the same? Aren't the heavens too? Man had been making the analogy since the dawn of time, philosophers and thinkers, people certainly smarter than Ibrahim... but he didn't care about that, logic meant very little to him, analogies too, he wasn't someone to feel strongly about such things. He liked the thought nonetheless. The skies were beautiful. The sea was beautiful. The desert is beautiful. He didn't take this journey because it made sense, he did it because he felt compelled to it.
          He remembered the verse in the Black Book,
          "Who is it that will lend to God a good loan, so God will multiply it for them, and they will have an honorable reward?"
          He wanted to be that one, he felt compelled to it. Reward was foreign, distant thing, yet he sought it because his heart told him so. All his being danced with exhilaration at the words of the Great Book. Ibrahim scratched his beard in thought sometimes and wondered if he was simply possessed by the things he didn't understand. Here and now as the empty and vast great desert laid before him, feeling as the last man on the world, he wondered if he had been duped by people smarter than him. The thoughts bubbled now in him and he felt dread. Hours passed and nothing happened.
          The camel groaned. Ibrahim smiled at that, he felt as if all his annoying thoughts were also pestering her, like little flies probing her. The sound of this beast reminded him of a groan of utter annoyance, she probably felt only disgust for his race. Thinking too many thoughts, until those thoughts started to terrorize the proud race of man. An entire species often defeated by their own paranoid, self-important minds.
          Ibrahim shook his head and before long he found himself reading the black book. Then he started listening to it.
          The rest of the day passed in a heartbeat.


          Again came the night, the despair, the primal fear. The daughter of A'wa didn't scream or howl and Ibrahim tonight was the night. He took out his sword and waited. He drugged his camel so it won't run away in fear, it was well-trained but no point taking the risk. Tonight the moon bathed the land in a cool blue light, it didn't make Ibrahim feel better.
          Tonight he would be reminded why Man feared the dark.
They crawled claw-first on the sand dune opposite to him. They were things he could never describe, nothing in his knowledge looked like them, he had been seeing them in his nightmares ever the journey started. Perhaps they looked like starved dogs aping men in how they walked, he couldn't look at their faces but it was certain their eyes were yellow. Froth dripped from their mouths and no matter the distance Ibrahim could smell it, the smell of an abattoir. As they shambled lazily towards their victim they looked to be in as much pain as they sought to inflict.
          Ibrahim gaze didn't drop. His right palm turned white from gripping his sword. The Daughters of Aw'a approached closer. The man felt the Gathoum on his chest again. His heart was close to bursting before drawing a single drop of blood from the ancient enemy. Then Ibrahim felt the Great Book ticking on his back. He started reciting the holy Quran and the beasts fumbled in something akin to confusion. Just for a moment.
          A moment was all Ibrahim needed. He charged and cut the first daughter across her stringy neck. She yelled like a woman in labor, Ibrahim kicked her in the guts and planted the sword in her narrow ribcage. The two other daughters charged. Ibrahim jumped and almost fell-over. The sands were treacherous but he survived a death worse than any imaginable. God willed he lived today.
          He held his sword away from his body with the tip facing the Banat. One took the bait and charged him. Ibrahim impaled her with a simple motion before her sister surprised him. She slashed at him, Ibrahim tried to back away but wasn't fast enough. He felt his Qamis turning wet with his own blood and felt a searing pain. It wasn't very bad. The pain is never as bad as after the fight. Still, Ibrahim summoned the caveman rage dwelling within him to charge the last daughter. It was a very stupid idea. The last daughter thought the same so she never expected it. Ibrahim was much heavier and stronger. He drove her into the ground and held her thin, clawed-arms away from him and proceeded to stomp her brittle chest over and over again. It took a while for her ribs to break and even then he continued crushing the creature's organs until her yellow eyes stopped shinning in the darkness.
          Ibrahim was shaking. Death didn't scare him before so why was he shaking now? Was he feeling so good to be alive? He thought about the journey, he thought about his mission. Did he truly have it in him? Then he remembered the Great Black Book he carried on his back. His duty. His honor. He decided that it wasn't death that scared him but the thought of failing this journey.
          Of course there were more of the Banat around. They howled and snarled at him from behind the dunes. They were animals more than demons and he was certain to them he really wasn't the effort anymore. After a while they left leaving the man to his thoughts. He thought about his fear when he finally saw them. Any man should fear that, should fear the dark. But then again, "Allahu Akbar" as they said, wasn't God and the light of his creation more worthy of fear?


          Dawn came. Ibrahim hadn't slept a wink. During the rest of the night he got himself better acquainted with his Black Book. His camel started to wobble awake, Ibrahim had been using her body as a pillow. It was time to continue the journey.


          No demons, no beasts, not a single living thing for the next few days. Ibrahim got closer to his goal. Then one day as Ibrahim mind was swarmed by the lonesome thoughts he saw something glimmering the distance. It looked like a Mirage at first. A blue dot in the distance. Ibrahim considered ignoring it but curiosity got the best of him. Surprisingly the man got closer to the blue dot until it was a dot no more. He could now see it clearly: someone dressed in brilliant blue robes.
          "A Tuareq?" Ibrahim thought suspiciously. They didn't live this far west. There weren't a horse or a camel he could see. No companions either. Were they behind the dunes?
          The person whoever it may be was certainly large, Ibrahim saw two skeletons close to him. One was instantly recognizable as that of a camel whilst the other Ibrahim couldn't tell. But by simply comparing him to the size of the camel skeleton this was one large man, if anything, he made the skeleton look like the misshapen remains of a sitting dog.
          Ibrahim got closer now much more weary than before. He dismounted and approached. The man was hunched over the smaller skeleton which Ibrahim still couldn't recognize. Then he heard it. The crunching sound of bones grinding against teeth. Ibrahim could only sigh as he realized he was approaching a demon having his lunch. He was too tired to be terrified, at least, until he saw that the skeleton he couldn't recognize most certainly belonged to a human being. It was a skill to keep a steady voice while facing the Unknown terrors of this world.
          "As-Salam Alikum." Ibrahim croaked, there was a slight crack. He failed.
The Jinn turned with what felt like laziness and replied "And on you."
          Another crunch.
          Ibrahim tried not to look too closely at the Jinn. Madness was known to befall those whose gazed lingered on the Unknown. He focused on the heavy, brilliantly-dyed robes of the Jinn.
          "My name's Ibrahim."
          "David." The Jinn hoisted the camel skeleton above him as if it weighed nothing and then with a sharp crack snapped its spine in half.
          Ibrahim glimpsed his hands, they had long feminine nails that glistened like a diamond under the burning sun. He refocused on the robes.
          "David is a strange name."
          "Strange of you to assume that," The Jinn said without turning, "Aren't you a foreigner here? What say have you in what's normal." He was still eating and crunching through bone. Somehow, the voice that came out of these robes didn't sound muffled at all.
          "What are you, exactly?"
          "Ghoul."
          "What you doing?"
          "Lunch." Figured as much.
          "Dare I ask what is your religion?"
          "You are already speaking to a demon, I don't think we are past that point of caution." David said.
          Ibrahim waited. Nothing.
          "I see..." Ibrahim paused and then thought, "Muslim?"
          "No." David turned for the first time, Ibrahim didn't meet its eyes.
          "Solomonite?" Ibrahim asked.
          "No." David smiled. There were so many rows of teeth where it's throat should have been, they moved when he said next "I am what you call a follower of Ibn Nazareth."
          "Christian?!" Ibrahim almost sounded insulted.
          "If you say so." David's massive shoulders moved in what might have been a shrug.
Ibrahim got over his shock quicker than he thought possible.
          "Forgive my curiosity..." Nothing like that was ever in the Black Book. Nothing he was ever taught mentioned something like this. "You don't exactly cut the traditional picture for a Christian, if you know what I mean."
          "You don't look like Mohammadean either." David mocked.
          Ibrahim thought for a moment. Looked at his pale hands, scratched his red beard and remembered his days in Brookleen. The Ghoul had a point.
          Then a thought sparked in his head. He was taught that Jinn had knowledge of many things a human being could never know.
          "Too much to hope for but I must ask," Ibrahim tried to sound as polite as possible "Do you know where A'wa lives?"
          "You come to hunt?"
          "No." Ibrahim voice suddenly turned hard. "Merely to evacuate. She and her daughters have been terrorizing the Bedouins around here." Ibrahim knew demons couldn't read minds.
          "They had been doing much more than that, Mohammadean." The Ghoul brought his long face all the way down so he could gaze into Ibrahim, eye to eye. Its chin touched the sand, it's impossibly long mouth was still chewing bones.
          Ibrahim tried to feel the ticking sound of the Great Black Book on his back, he tried to think only about it and not stare into those gleaming eyes.
          "Do you know what fear is, foreigner?" The Ghoul said. "Whatever pathetic idea of fear you might have ever felt, it's nothing to the world you are middling with. Turn back. Go home. There is nothing well here for you."
          A beautiful, feminine hand slid from between the robes. The hand gripped a human skull, Ibrahim didn't remember them being so tiny. The empty sockets stared at him from beyond the grave.
          "Brave." Said David, "Brave just like you. They stripped his flesh slowly. Kept him alive only christ knows how. They took too long and he was awake through it all. He saw his beating heart, he saw his arteries spurting a fountain of blood. Nothing left but bones, they ate the skin, they emptied the guts for the excrement" David smiled again. "Awfully selfish aren't they? Leaving nothing for the carrion eaters like me."
          Ibrahim looked at the skull and tried to imagine a human face just like his. He tried to imagine it twisted in horrid agony. He couldn't. He swallowed and said in the lightest tone he could manage, "Indeed, how ungracious of them."
          David many teeth contorted until they formed a V shaped expression from chin to ears. It was his most genuine smile yet.
          "I won't discourage you if you still wish to seek the desert desert daughters' mother." David said. "More food you and your mount will become."
          "How christian." Ibrahim smirked.
          "I warned you didn't I?" David pointed a talon towards the east. "There behind the Oases of Heathens you will find them. Hurry there and die quick, the sooner you are dead the sooner I will have a new meal. There aren't as many fools this side of the desert anymore."
          Ibrahim nodded and went back to his camel.
          "Hey demon!" He shouted when David was nothing but a speck on the horizon. "Leave nothing of me behind! I don't want to stay in this empty place!"
          David laughed and Ibrahim heard it like he was only standing a few feet away from the Jinn. The wind whipped around him fluttering his Qamis and robe. It was time to leave. Nothing in the world sounded worse than falling a victim to a Jann than perhaps befriending one of them.


          Days passed. Ibrahim got closer to the end of his journey. He crossed the Oases and restocked on water. They were completely abandoned with no animals or people. With each night he heard them howling and calling behind the dunes, the daughters of A'wa were gathering confidence to attack him again. They were bloody, violent and vengeful yet as all other cruel bloody men they were utterly cowardly. After the Oases, Ibrahim followed the concentration of half-eaten corpses and skeletons. On few occasions he met a few, hard-eyed but frightened Bedouins. They were willing to help despite their fears, their terror only matched their lust for demon blood. Given time they might have went ahead and did the deed themselves but Ibrahim had a mission. He remembered the Back Book sitting on his back, a constant reminder of the duty he owed. The Bedouins showed him the way to A'wa
          or what they thought might be.
          Throughout the next days he saw David a lot. He was always ahead of him, he wondered if at some point either of them started following the other. Ibrahim thought nothing of it, he didn't fear the demon as much he probably should have. He was just a Christian. Faith was always understandable to Ibrahim, the madness of reason is where the true horror's at.
          He chatted occasionally with the Jinn. Sometimes he ignored him, especially when the sun was hotter than usual. David was always eating when Ibrahim would see him. His last encounter with the Jinn involved watching him rip out the intestine from a recently deceased poor fool - doubtless slaughtered by the Banat A'wa during the night - and suck the feces out of the tract. Ibrahim never saw David again after that, which was probably for the better. He wondered if it truly was this insane for a creature to do such a thing? If a human tribe somewhere in the infinite vastness of the calm Ocean did the same thing would he feel contempt for them? Probably not. He might care if it happened in Bristol, in Valenssyah, even Brookleen. But then again Ibrahim should have never spoken to the horrors to begin with. He felt slightly abandoned so he decided to read the Black Book tonight as well before laying to sleep. It was his only true friend, his last companion. The ticking became more irregular however and Ibrahim knew he had to hurry.


          Before he knew it Ibrahim had arrived to his last station. The great rock stood like an infected thumb in the vast desert around. The skies above were so dark as if pregnant with rain. Ibrahim would have feared the rain in such a place once, a flash-flood could be so deadly here. It didn't feel like it mattered anymore. He had seen everything and every inch of the world that mattered. A soothing feeling of finality had seized his heart.
          Without feeling he recited the last surah in the Quran, Surat El-Fateh. El-Fateh meant Victory. The words felt foreign as always but the meaning felt as natural as breathing. Truth was going to triumph over falsehood. Good will be victorious against evil. He kept telling himself that as he approached the rock. Perhaps it might be a temple, Ibrahim thought. A temple for the false God A'wa of the Desert, the last amongst the Jann to claim Godhood.
          By an opening almost too-small Ibrahim nestled his way through. One last look to the desert outside made him content. He saw David hunched over close to his camel and gazing with those gleaming eyes of his towards Ibrahim. Ibrahim looked into those eyes for the first time. They were the eyes of someone who had known the desert for an eternity. The eyes of one who had wandered through it before the first man walked on earth. Someone from the beginning of time.
          He wanted to laugh. He shouldn't have done that but it didn't matter.


          Ibrahim stared into the vast, empty darkness, he didn't want to see anything. He was filled with despair. He felt the Great Black Book ticking on his chest. It was much stronger than the beating of his own heart. Then she opened her eye.
          In the abyss the largest eye he had ever seen glared at the human who had barged into its ancient domain. It was yellow, ancient like David's, yet so utterly hateful. This was A'wa and Ibrahim could feel the hatred she felt for all of mankind. She snarled, she didn't speak. The light of those blazing, hateful eyes allowed him to see clearly. See the bones. See the shit-covered walls and floor. See the ribs of men which were gored into her bleeding gums. The black, foul feces smeared across her teeth. She was large, so large she couldn't bend her head. Then Ibrahim realized she couldn't move. Her body had grown and grown and grown and the Rock around her didn't give an inch. It was crushing her slowly. Bent and misshapen limbs were sprawled all over the cavern. They were still bleeding. Ibrahim smelled the yellow odor of pus from countless little cuts and wounds.
          He almost laughed and remembered the words "Don't fear. God is indeed with us."
          Ibrahim almost felt pity for the thing. Then he felt despair. This was supposed to be his finest hour, his great day. This was supposed to be his duty done and accomplished in a blazing wave of violent glory. How could something so utterly pathetic be so great as to claim Godhood. How could something that has terrorized so many for so long be this weak...
          Anger pushed him to gouge the yellow eye with his sword. The beast cried but none of her daughters came to save her. Ibrahim was certain he was going to die. Ibrahim was supposed to die today. He was supposed to die since the moment he set out.
          He planted the great black book which had been with him since embracing the faith into the bloody socket. It felt light for the first time in his life.
          He tried to read the title one last time, feeling it with his thumb.
          'Tafsir Al-Afandi of the Holy Quran, English Translation.'
The bomb which had been planted in the book was still ticking. Ibrahim activated it. For the first time it started ticking regularly. Time started moving again for him after spending so long in this infinity of place. He kicked A'wa one final time before heading back towards the entrance of the Rock, she whimpered slightly. Ibrahim was still angry and more than ever fearful. The cave was dark again, the false deity has shut her remaining and prepared for final release.
          Ibrahim recited the last Surah of the Quran, the one he believed he truly mastered; 'El-Nas'
          Before he left the darkness the daughters of A'wa were back. They had heard the cry of their mother. There were too many of them. Ibrahim almost cried with joy. He didn't get to.
Ibrahim didn't have time to smile, scream or laugh before they had torn him to shreds. He felt utterly victorious as he died.


          David heard then saw the blast. He approached. Much of the corpses were gone, same with the rock itself. Most likely to the realms where they belonged. He found the shredded, bloodied, pulped corpse of the human. David considered eating it then shook his head. The desert had been so lonely for so long. He wrapped the corpse carefully in his blue cloak and sent it with the camel running. It will make its way to some bedouins sooner or later. The human would have his pointless burial.
          Bombs David thought with hate as he looked on the remains of the rock. Such an ugly despicable weapon of man. His stomach growled as he dug through the stone and sand looking for any bones left behind.