‘Take them from me.’
The thought came unbidden into my mind.
‘Let them die in their sleep, peacefully, painlessly. Let them never wake up to know what I’ve done. Let me never see the disappointment in their eyes.’
Tears blurred my vision, but I kept running, faster, harder.
It wasn’t that I didn’t love them—no, it was because I did.
If they perished in the night, it would be mercy.
If I perished, it would be justice.
But I wasn’t granted either.
I was still alive. Still breathing. Still damned.
I needed coins.
Even a handful would be enough—enough to lessen this crime, to buy back a morsel of the dignity I had sold. And so, I did what every desperate fool did when he had nothing left to offer.
I ran to the one place every beggar feared to tread.
Al-Zagyr.
It was the city’s cancer, the rotting wound festering at the furthest eastern point, just at the city walls.
Only the lowest of the low lingered there, the filth who had nothing left to lose.
The ones gnawing at each other, fighting over crap not even rats would touch.
Here, there was no kindness, no pity, no mercy.
You didn’t get something unless you had something to trade.
And if you had nothing?
Then you were the trade.
A body to sell.
A back to break.
A throat to slit for whatever coin might be left in your pocket.
Here, people didn’t ask.
They took.
And if you couldn’t stop them?
You didn’t deserve to have it in the first place.
The soldiers didn’t come here. Not unless it was to dump a few more bodies into the dirt, let the blood soak into the sand, let the city’s filth clean itself up with its own greed.
Al-Zagyr belonged to the gangs.
Lesser beasts compared to the ones lurking outside the city walls, but monsters all the same.
Men with no honor, no law, no code except power.
Take what you can.
Kill who you must.
And if you’re weak?
Die.
That was it.
The only rule that mattered.
The deeper I went, the quieter it became.
People disappeared. Shadows lingered behind broken shutters, eyes peering out from cracked doorways.
No one wanted to be seen.
No one wanted to be remembered.
Because being remembered meant someone wanted something from you.
And in Al-Zagyr, there was no worse fate than owing something to the wrong person.
But me?
I didn’t care.
I wasn’t afraid of the gangs.
I wasn’t afraid of dying.
There was only one thing I feared in this world.
Only one nightmare made my stomach churn, my breath hitch, my chest tighten like a noose.
Facing my family again.
Seeing their eyes, knowing what I had done, knowing what I had stolen from them.
Anything—anything—was better than that.
So I kept running.
Minutes passed, my breath ragged, my lungs burning, and then—
There it was.
A door.
A small, jagged crack in the massive city wall.
A wound in the stone, barely big enough for a man to squeeze through.
The way to No Man’s Land.
And I was going through it.
But first, I needed to get permission.
That was only of course, as the ‘door’ was their lifeblood.
Besides it, men sat on overturned crates, lazily tossing bones onto a rug, gambling away coin, perhaps lives.
A few women lingered not so far away, wrapped in silks meant to entice, their faces painted with kohl.
They called for me, but I didn’t hear.
My eyes were on one thing and one thing alone.
I would’ve felt hope. But it wasn’t a place of hope.
It was a place where men went to die.
Yet right now, death was from being my worst fate.
I stepped forward, hands trembling at my sides.
I had no weapons, no strength, no reputation.
I was nothing here. Less than nothing.
But desperation was a powerful thing—it made men bold, made them do things they never would in their right mind.
A man in faded silks, his head wrapped in a frayed scarf, watched me with disinterest.
His arm rested on a long, curved dagger at his hip, a lazy threat.
He had seen my kind before. He knew why I was here.
“Are you sure?”
His voice was dry, raspy, like a man who had swallowed too much dust.
I nodded, unable to form words.
He eyed me, then snorted.
“You’ll be dead by morning.”
“…I NEED coin.”
My voice cracked, pathetic.
He smirked, flashing yellowed teeth.
“We all do, brother.”
I swallowed hard.
“Thank you.”
The man flicked his right hand, gesturing for me to go.
And, like a man already sentenced to the noose, I did.
This was a place where Nasir’s laws did not reach.
A place where their banners did not fly.
Those who entered rarely returned.
The rebels would kill them, or worse, the beasts would swallow them whole.
Massive jackals with eyes like burning coals.
But, again, I had nothing left to lose.
I slipped through the crack, my body fitting through with ease—too much ease, as if the city itself had long since rejected me, unwilling to keep a man as worthless as I within its walls.
The air outside was dry, harsh. The Shams beat down mercilessly, searing through the rags on my back. The wind howled like grieving widows, ones that cried for those who had perished before me.
Here, I would find coin or death.
Either was better than returning empty-handed.
I tightened my fists and walked forward.
My feet soon found themselves sinking into the dunes.
Sand constantly whipped into my face, stinging my skin, getting into my mouth, my nose, my eyes.
I spat, cursing under my breath, but it didn’t stop me. Nothing would.
I walked and walked, and not before long, my stomach began twisting itself into knots.
Why?
Because… I smelled it.
That stench.
Thick. Foul. So damn foul.
Rotten meat left to bake under the Shams, mixed with sweat, piss, and shit.
Hm… It turned out people shat themselves when they died.
Real cruel, was it not?
Not just for them—no, they’re already dead, what do they care?—But for me.
For the poor bastard digging through their corpses, trying to find something worth taking.
The smell was real bad; even this far, it clung to the depths of my nose.
It made my instincts scream at me to turn back.
But I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
Because that smell only meant one thing.
I was getting close.
No Man’s Land was waiting for me.