Desert and its rain- a journey

Frothy as the Damascus wine with an aroma that carried a similar intoxicating spell the wind hushed northward as though cavalry moving under the cloak of night. Trailing long with a canister of water on the side of my dear companion we set on foot towards a place not yet well known to the Arabs, a land where clouds gather in abundance, where turrets of fortresses oversee such clouds. We set course on a new moon’s eve to get the position as accurate as possible as it was only on a new moon’s night that we could make out the exact whereabouts of the star Altair, as under it lay the land of Constantinople. Using a slender stick tied to my camel’s back we set a temporary marking of our trail, to be safe. This line of thought faded along with the horizon as with the coming dawn a sandstorm advanced.

They call it Eqaal as it is a piece of cloth that is wounded by a rope around your head, also where the word Aql comes from, a sound Aql is a one that’s tied firm in knowledge and faith, and so with the knowledge of the winds and my Eqaal’s grip I directed my ride through the storm, steady and sure just how a merchant desires to progress in life, but little does he know about the sound Aql, had Bedouins been greedy like the silk route merchants who now pass my left side, they would have been nonexistent. The sun was now setting over Al maghreb and the horizon had cleared up just in time to accommodate a visual of the last blade of light dipping down beyond the thin line that divided this world and the world unseen. The next day at dawn, my companion and I arise to land which is closer to our destination and the path lying onward and the sky under which it lies seems to have been taken under siege by a surplus of low-lying clouds, their merciful shade had made us forget all the hardships of the days prior. I remember how the tradesmen used to reason as to why I accompanied the word shade with merciful, is a shade in itself not mercy enough? The reason my friends is that a shade is only of the properties of what the object is that casts it to be, and so it becomes an obligation to make that distinction. For a soldier who is knee down in blood in midst of war, he too sees a shade, but does that mean the arrows that cast it are carriers of mercy?

One such arrow dived down upon my ride’s shoulder blade, dusty eyed I could not make out the soldiers that stood guard, much like the sky above the city was on the verge of something similar. The enemy arrows had aimed for beyond the city walls, though swift the determination they carried was a matter of pity unlike my condition as with another arrow now to my waist I was on my way for a travel greater than I could ever assume. May the winds carry man as effortlessly as dust, may the gusts narrate their stories to passersby, may the dunes be a testament to man’s perseverance. As the rain of red settles gently on my bed I remember, from dust we were and to it we return.