Shadow on the Wall: Superhero | Magical Realism Novels (The SandStorm Chronicles | Magical Realism Books Book 1) (2 page)

"Father…what have you—?"

"Child hush, now help me get him inside…quickly."

Recai Osman drifted in and out of consciousness, voices occasionally penetrating his awareness. When he awoke, for the first moment he was blissfully unaware of the severity of his injuries. He moaned and attempted to speak, sensing the presence of someone near. Scents of cardamom and jasmine drifted around him.
Perhaps this was an oasis, perhaps the desert djinn had saved him…

"Where did you find him? What happened?" A voice spoke from above. Recai struggled to open his eyes, but could not find the strength.

"Rebekah, this is not the time, he is badly hurt, please…."

The throbbing of Recai's shoulder started slowly, building on itself until the burning pain consumed his reality. Pain radiated throughout his entire body. The serious and superficial injuries all linked together to create a cloud of agony. His mind revolted against being lifted and dragged across the same sandy terrain that he vaguely remembered swallowing him whole. He struggled against the unknown hands restraining him. A sudden lurch threatened to pull him apart, deepening the cutting pain.

Recai released a shaky breath, his chest pounding as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to it, snapping him in two. Darkness claimed him again, leaving his caretakers to carry him into their home without resistance.

"Rebekah, I could not leave him out there to die," Hasad explained to his daughter.

His voice was heavy as he slumped at the small wooden table in his kitchen. He'd acted on impulse, allowing notions of right and wrong to dictate his behavior instead of considering the threat his actions had placed upon them. A strange man in his home, now sleeping in his bed! What good could come of this?

"I know, Aba," Rebekah breathed without turning toward her father.

Her attention was focused on the Nogai tea she was preparing for the unexpected guest bleeding in the back room where her father usually slept. The comforting drink was something her mother had always given her as a child when she was sick. It would not heal his wounds, but it would offer him some nourishment and hopefully ease that which was not visibly broken.

She stirred the milk and tea as the mixture slowly rolled to a boil. Setting her wooden spoon down, Rebekah opened the small refrigerator her father had bought from a distant relative. He was always resourceful, able to accomplish things others only dreamt of. Many out here did not have running water, but she lived in a home with electricity and a refrigerator. Retrieving the butter, she closed the door gently before turning to the old man who sat in the same seat he had occupied her entire life.

"Aba, you are a good man. I know you did the right thing, you always do. We will make the best of the challenges God has given us."

"You have too much faith in me my daughter, but I am thankful for it. I do not know what will come of this, but that man…he was dying, an awful death, in a way no one should, no matter their crime. I could not simply leave him."

Hasad feared whoever had left the stranger in the desert; he was afraid of what kind of man he had brought into his home. He was wrapped in so much fear he couldn't devote attention to any of it.

Rebekah stirred the butter slowly into the pot, allowing it to roll off of the spoon as it heated. The consistency thickened, and she lost herself watching the brown tea, white milk and yellow butter swirl together. Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of her father's chair scraping across the floor.

"I will tend to him; see if we need to find a doctor to come."

With that, Hasad walked out into the small living room, past his daughter's bedroom and to the back room. It should have been storage or an indoor space for his animals, but it had become his when Rebekah reached the age where she needed a space of her own.

Adding in some salt and peppercorns, Rebekah continued to stir the mixture, bringing it back to a boil slowly so the milk did not curdle. She placed some sugar cookies on a plate and used a ladle to scoop the tea into a bowl which she could use to spoon the liquid out of, or soften the cookies in, the way her mother had so many years ago.

Rebekah was not a nurse. In fact, she had no formal education at all, although her father had taught her how to read and do basic arithmetic. Instead, she lived as most girls on the edge of the desert did: sweeping the encroaching sand from her home and helping her mother. But Judith Sofaer had passed away when Rebekah was only five years old, and so the child had been forced to fill the shoes of a much older, much wiser woman.

Never complaining, Rebekah spent most of her days and many nights alone in the small home she shared with her father. Hasad was very liberal in the freedoms he gave his daughter, always bringing her new books – textbooks, language books, even romances. He read very little Turkish himself, only enough to get by but Rebekah was smart, reading books well beyond her age with nothing but an old dictionary and her own curiosity to teach her. Hasad had little interest in the gradually tightening restrictions on women and their education that occurred as Rebekah grew up. He only knew his daughter did not have a mother, and books made her happy.

She had few friends, but many chances to meet new people and even some suitors at the temple. The life of a widower's daughter was demanding, requiring so much more of her than of the other girls whose mothers and sisters shared the burden. Everyone in their village knew Rebekah lived alone with her father, so the women had taught her how to cook and keep house. They had prepared her for life as a wife, the way her mother should have. Her mother's closest friend, Tabitha, had even taken her in when her father left to trade with relatives in India until his return.

Many years ago her father had fallen in love with her mother, Judith, only a few months after making his way to the desert city of Elih. He intended to continue west toward the sea after raising enough money for the journey. Instead, he stopped and made a home with the raven-haired beauty who had captured his heart. Judith was his second wife; his first died in India before he ever imagined coming to Turkey. Judith and Hasad married within a year. They lived a simple life; Judith gave birth to their first child, a son, before their second anniversary.

Ezrah, the joy of his parents, lived just long enough to see his sister, Rebekah, born. An infection the local physician could not identify had sent him to the large hospital in Elih, where the boy received antibiotics but little else, and quickly fell into a lifeless sleep.

Hasad was never as he had been after his son's death. He believed that if he had taken his young family back to India Ezrah would never have gotten ill. The grieving man blamed the hospital, the doctors, the Muslims, the world. Judith never suffered his anger in silence. She would scold him, berate him, shame him, and remind him that their family was an epicenter of love when he sank into depression and looked at the world as a broken place.

Judith believed Ezrah lived on with God: she believed Rebekah deserved both of her parents; she believed Hasad was a good man. Her faith in him brought him back from the brink of self-destructive anger, though a part of him had died along with his son.

Eventually Judith and Hasad conceived again, and his heart thawed as he watched her growing abdomen. He resumed his habit of singing bangla songs to Rebekah at night and even took some pleasure in grooming his camel. The women of the village visited and when Judith's fatigue made it difficult for her to cook and care for Rebekah they took turns helping. A child was a blessing to their world. The close-knit community was accustomed to raising each other's children and caring for their neighbors in illness.

When Judith began to bleed, signaling the end of another beginning, Hasad's burgeoning smile locked into a permanent frown. He sat in the living room as Tabitha tended to his wife in their bedroom. Rebekah sat on the floor playing with the small dolls he had found for her on one of his rare excursions into the city. Her sweet innocence crushed him as he waited, resigned to the loss of another child.

Tabitha assured Hasad there was there was nothing abnormal about the dark grizzled blood Judith expelled after losing her baby. She insisted Hasad's worrying did nothing but add stress to Judith's sorrow. The best thing he could do for her was continue to provide for his family. Judith did not want a doctor or midwife. Children were lost every day, this one was no different. And with Tabitha's agreement Hasad conceded to allow the child's passing to happen in its own time.

He allowed Judith her grief, and gave the mysterious world of women its due respect.

The next day Hasad left the house to return to the small job he had found caring for the animals of tourists in the desert. When he returned home that night, five-year-old Rebekah sat on the floor next to the couch. She was holding her mother's limp hand. "Mama fell asleep," the little girl told him. "I covered her up, but she's still cold."

 
"Aba?" Rebekah inquired. She approached her father's bent body with a tray in her hands. Her long skirts moved as she walked, shifting the thin layer of sand that could not be evicted from the floor.

"He stirred. He stirred but didn't wake," Hasad said wearily, from his position next to the bed where the man slept. "I wrapped his chest. His ribs are certainly cracked, perhaps broken, but there is little the physician can do. We must watch his breathing though. If a lung should be punctured—"

"Aba, we should take him to the hospital," Rebekah stated simply, confident in her every word.

"And tell them what? That we found a man buried alive in the desert?"

Frustration dripped from Hasad's words as the stranger moaned again. Stepping away, Hasad ran a crooked hand through his salty hair.

"I will go to temple, ask the Rabbi if there are any missing men reported from the city. Maybe he will know what to do," Hasad decided.

Rebekah nodded and sat on the floor next to the pallet, smoothly folding her legs under her so the tea was undisturbed.