"Okba is dead.”

 I slumped down in Joachim's arms and started crying. Okba was shot and died of excessive bleeding, but I remembered that I was also stabbed yet nothing happened to me.

“Why didn’t you save him?” I barked at Joachim. “If you could save me, why didn’t you save him first?”

 “When we returned from the desert, it’s already too late.” Joachim told me. “He had died.”

The survivor guilt that settled in my heart was heavy and I became nauseous. I retched badly, gagging on empty stomach but nothing came despite the sickening feeling.

Okba could have been alive had I come earlier. He would’ve been if I hadn’t left to find Dylan that night.

Joachim helped me up and told me to be mindful of my stitches.

“You shouldn’t strain yourself. It’s already difficult to stitch you up in such circumstances.”

I asked him about Zimar and the others and insisted on seeing them. Joachim took me to see the girl and seeing her chest rise and fall with each breath was a relief. I immediately grabbed her cold hand and started crying in distress. I thought I would lose her as well.

“She’s safe.” Joachim comforted me. “They are safe.”

“Why did you save us?” I decided to confronted him. Even though he had saved us, Joachim was David’s man, and there was no way he wouldn’t bear a grudge against us after his entire team was killed in the desert.

“Do you have to ask it?” He said to me. “If it weren’t for someone helping you out secretly, do you really think you could’ve snuck out of the tent at night.”

“W-Who are you really?” I stared at him in surprise.

“You should rest first. All your questions will be answered later.” He asked the woman named Yanxi to take me back to my tent.

She helped me back to the cot and instructed me to lie down after having the painkiller.

I looked up at ceiling of the tent as fresh tears fell from my dry eyes when I thought of Okba. Life was unfair. How many more deaths would I witness before I could go as well?

Memories and Dreams had become a slurred reality. I was unsure whether I was alive or not. I couldn’t tell whether it’s Irem or Dylan who had stabbed me before, or whether the woman whom the serpent had killed in the desert was Irem or someone else.

The reality had blurred for me. Zhuang Zhou couldn’t tell whether he’s a man dreaming about a butterfly, or he was butterfly dreaming about being Zhuang Zhou.

I even doubted myself as Dylan who had killed all those people, or I might be a vengeful spirit of the desert with the false memories pretending to be a human.

What if I was in the psychiatric ward imagining all these things in the head. I could tell nothing in the end.

When Zimar regained her consciousness, she broke down into tears after seeing me beside herself and cried her heart out the moment I held her in my arms.

She’s as traumatized as the rest of us after hearing about Okba’s death. Karim couldn’t move around by himself, so Sean helped him outside when we bid farewell to Okba. We buried him in the desert along with the others under the timeless sand of the painful memories.

A human heart is indeed vindictive than a vengeful ghost.

“Amira and I have already known about this team.” Joachim admitted, and I was surprised to hear it from him.

“When our team went into the desert in Egypt, our team encountered a sudden sandstorm. Amira and I stayed behind at the camp and waited for the team members to return. However, when the team returned from the desert after three days, Amira and I sensed that something was wrong with this group of people.Their behavior and personality had completely changed, and Amira’s professor, David started acting suspiciously. Later, we realized that this of group people who had returned wasn’t the same one that had gone into the desert earlier.”

“The team was switched.” I concluded, and Joachim nodded in agreement. “Didn’t they do anything to you?”

“No, they needed us to get out of the desert. Moreover, She and I acted along afterwards and pretended to be interested in their new research. David came to Morocco, and Amira had to go back too because of Karim. Later, both of us learnt that he and the others were looking for a dagger to go back into the desert, but—"

“But, I appeared.” I said to him. “They were looking for me.” Hisam and Irem used the dagger to lure me into going to the desert with Hachim’s people. They knew who I was and had been observing me from the shadows ever since I returned from Romania.

“I have always suspected Amira to be one of them.” I said to Joachim.

“If it wasn’t for her, would you be able to locate the water in the desert?” I was stunned at his comment and stared at the man who smiled in return.

“Didn’t Okba mention the moving water to you as well?” Joachim told me, and it made sense now why Amira had mentioned the story of Khidr to me. Later, Okba also said the same thing about the miraculous water. Both had been guiding me throughout the journey, but I doubted Amira’s goodwill because of Irem.

“What would have happened if I hadn’t returned?”

“The original plan was to kill the entire team in the desert, but we didn’t expect that—”

“—that Irem would be the mole.” I said to him. Irem was the variable that Amira and Joachim had never considered in the equation. The girl had been secretly monitoring the movements of Okba and Joachim but didn’t expect the latter to be the game changer in the end.

“You could’ve saved him.” I said, and Joachim knew that I was talking about Okba. “If I hadn’t gone into the desert to take care of those people, I would definitely have.”

 Joachim had to lure Hachim’s team men into the desert to silence them. Okba waited for his return before taking an action, but neither had expected such a strange turn of the event.

“We are leaving today. Yanxi did a good job in stitching you up, but there’s a risk of infection. You and Karim need to be treated at the local hospital.”

“I can’t go back.” I told him. “There’s something that I need to do.”

“You can’t go in this condition.” He objected, but I raised to hand to stop him.

“I insist” I said to him. “So many people have died because of me and this is the last thing I can do it for them and myself.”

“Then, I’ll ask Yanxi to help you pack some food and medicines to last for few days.”

Yanxi prepared bag for me, while I searched for the dagger and hairpin in Hachim’s tent. After three days of rest, I bid goodbye to Sean and Zimar and told Karim to thank his wife for me.

“If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have survived this ordeal.” I told him. I handed a letter to Zimar and instructed her to send it to my family if I did not return after a month. The girl hugged me and asked me to promise her that I would come back alive to them.

I slung the bag on my shoulder and saw them leave in their cars. I looked over at the shifting mounds of sand, and I walked in the direction of the water holding the dagger in my hand.

However, I didn’t know that I was too late. The hǎi zi was gone. There’s nothing except for the stretch of sand and a burning sun on the sky.

In the end, I had no option but to continue further into the desert with a compass in hand to search for the moving water.

During the day, the ghost of Okba often kept me accompany in the desert, but when the sun sank below the horizon, I would hear Kasim walk behind me and ask me to give up.

“Why don’t you stay with me here?” I would ignore his words and continue walking with pain in side as the wound would bleed from strain, but I had noticed that he would keep his safe distance from me.

“Where did you get this ring?” Kasim asked, and I sub-consciously raised my hand to see the metal ring on it. Okba had given me the ring after I recovered from the storm’s incident, and told him about the wandering spirits of the desert.

‘The ring is forged with the iron which is said to be the element of King Solomon.’ He had told me back then. ‘It will ward off the evil and protect you from a djinn if you come to encounter one in the desert’.

Had it not been for this ring, I would’ve been mortified for having a someone like Kasim follow me around in the desert. The ring affected him so he dared not approach or harm me.

In the end, I realized they all were in my head. None of them was real.

The Hell_ is People.

At night, the little fennec fox used to follow me and kept me company when I’d pitch up a tent to spend the night. It would go and catch geckos and beetles from the desert and bring them back to me to eat. I would squeal in horror and ask it to throw them away. I would set up the fire in the desert to warm myself and have dry food instead.

I tried to eat as little as possible to last myself for few more days since I’d eventually run out of the food and water. I’d check my bleeding wound and clean it again, and put a fresh plaster on them to prevent the infection. The fox would curl itself in my lap, and I’d stay awake unable to sleep in the foreign environment.

The desert had made me paranoid. There might be a rattlesnake, a wolf, or a passing caravan that could kill me. Okba was right when he told me that the desert is alive. It eats and devours the man’s mind and feeds on his emotions. Even a person with a strong resolve will crumble in such a harsh and cruel environment.

A day passed, then another, followed by a sense of loss of time after some days as I ran out of the last bit of my food and water. I had heard before that the people would often drink their own fluid to survive in the desert and would resort to eating all sort of things.

I’d stare at the little fox, and the poor thing would look at me as if I would kill and eat it.

“I won’t do that to you!” I would snap at it, and the poor fox would run away from me in terror. However, It’d still bring me the things it’d catch in the desert, and I’d refuse to eat them.

I became a wandering ghost in the desert without a trace of food and water in sight. When I was lucky, I would dig out some plants to squeeze water from its roots to moisten my tongue and throat. Often, I’d see the water from the top of the dune and run towards it only to realize that it’s just a mirage.

Going on without food and water in the desert for days had exhausted me. I’d lie on the sand during the day not having any energy to move and wait for the sunset to travel again at night. I had rolled up my pants and pulled out a dagger to cut a piece of flesh of my thigh to eat, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it and tossed the dagger aside in frustration.

‘You’re a coward!’ I shouted and slapped myself as a punishment.

I even considered ending my life in the desert, but all of my efforts would have gone to waste.

The midday sun of the next day burnt overhead, and I could barely walk straight due to hunger and fever. My throat, parched and hoarse, hurt as if I had swallowed thousand of thorns. The stomach and ribs had sunken into the spine. The lips became dry and split, and the corners of fingers bled after being chewed on them to relieve some of hunger.

If I had gone for another day, I’d have ended up as a processed corpse in the sand myself.

With last bit of energy, I pushed myself up on top of a mound and let out a eccentric laughter upon seeing the water in front of me. I slipped and tumbled down the dune, letting myself fall and roll down the sand as I had no energy left in me to even stand.

I raised my head and crawled on my empty stomach towards the lake. I pushed myself up on my elbows and collected the water in my hands to drink; however, going on without food and water for days made my stomach wretch and I immediately threw up.

I gagged and heaved on empty stomach but tried drinking it again slowly. This time, it didn’t hurt my stomach like before. I fell back on the burning sand, and extended my hand to touch the water with his dagger. When I woke up, Dylan was sitting beside me humming something.