He was reciting something in another language, perhaps a poem, a song or a hymn.

It sounded melancholic, but his voice comforted the heart and soothed the ache as I listened to it.

Pour onto me thy wine from Heaven,

I shalt collect it in my body— the chalice

The soul hath been parched for long;

A mere drop could do no more

Come hither, why thou escape me?

The separation is death, if you shun me

Oh, how far I shalt run, Qais?

I’m no Shams, I’m no Rumi!

“What language is this?” I asked him, and he snapped his head to look at me in surprise.

“You’re awake.” He said, but met with a noncommittal silence.

“It’s Persian.” He told me. “I can renounce all, but wine—never”. He recited something again, and I half recognized these verses this time.

“Is it not from Rubaiyat?

 I rolled onto my good side, and sat upright looking up at the full moon on the sky.

“The moon hasn’t been this radiant since childhood.” I said. “Father used to take Darcie, Alec and me for a night walk in summers through the fields to see the fireflies.”

 I became nostalgic as I reminisced about wistful memories of childhood.

“The moon used to be so bright to light the entire path for us to run around and play. Alec was little; father would carry him in his arms, but Darcie and I would race with our shadows in the moonlight and step on them.”

I paused for a moment as my heart felt constricted due to sudden surge of emotions.

Then I said, “The fireflies that I used to chase after and catch in the hawthorn bushes, to bring home and release them when mother would scold me, are no longer here. The moon is gone, so are the fireflies. In the end, we all grew up.”

“Where’s your father now?” Dylan asked me, and my throat tightened. I gazed at the moon in weariness, and wondered if grief had an end to it.

This moon has witnessed far more deaths than humans, has listened to their silent cries and pleas for millenniums and has seen the civilizations crumble to dust and rise again from the ashes.

Is it not tired for bearing it all alone?

“He’s gone.” I told him. “He’s gone. I didn’t think Okba would be gone too.”

The voice cracked as tears threatened to spill from my eyes, and I started crying again unable to hold it back anymore.

Humans don’t realize the pain and grief they carry inside them until they experience it again. I didn’t realize it that I had been mourning for quite long until I lost Okba too. The pain I had been suppressing in my heart resurged, and the wound I had been trying to heal re-opened upon his death.

Death is a cruel Teacher. It doesn’t let you off easily.

I rested my forehead on my knees to hide the face as I cried it all out. Dylan fell silent and let me have the moment of reclusion in myself, but kept me company.

“I’m envious.” He spoke, and it made me look up at him.

 “You have at least something to reminiscence about whereas, I have nothing. I have neither past nor future. I’m a wanderer with no origin passing through time to the eternity.”

“Can’t you recall it?” I sniffed, wiping the tears and turned to hear him.

“All beings in this world experience birth, or at least have some memories of their childhood, but I have neither”, he said. “One day I realized that I exist, and there’s no other explanation.”

His features softened under the pale glow of moonlight, but his face had a melancholic look as if he carried centuries of pain inside him. Although he was sitting beside me, his reticence made him distant and elusive— closed off in his world, out of my reach.

 Even if I extended my hand to comfort him, he would not have felt it.

“There must be someone who knows about it.” I said to him.

“No one here knows it.” He told me. “You, humans can experience death and have an end to your suffering, but I cannot die. If I’m fortunate enough, I’ll meet Lord in the end and ask him for death.”

“Lord?”

“The one who has created us, but it’s the only thing we know.” He answered.

“Have you seen him, The Lord?” I asked, but he shook his head. “No one has seen him.”

“Your Lord simply wants you to suffer.” I retorted and tasted bitterness in my mouth.

“He does not want us to suffer.” He denied this accusation and said, “We suffer because we want to suffer.”

“In anguish we find meaning, but in meaning we find anguish. We torment ourselves all our lives to find the meaning, but when we find the truth it pains us further. There’s no repose.”

I wrapped the arms around my knees and asked, “What meaning do we even want to find in this life?”

“Soul Searching.” He answered. “Isn’t why you’re here as well regardless of all the sufferings you had to endure?” Dylan was right. If not feeling lost and looking for something for myself, would I have wandered off this far?

He searched my face for the answer, but I questioned, “How to find this Self then?” I felt more lost than ever. I thought that all the experiences in the desert might teach me something, but they left me with more questions.

“The self isn’t something sold in the Bazar of Egypt, nor Shams Al-Tabrizi could give it to Rumi. He had to find the truth himself. You can only find it inside yourself, or perhaps look outside yourself for the answer.”

“Sometimes, I doubt that you’re one of those people.” I chuckled at him. “I even thought that you were Khidr.”

“No, I am not.” He laughed. “If I were Khidr, would I have been so lost?” He paused to look at me with saddened expressions of his and said, “The wine is not for us lowly beings to drink.”

“Is it from Rumi too?” I tried to humor him.

 “No, I made it up myself.” He flashed me a grin, and I wanted to smack him for that.

Then, his expression turned serious, and he pursed his lips in a thought and said, “I’m a mere being wandering through time who doesn’t know his end.”

“You’re no simple being.” I remarked. “Sitting in the desert under the moonlight and listening to you is comforting. You are enough—” to me, that I left unsaid.

I let out a sigh and relished in the tranquility of the night under the full moon for a while.

Humans fight for life in death, but to him, who couldn’t die, death was relief.

In that godforsaken place, I was looking for life, but he was searching for death. We, two, were indeed of different worlds.

“Would you like some tea?” He suddenly asked, and I quirked my eyebrow at him. Who would want tea in the middle of the desert? But he offered again, and I didn’t refuse him this time.

He made a fire near the lake and placed a small tin on it after filling it with the water from the lake. He prepared Tuareg tea, a desert staple made with the tea leaves, spearmint and sugar to relieve internal heat and pour me a cup of it.

I accepted the cup of tea from him, and looked into the swirling steam in a deep thought.

“You’ve been staring into the steam of your tea. Are you able to see anything?” He asked me, and I blinked at him in confusion unsure what to make of it.

“Often, truth can’t be seen if the emotions are too muddled. The answers you are looking for have been before you all along.”  I put down the cup, and turned my attention to him.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been traversing between the two world. Did you not realize that each encounter was to teach you something?”

I thought about it for a while, but failed to understand it, then, he explained it to me.

“Dukhas are the sufferings that inhibit us from achieving Nirvana. Humans go through seven dukhas of Jati-the birth, Jara-the old age, Vyadhi-the sickness, Soka- the sorrow, Marana-the death, Parideva-the lamentation and Domanassa-the despair in life which creates a cycle of samsara. Birth is the root of all sufferings, and all Dukhas stem from it. Apart from Jati, which one have you experienced during each encounter?”

He asked me again, and this time I realized the truth that I failed to see before.

From train to the woods, and all that I encountered in the desert was the manifestation of my dukhas. The soul-eaters on train and the blind ghosts in the woods were the projection of my self-loathing and sense of being lost.

However, when I fought with the blood-drainers, it showed mortal desperation in the face of death.

Okba and Aicha who died in the desert showed grief and loss that I had to bear for a lifetime. These things were simply the projection of my own repressed memories, unfilled desires and fears in the unconsciousness.

“Then…” I started, “What do those hell hounds show?”

“What do you think?” He asked, and I felt a chill ran down my spine. “Tell me, if those hounds didn’t come, wouldn’t you rather still those people were gone?”

“No, I don’t!” I objected, but I couldn’t deceive either of us even if I had lied.

“Don’t fool yourself. You wanted them dead.”

“I-I…” I was at loss of the words as the idea horrified me. However, somewhere in my heart I knew that I had wanted them dead.

“Those hounds are your destructive self.” He reiterated, and I shuddered at the thought.

Did the desert really change me, or it had been real me all along?

As I shifted on my leg to change the sitting position, I didn’t feel any pain in my side. I pressed on the stitches through the shirt to check the wound, but I noticed that it didn’t hurt as much as before.

During our conversation, I had completely forgot to ask him how did he find me in the desert.

“I had a fever and passed out near the lake. How did you find me?”

“I found you by the lake with my dagger in your hand. This thing has brought you back.”  Dylan told me that I had been out for an entire night and day, and it was difficult for him to bring my temperature down to normal.

“How did you treat me?” I inquired further out of curiosity.

“It was hard to take care of you first, but not impossible.” He spoke without looking up at me. “I have got some food on me to feed you. Besides, your injury will heal faster here.”

I remembered that his stab wound had already healed when I met him in Marrakech.

I eyed him in suspicion but said nothing. It’s already embarrassing enough that he took care of me when I was unconscious. I picked up the cup to take a sip of the tea, but it had already gone cold during our conversation, so I put it down in irritation and asked:

“You said before that it’s The Watchers who wanted to break in through the barrier, who are they?”

“I don’t know much about them either. It’s the Other Worldly Beings that threaten to intrude on Human Realm and replace humans.” He said it, but explained nothing further than that.

“What about the dagger that appeared in the human world? Would I be able to return? I asked in worry, but Dylan told me the moment I crossed over to this world, that dagger lost its power and disappeared from the world.  When I asked Dylan to explain it to me, he only told me that all things will reveal themselves in time, and I needed not to dwell on it further.

Having nothing to do, I observed Dylan’s face in the glowing fire and noticed that his features resembled those from Eastern Mediterranean regions. Suddenly, it struck me that there’s no way his name could be of Welsh origin since he was not even from our world.

“Is your name really Dylan?” I asked him about it.

“I don not have a name.” He admitted. “When I met you, I heard someone being called ‘Dylan’ so I took on his name. Later, you also started calling me Dylan, so I decided to keep it.”

“What do they call you here?”  I became curious.

 “Hadeon”, it meant The Destroyer.

I felt a sudden pang in my heart after hearing him say it. Name is the identity of a person, but Dylan had none. A person with no birth, no origin and no name was far more miserable than I was.

“What do you want me to call you?” I asked him. “Should I call you Haroush or Aaron?”

“Haroush”. He eagerly said, “I’ll call you Kandicha then.”

“You really want to name me after that She-Devil?” I was flabbergasted at his name choice.

“Aren’t you the one?” He teased with a glint in his eye. “Even that Kasim dared not harm you in the desert.” Hearing Kasim’s name made my mood go curt again, but I didn’t let it show on my face.

“It’s because of this ring.” I showed it to Dylan and brought it near to face to test him.

“Do you feel uncomfortable anywhere?” I probed, but he snickered at me. “I’m not a djinn to be wounded by it.” He swatted my hand away, and I sank back in disappointment.

“I still can’t tell who you really are.” I muttered under my breath and lay down on my back to rest. I gazed at the stars in the sky, unable to fall asleep and heard him sit next to me resuming his previous position.

“You can’t sleep, is it because of them?” He inquired, and I nodded in reply.

“Whenever I close my eyes, I see their faces. Their dead and soulless eyes accuse me of their death.” I confessed to him.

“If it’s not them, I hear Kasim telling me I should have been the one to die in their place.” That girl, Aicha, who wanted her brother to be safe, I failed to protect her too.

“He is not here.”  Dylan assured me, but paranoia is one’s worst enemy.

“Why did you not tell me before that he was not a human being?”  I confronted him about it. Until the end, I didn’t know his real identity.

“I tried to warn you, but you refused to listen.” He reminded me. “Moreover, he wouldn’t have let you go if you didn’t leave him yourself. He and You aren’t different from each other.”

“What is he then?” I questioned again, and Dylan countered with, “Don’t you know he’s your shadow that threatens to overtake you?”

“What would have happened to me if I didn’t leave?” I sat up and asked him in fret.

“You would have never gotten out of the desert and become a wandering ghost yourself.” He answered, and the fear unsettled my heart. However, the next words that I blurted out were unexpected.

“Could I have still found you?” A momentarily look of surprise flashed across his face before he said, “I would have found you.”

 I don’t why, but I felt relieved after hearing him say it.

I lay down again on my back and in the periphery, saw Dylan do the same, but he put a good distance between us for the sake of propriety and not to make me uncomfortable.

“Sleep.” He said to me, “I’m here.”

I closed my eyes and heard him sing that poem again. I listened to him with my closed as his soothing voice lulled me to sleep.

That night, I dreamt of my home and the fireflies and saw father standing in the field of reeds holding out a lantern for me.

‘Let’s go home!’ He motioned at me and led me through the fields under the moonlight as it used to be; however, after following him for a while, I lost sight of him and got lost in the fields.

“Dad?” I called out for him in the wilderness.

 I frantically looked around for him in the fields, calling out for him in desperation as tears ran down my cheeks.

I started walking through the fields in the dark to return to home by myself, but I could not go back anymore. I had forgot my way back to home