Where Is Manar?
Book Two: Sorry, Ma'am — This Body Is Not for Rent
Chapter Eight: The Weight of Waiting — Part Two
—
Two Days Earlier:
—
Dajja knew Basra.
Not the way its people knew it — but the way a hunter knows the forest he enters. The names of neighborhoods, the intersections of main streets, where the informal settlements began and where they ended. Information collected over time because the work demanded it.
He sat beside Fidda in the car.
"The area is clear. Ten minutes from here." Dajja lit a cigarette.
The car moved.
Ten minutes passed.
Fidda looked at the street. But the street ahead wasn't the right one.
"Turn back."
Dajja reversed. They tried again from the parallel street. Five minutes, and they found themselves back where they started. Dajja looked at Fidda. She took out her phone and activated the GPS.
"Again," she said.
The third time, Fidda tried to follow the map precisely: right at the signal, left at the mosque, then straight to the second street.
Right at the signal. Correct.
Left at the mosque. Correct.
Straight to the second street.
They found themselves completely outside the city, on the Abu Al-Khasib road.
The car stopped. Dajja looked at the road ahead, then at Fidda.
"I didn't turn here," he said, in the tone of a man trying to understand what just happened.
"I know," Fidda said flatly. But between her brows, a small crease had appeared where there wasn't one minutes before.
On the fourth attempt, Dajja decided to get out and walk. The car could be deceiving, but his feet knew the ground.
He walked, Fidda beside him. The street was clear, the names on the walls were clear, even the positions of the houses — everything was clear in their memory. They walked ten minutes and stopped.
They were on the street they'd started from.
Fidda moved. She didn't turn right or left. She walked straight and found herself circling. She stopped in the middle of the street, the blue tattoos on her skin pulsing in a different rhythm — as if trying to tell her something she had no name for.
"Dajja."
"Yes."
"There's a barrier."
He didn't answer immediately. He lit another cigarette and looked at the neighborhood around them. Ordinary houses, ordinary lights, ordinary sounds. No different from any other neighborhood in Basra.
"I don't see anything."
"It's not seen," Fidda said. "It's felt."
On the fifth attempt, Dajja closed his eyes. He released what the Transcended release when they want to read a place — that sense like smelling a scent that has no nose.
He found the barrier.
It wasn't a wall. It wasn't a fog. It was like a distortion — as if the entire area was wrapped in something that made the mind refuse to go toward it. Not fear, not pain; just... no. As if part of your brain quietly decided that this direction didn't exist.
He opened his eyes and looked at Fidda. "How wide?"
Fidda measured it in her way, turning her head slowly like a living compass: "About ten kilometers. In every direction. A complete circle."
Dajja sat on the curb with the quiet of a man rearranging his information. He exhaled smoke slowly: "This level of protection wasn't made by a human."
"No," Fidda agreed.
"Nor by an ordinary sorcerer."
"No."
"Then..."
He didn't finish the sentence, but Fidda understood. She looked at the distant neighborhoods behind the unseen barrier, then said in the tone of someone confirming what she'd already suspected:
"The artifact isn't in the temple. It was never there when you withdrew."
"No," Dajja said.
"It left with the Kid."
"Yes."
A silence between them. The street around them went about its daily life, indifferent to what was happening in it. Then Fidda said, in a tone that carried no anger but careful respect: "Then the artifact chose."
Dajja looked at her: "It chose."
He stubbed his cigarette on the curb and stood: "Seems he's not just a carrier. He's something else."
He walked toward the car, and before opening the door, paused for a second and looked in the direction of the barrier:
"This dog — I know him."
He said it without anger. Then got in the car and closed the door.
—
Maytham stepped out of Sami's house and closed the door behind him. He stood for a second in the alley.
The usual Basra smell: car dust, bread, the humidity of a distant gulf. He walked. His feet carried him with old muscle memory — right, left, the narrow alley behind the mosque, then under the bridge.
His mind was returning to him slowly, like a device rebooting after a forced shutdown. Maytham without his mind was just a body walking. Maytham with his mind was a problem for everyone in his path.
He felt something unlock in his head. Not pain — the opposite. As if a small monkey had been sitting in the middle of his brain, licking all the sticky residue that had been clogging his thoughts.
He stopped in front of an old house at the end of a dead-end alley. Took out a key, opened the rusted iron door, and went inside.
The room behind the door wasn't large. Low ceiling. The smell of gun oil, moisture, and time. On the left wall, a metal shelf: disassembled rifles, ammunition in clear boxes, knives arranged by length.
And in the corner, covered in grey linen cloth: the bike.
He lifted the cloth. A black mountain bike, light and muscular frame, tires for rough terrain.
"Hello, old girl."
He sat down and took out a backup phone, dialed a number saved under a triangle symbol. The phone rang. Twice. Three times.
"Hello."
"It's me."
A short pause. Then: "It's been a while, friend. Thought you disappeared."
"I did disappear. I need merchandise."
"What do you want?"
"A launcher. Mounts on a rifle. M203 if you have it."
A longer pause, then a dry laugh: "Big talk, Maytham. When?"
"Soonest."
"Day and a half. Big merchandise takes time."
"I'll wait."
"You know the old warehouse by the fertilizer factory in Abu Al-Khasib?"
"I know it."
"Day and a half. Noon."
He hung up. Looked at the bike. Somewhere behind his ears, a light pulse — not pain, but not normal. Like an alarm ringing at low frequency. He ignored it. He had enough ahead.
Behind the plastic "Bismillah" plaque was the hole in the wall.
He took out what was inside: money, an extra pistol, a ring-handled knife. He put everything in place.
—
Regular bullets hadn't scratched Dajja. Movies said silver. I don't fully believe movies, but I don't have a better theory.
I found the shop in a narrow alley behind the old Al-Ashar market. A silversmith who didn't ask too many questions. I put the magazine on the counter.
"I want these bullets coated in silver. Real silver."
A short silence. Then: "This isn't a silversmith's work."
"I know. But you can do it."
I sat an hour and a half while he worked in silence. When he finished, he put the magazine in front of me. The bullets had a muted, quiet shine. I thought to myself: Perfect. This is exactly what I need.
—
The day and a half passed.
I was drinking heavy tea, watching the alley. Dajja hadn't appeared — that was troubling. When Dajja disappears it doesn't mean he's gone. It means he's thinking.
Noon.
The winter sun over Basra is an apologetic sun. I took the bike and headed toward Abu Al-Khasib.
The warehouse was as described: an old building beside a half-abandoned fertilizer factory. I knocked three times, paused, then once. The door opened. A short man with a thick moustache.
"Come in."
Abu Radi was behind his table, his hand over something covered in brown cloth.
"Maytham." He greeted me with only the name.
"Abu Radi." I gestured with my chin.
He lifted the cloth. The M4 was there. Clean. The M203 mounted underneath with precision, as if they'd been made together. Gleaming like new. Two boxes: the first held ten 40mm grenades. The second held four offensive hand grenades.
I took out a bundle of dollars and tossed it to Abu Radi. With professional speed, I began loading the grenades into my vest. Ten 40mm rounds — I could feel their weight on my chest, as if I was carrying my own death. The four hand grenades on my legs? They were my early retirement plan in case things went badly.
Then I heard the front door. It wasn't knocked. It was breached.
Dajja entered the way he always entered — as if doors were made for other people. Sunglasses on a cloudy winter afternoon, because logic doesn't apply to someone who transforms into a wolf. That heavy step the ground knows before the ear hears it.
He looked at Maytham and smiled — that small smile he doesn't want you to see. But you always see it.
Then she entered.
Maytham saw her for the first time.
Tall in a way that didn't make you feel small — more that the proportions of the room had shifted. Black panther-skin armor covering her shoulders and chest, the hide of an animal that seemed to have chosen its wearer, not the other way around. Her black hair braided with silver threads that gleamed in the dim afternoon light. Her arms bare from the armor, with thin lines that looked like cracks in skin — tattoos sleeping beneath the surface, not glowing in daylight but there.
Her face.
Not a beauty that reassured you. Not the kind that invited you closer — the kind that made the smart part of you take one step back. A nose and mouth and cheekbones in proportions that made you think something behind this face was permitting you to look at it.
And the scar above her left brow — a fine old line that didn't disfigure. It placed a signature. As if the whole face had been saying a long sentence, and the scar was the final period that made everything before it legible.
She looked directly at Maytham — the calm of someone who has no need to raise their voice, because what they carry is enough.
Maytham thought to himself: "Tsk."
Dajja saw that look and gave his small irritating laugh:
"Maytham... this is Fidda."
Maytham didn't answer.
"My partner..." Dajja added in a mocking tone, "...in the hunt."
Fidda said nothing. Just looked at him in that way that made silence heavier than any word. Dajja walked toward him with his usual irritating slowness, took out a cigarette and lit it as if the warehouse was his, the air was his, and Maytham was just an unwelcome tenant.
He looked at Abu Radi.
"Sorry, Maytham. Work is work."
Dajja stepped forward with his swagger.
"It's been a while, Maytham."
"It has."
"I was asking about you..." Dajja exhaled smoke with cold composure, his eyes moving over the M4 and the grenade-loaded vest:
"Maytham — are you planning to retake Jerusalem, or just blow up the alley?"
"Basra first. Jerusalem? Iran's working on that."
I was asking about myself too. I tightened my grip on the weapon.
—
— End of Chapter Eight —