The Frozen Desert by Moein Mansoori Fard (free e books to read online TXT) 📕

Suddenly my hands tremble and my head reels. I wait for a while to recover myself. Then I curl one end of the rope, I concentrate and throw it up with the hope that it sticks somewhere on the car. But it sticks nowhere. I throw it again, but still no result. The sands don’t allow it to stick somewhere. I wait. Once in a while, the sand fall becomes weak. Everything depends on the wind and sometimes the sand fall stops completely.

For a short few seconds I get a chance and I throw it up quickly. Suddenly, a mass of the sands rush toward me with the wind blow. Where ever I look at, I see the sands which has blocked the bolt holes. I just stand and look at my killer.

Chapter 13

The hole

I am holding the rope tightly in my hands and am suspended and spinning around in the air while I shout deeply from inside. Suddenly a rod passes by my head quickly, I lose my balance, collide with the iron beam and finally I stop moving after I hit the wall of the valley.

My breast goes up and down continuously and I gulp my saliva once in a while. My body trembles and my hands are shaky. The rope slides off my hand momentarily. I swing in the air looking for an iron beam, and then I come down on one of them by a short jump. I take a rest on the beam until I can clench my fists, then I grab hold of the rope.

Slowly and sweating, while I try to be inattentive to my pains, I climb up the rope. The weather is calmer than before and the sand fall is weak. By each centimeter of ascension, I feel that a nail is stabbed in my body.

When I reach the edge, the sands rush to my face and I have to close my mouth. I cough so that I empty the sands out of my mouth and I grab the edge. But the concreted sands collapse under my hand. Again I have to grab the rope. I pull myself up with the help of the rope. The edges and the ground are loose and wobbly and once in a while, some part of them collapse. I pull myself up and open my way through the sands, which are knee-high, immediately and go toward my knapsack.

The loop of the rope caught the bumper. Again I thanks God and I take my knapsack behind the door of the car. But suddenly something stops me. The position of the rope around the bumper is rather strange. The shape of the bumper doesn’t allow the rope to loop around it. This needs more skill and mastery than a random or natural skill to loop the rope around the bumper. I should leave here soon.

The ground is too loose so that I may fall again at any moment. I remember the shelter but in this storm which nothing meets the eye, it is impossible I find it. For the time being, I should go away from here as soon as possible and then I put my plan into effect again. I have to lie on the ground again because as I go forward, more sands debar me; like the sea in which as you approach the center, it becomes deeper.

It seems a great deal of sands has flowed down to the valley again. I have not enough strength to force my way through the sands and I can’t forge forward but rather I go backward. I have to hold my hands as a shield in front of my eyes and move slouching. I feel rain drops beating on my face along with the sands.

I find myself sad. Then something smashes into my face severely insomuch that I grab my face, and my head reels under the blow for a while. I fall on the sands and flounce against the sands stream. I open my eyes and suddenly see a yellow snake creeping on the sands. I jump back by fear.

The movement of the snake is rather strange to me. After a while looking at it, I angrily take the rope, which is creeping like a snake. I don’t know why I thought that some animal may live in this desert.

I take the rope which seems has come from nowhere to save me, and pull it toward myself so that it pulls me forward too. As I go forward, I hear the cries which seem come out from the mouth of a ghost or a shadow. The cries are completely vague and hardly can be understood. Finally I approach the voice insomuch I can realize the words:

No long way left, hold out! Don’t release the rope. Not too much way left. Just some steps. Come on!

All of these words echoes through my head as if a tape is playing at a slow motion, and I see Vorarin like a ghost. If Vorarin didn’t catch me, I would fall on the ground. We push along while all of my weight is on Vorarin’s body. His words are like a whisper which echoes through my ears.

I stop with the motion of his hand which presses on my breast. He pulls out a blanket of his knapsack and pulls it over both of us. I don’t know why, but I feel that my feet are linked to the ground like the roots of a tree. I feel their weight manifold, but I push along again with the help of Vorarin. I am totally obedient to Vorarin for a while and he guides me. We walk for an unknown period of time continuously, until Vorarin tucks up the edge of the blanket. I see that we are approaching a dark thing. The air is slightly dark or I see it like this. Vorarin is completely bent under my weight and due to his little body, he is physically weak. But he moves me along by his full force. The blanket is completely wet and raindrops leak and fall on us.

Vorarin again tucks up the blanket and I see that the dark spot is the same shelter I have found. We enter and he takes me to a corner under the ceiling. Then, he crumples up the blanket and throws it aside.

You’d better take off your wet clothes while I set these bricks, otherwise your glassy clothes become ruined.

Then he begins his work. He puts and arranges the scattered bricks as a wall, at a distance of a man room from me. Then he goes toward his knapsack and pulls out a dry blanket, and he does the same with my knapsack, without asking me. Then he sits by me and removes all of his clothes except for his trousers and his shirt. His body is slender. He rises like a statue and says in wonder:

Why you didn’t take off your clothes yet?

Then he grumbles under his breath and comes to help me. He only removes my trousers, it seems he had pulled the most part of the blanket over me that my shirt is not wet. He snuggles up to me and gives me one of the blankets:

Pull it over yourself. It would be so cold tonight. We must sleep hunkered and stay close to each other to get warm.

As soon as he becomes quiet, and the air under the blanket becomes warm, I fall asleep despite of my body pains and the intensity of tiredness.

***

Zairas, get up! Zairas…

Vorarin shakes my shoulder. I open my eyes but I can’t see anything. It is like I am looking through a lens closely, everything is dim and unclear. I wink my eyelids repeatedly so that my eyes could see clear. It is dark and the moon is shining. Maybe one or two days left to full moon. I turn my head and see Vorarin sitting near me and tries to wake me up.

I look at him confused. He also stares at me and I can see the pity and compassion in his eyes which change his face. I look around like the paralytics, who can move only their eyes, to recover my memory.

Seeing the sands, which have reach in front my feet, and the walls of the shelter, I remember all last night events. I can’t believe that last night events to be real. It is Just like a dream which newly I woken up. Maybe I am still dreaming, but the pain which increases momentarily disproves it.

I bring my head out of the blanket completely, and the first thing which attracts me is the reek coming out of my mouth. The cold air enters the space under the blanket like the water through a small hole on the dam wall. I pull up the blanket again and just let my eyes to be out of it. Vorarin shows his hand to me and says:

Look this! I saw it a few minutes ago when I woke up.

I show him my disesteem for the matter by looking his hand and then again to the moon. Nothing is matter for me for a while and I just want to look at the moon. But it seems he can’t understand what I mean, or he pays no attention to it.

You know, it’s not my blood…it’s from your back. I think you’re wounded. I should have a look at it.

I know it, but I say nothing and do anything. He misunderstands my act and, while reproaches himself, he says with a sad mien:

I’m really sorry for last night. It was all my fault that it happened to you. If I hadn’t lost you maybe it wouldn’t have happened to you and you won’t have wounded. I was coming behind you and then I don’t know what happened that I lost you. I look for you so much, I call you many times. I even come here because I thought you may be here. But there was no sign of you. I went back the way to search for you more but the storm became fierce and I had to lie on the ground and wait. After a while, maybe five minutes, it seemed to me I saw someone. I got up and I reached you one way or another. I wasn’t sure it is you, yet I threw the rope and…

He cuts his words at this point, because I know the rest. I don’t deem him guilty even for one per cent, I even don’t give importance to last night events but I don’t know why I am annoyed and sad. I just planned to bring back Mansidan.

The blood stain on Vorarin’s hand denotes that maybe the wound on my back isn’t serious, but it also may not be superficial; yet, I even don’t care about my wounds. Even the moon has no luster to me. I close my eyes. Vorarin says insistently:

I don’t like to piggyback you rest of the way. I should have a look at your wound. It’s unknown how much blood you’ve lost till now.

My eyelids are heavy and I want to sleep to the end of the world. My lips just say two words:

I’m fine.

I don’t care about my wound but he shows his hand again and says:

I think you lost too much blood. I should treat it before it becomes infected. Hold on, let me help you to be in a better position.

Then he takes off his blanket. A weak shake engulfs him. The reek of his mouth increases and he rubs his hands. He has worn his clothes. He comes to me and after a pause and thinking for a while, he says:

I help you to sit in a position so that I have a look at your back. You must sit toward the small wall I made last night,