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

Then he takes my blanket off. I gasp and my mouth remains open. All of My hair stand on end. I feel like I take a shower outdoor in winter. The air brings us the chill caused by the water on the ground. It is too cold so that my body becomes numb. When Vorrarin sees I am trembling, gives me my trousers, which is dry now, and says:

Put it on for the nonce. You have to tolerate till I finish my job.

My trousers is too cold so that I’d rather not to pull it on. I close my eyes, gnash my teeth and pull my trousers up quickly. Maybe it wouldn’t sting and ache this much if I sat on glowing coals; it is like I pull on a trousers of ice.

After a slight hesitation, he takes my hands and separates me from the wall. All of my bones make cracking sound and if he leaves me alone I can’t hold myself up, and this way, I would feel thousand knives are thrust into my body and hundred sledgehammers are pounding on my breast. So, when he hears my shout, he doesn’t move me and ask me frightened:

What happened? Are you ok?

He receives no reply from me. I grab the wall with my hands and hold myself up. Then I bend forward. Now I realize that why he made this small wall. The sands stopped in the back of the wall. If this wall wasn’t there, we would sink half high.

I feel a breath taking burning on my back, and I find out he is taking my shirt out of my body. It is stuck to my body with dried blood. As he says, my back is thoroughly red. He gives a deep sigh when he pulls up my shirt half, and then he stops.

Your back is wounded seriously. Almost up from your shoulder to down on your back is ripped by something sharp. It’s not a deep wound but it needs some stitches.

Then he leaves me and spreads his own blanket on the ground.

You should lie on it so I could stich it.

I lie prostrate on the blanket without his help. I feel a hot spear is thrust into my body little by little. My breast frizzles like a fish in the hot pan. I try to reduce my pain with holding my breath.

He brings his outfits out of knapsack and set them near me. He cleans the blood out of my back and I feel a cold liquid on my back. He starts stitching and breathes a sigh of revulsion once in a while. My body is too numb so that I feel the tip of the needle on my back only every few seconds.

He stitches so fast and finishes his job quickly so that I don’t notice when he holds my shirt in front of me. I reach out my hand to take my shirt but he suddenly pulls his hand back and says perplexedly:

What happened to your breast?

His words makes me bend my head down and I see the bruises on my breast caused by the two edges of the iron beam. Now I realize its reason. Vorarin sits on his legs and examines my breast with his soft hands. Then he frowns and says:

It’s too bad. Some of your ribs may be broken. What happened to you last night? Tell something. You haven’t talked at all since you woke up.

I take my shirt from him and put it on slowly. Then I rise with the help of the wall and he also comes to help me. I take my raincoat but he stops me and says:

Hold on, you should rest.

Then he pauses for a while. He pretends a pitiful face. He challenges with himself. I can see in his face that he finds himself guilty. I don’t know what mien I exhibit that he recedes one step.

Forget it, you’re not guilty. We should move otherwise we’ll meet day. I’m not fine.

He shakes his head to show his agreement. Then he gets ready to go. So I take my knapsack and wend my way.

You should eat something. You seem too weak. Your face is pale. It’s because of the blood you’ve lost. I’m too hungry.

I reply him lifelessly:

We haven’t time. We’ll eat while walking.

Why you’re so in hurry?

I must find Mansidan.

I gasp when I step out. I can’t believe such a difference between the temperatures in and out of the shelter. I bring the edges of my raincoat together and Vorarin intertwines his hands.

The wind pours the chill of the wet sands on our faces and then goes on its way. The ground is muddy in some parts and the water has pressed the sands together. When we move and go far away from the shelter, Vorarin says:

It’s too cold!

His red face and the reek which is coming out from his mouth prove this. The sands are the snow of our mountains. The difference is in their physicality and just the snow appears here differently. Its chill is the same. Vorarin winds the blanket around his body and proceeds. I do the same as he does and go along with him.

I thanks God the wind blows from behind, yet it makes us tremble. The sound of Vorarin’s gnashing is louder than mine. We move ahead slouchy. I am floating in my thoughts. Vorarine stares at me, and I leer at him. He offers me a canned food:

You should eat it, you have lost much blood. I can’t realize how you still are alive. How you can walk with such condition?

I take the can.

We’d better talk to get warm. Silence is painful, I mean I hate it.

My idea is different as chalk and cheese. In my opinion, silence is soothing, especially when it is linked with a thought. When I do think, the distance of my way seems shorter than one minute. Maybe he means something else. I take my fork, which its handle is bent, out of my knapsack.

I’m all ears to hear what happened to you.

I tell him the events in some short sentences and he forgets to eat his food while I am talking.

Did you weather these happenings? It’s too hard to understand, I mean it’s unbelievable.

Then he ponders, yet I change the subject and I say:

Which way we should go?

He puts his fork in the half-eaten can and takes out the map:

If we are still in that road, we shouldn’t be so far from there, unless we are walking in the wrong way. Yet, I could see the road few seconds ago, but not now.

There is no sign of the road. It is faded completely by the storm few hours ago. Vorarin suddenly stops reading the map and says:

There’s another way. We can find our way using the stars, but I don’t know anything about them.

I also shake my head to show that I don’t know too.

We’d better mark these two stars lest we lose our way.

Then he points at the two stars, which one is above his left shoulder and the other is above his right shoulder, in the sky. So we go that way. Time passes in silence for a while, then he throws his empty can toward the hungry desert and says:

I hadn’t seen a calamity worse than this. Killing this many people, what for?

I stare at him. I see so many differences between me and him; he probably is one or two years younger than me.

I don’t know… I don’t know at all.

It shouldn’t …

He finishes his words with scream and shout. I turn to him so fast insomuch my breast and back ache. He is not there as if a thunder destroyed him or the earth absorbed him and nothing remained of him.

Chapter 14

The ghost town

I look at his footprint to find where it is faded. Since I was walking about three steps behind him, I go there cautiously. I see a big hole under the moon light, which has engulfed a wide region in absolute darkness. It has a sharp incline, yet it is possible to go down. I search around to find the better way.

Then I realize that it is not just a hole and as I go on its mouth becomes wider. I back to my first place and call him several times but he doesn’t reply. It seems that the hole is created by the sands. Cannot call it the hole, but should call it the valley. I have no other recourse but to go down.

I plunge my feet into the sands slowly lest I fall down. Vorarin slipping track on sands is visible. I go down slowly plunging my feet into the sands. As I approach the depth of the valley, its slope reduces to the point that I can walk easily. After coming down a rather long steep path I walk on the level ground.

The ground under my feet is hardpan. Then I see the pavement which has more cracks than a dry desert and as far as I can see a part of the pavement is thoroughly damaged. I see Vorarin’s footprint on the sands. He has gone toward one of two buildings on the right hand.

The electricity posts are bent as if they genuflect to someone, and the remnants of their wires are wriggling on the ground by the wind. Many of them have no wire. There is a broad boulevard which has made a gap between the buildings. There are some small and high buildings on the both sides and they seem to me as the black giants from afar. The buildings with no door and window, with collapsed walls and without ceiling; the iron beams which emerged from the buildings like the broken bones. I can also see only the frames and skeleton of some buildings.

A fog of darkness has nested in the town and made it like a ghost town. I see the shadows from a distance which make me tremble with the howling wind. The signboards of the buildings are swinging and doors open and close continuously. I can hear scream and shout from inside of the buildings. Some cars have covered the road surface irregularly. The sign of burning can be seen on some of them, and some other have lost their color by lapse of time and nothing remained but some pieces of rusted metal.

I call Vorarin several times but I hear no reply. Then I hear a footstep which its direction is indistinguishable. I go toward the right side from the middle of the road unconsciously and then I bend down behind a burned car.

The ashes represent the darkness and fix unluckiness of the town in my mind. Something says me I cannot get out of here easily. It is like a fault is under my fate.

I look around to hold some aces in case of danger and to get the chance. I wait for a while but nothing appears. Darkness has made everything the same color. I decide to enter the first building but it sank into the sands and just a small part of it is apparent. I go toward the second building slowly and cautiously and enter it through a window. The sands have surrounded the town like the flood and make advance every day. The outskirts of the town also are surrounded by stone hills. Although the stone hills stand against the sands like a dam, the rush of the sands is madly and nearly overflow.

The sands could enter these buildings, the surface of this building is also full of sands, a big hole is apparent on a wall and half of the inner part of the building is thoroughly destroyed. There are just some broken tables, the rusted cabinets, broken glass on the floor, a sand dune in the middle of the hall, a burning sign in the corner of the hall and half burned woods. The