Sudan is Omdurman. In life, there are pitfalls, like the slopes of a torrent, which can suddenly sweep your feet out from under you. It does the same for them as a torrent does to the slope. Yes, here in Omdurman, near Mar Gerges Church in the Al-Masalama Coptic neighborhood. Yes, for some hidden reason, and unaware of his concerns, Sam’an woke up at about 4:00 a.m. on Saturday, April 15, 20__. The throbbing of his right eyeball and the stillness of the world roused him. He felt a sense of confusion and was taken aback. His good left eye opened. It was small and weak, whereas his right eye throbbed with its congealed blood, oozing and pulsating like the neck of a cockerel, which oozes and throbs. For a while, dawn broke—ambiguous, mysterious, black, and shadowy—turning into complete darkness, like blindness that forcefully engulfed Sam’an’s dilapidated room.

The dirty panes were silent, the thorn-leaved blankets were silent, and Sam’an, in his silent existence, listened to the beating of the night—his mind, his heart, and his veins. There were shadowy voices calling him from a distant depth. He tossed in his sleep, wiped his mouth, and heaved a deep sigh. Then he let out a noisy snore: “Akh… shookh! Shookh!” He moved and turned, breathing heavily. He was dreaming in that old, unstable bed, in a state between waking and sleeping. He saw his wife roaming in a dusty cloud, and his children scattered in small yellowish clouds. As for his colleagues at his last job, which he lost only yesterday, he could not remember where they were. He became more awake than asleep.

Sam’an snored twice, thrice. The dream squeezed him tightly. He ought to do his best to flee from that uneasy presence. There he was, floating amid the clouds, unable to move his arms, struggling not to be caught by the vapors. For a while, he lost consciousness. He was neither dreaming, deeply asleep, nor fully awake. He was in between three states.

Then, from the depth of all depths, from somewhere in his soul came a howling and wailing song. It rooted itself in his consciousness and caught him with a pointed hook. The song spun around his mind like a phonograph, turning violently under his skull. Ah, yes, it was an old song. “Oh Time” by the Sudanese singer Ibrahim Awad. How intimately he loved that amazing radio he bought 16 years ago…

On the old bed, the huddled figure of Sam’an—who had lost his job yesterday—looked like a passing statue, full of lines and circles. His insides had been torn to shreds by poverty, confusion, deprivation, and resentment. He murmured in his sleep, “Amazing, that Philips radio. Amazing!” The arteries in his brain trembled. His face shook, and he returned to one of those states. He needed to regain his consciousness, to save his wife, to save his children. He continued to roam in that nightmare and fantasy, wandering with his right eye, his sanguine eyeball.

He then felt a hand below, touching his face. A face! It was Effat, lying beside him, and between them lay two pieces of flesh: the twins, Antonius and Samuel, who had been born two months ago.

The day she gave him the news that she was pregnant, she asked him in bewilderment, “How can I bear a child? Can’t you see I’m an old woman, Sam’an?”

But then she began to ask God for forgiveness and repentance. Raising her hands to heaven, she prayed, “If I am able to give birth, may God take care of the fetus and bring him safely into the world.” She then recited the holy verse from Proverbs: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” Afterward, she said to herself, “Woe to me! Shall I bear a child while I am an old woman? And here is my husband, an old man?”

He replied to her, “We have five children; it will do no harm to have a sixth. Our livelihood is in the hands of God.”

However, she gave birth to twins, raising their number of children to seven. The eldest was 12 years old. Yes, Sam’an married late. He was fifty-one when he married, and no woman in the village would have him. Besides his poverty, he was one-eyed and unattractive. But Effat, a spinster, came to the neighborhood with her parents, and when she married him, she was forty-three.

One evening, they met Peter the grocers. He stared at her with his left eye, and she smiled. They had many dates. Love blossomed in their hearts, flourishing after being locked away in desperate and miserable jars. He complained to her about being tired of work, tired of life, and how bouts of exhaustion and illness had started to make his body suffer. His body no longer allowed him rest. He complained about the sleepless nights he suffered through daily, how he woke up each morning with extreme difficulty, harder than when he used to come home from a grueling day of work.

Understanding grew between the couples. Effat spoke with sympathy mixed with desire; she still had a burning passion for life in her heart, which streamed through her every day. She told him stories about her life that helped him forget his own worries. Sam’an started to laugh with life. One evening, during their courting time, he whispered to her, “I intend to get married.” She covered her mouth and said, “You are most welcome–”

He tossed in his bed, holding the body of Antonius, feeling the head of Samuel… Thank God… he was awake. He moved his hand over Effat’s face, which responded in kind. He felt it: cold, wet, prickly hairs. He was eager to get closer to her tired legs, so that her fully flowing arteries would transport her eager blood to them, igniting ecstasy. It made her body heavy, as though carried by leaping brooks. Her chest was full of intoxicating human happiness.

Silence. Then Sam’an began to remember the night before when Effat had eased the bitterness of losing his job. She fed him, and he drank half a bottle of araq, a liquor made from dates. He truly enjoyed the delicious food, the tasty drinks, and the warmth of his wife, with her hair tickling his body. Afterward, there was comfort and rest in this pale, warlike dawn of April. Then he woke up, yawning heavily and slowly. For a moment, he enjoyed the song “Oh Time” and felt captivated by Ibrahim Awad’s voice:

Oh time, stop for a while,
And give me some happy moments.

 Silence reigned, even more terrible and frightening. And what is silence? It is the sound of an eardrum being muffled. It is the fading chirp of crickets in spider webs, the sound of a visible memory blowing itself out and dying away. Silence is the moment that lasts an eternity. It is the sound of despair, of creatures proclaiming their existence and their surrender to nothingness.

In the next two minutes, dawn broke. It overflowed with a crimson, blood-like colour, filling the room. It was a dawn that had disbanded in the fearful, hazy air, soon filled with horrors. It engulfed the sleeping bodies, wrapping them in its shroud. It wrapped them gloomily, reaching their ears and seeping into their brains. It engulfed them, infiltrating them, searching for the vaults of their dreams. The dawn engaged them and began to toy with them, stretching them and laughing at them with a horrendous laugh. The blood throbbed in his sanguine eyeball; its fluid congealed by the extremely cold air in the room. That dawn was disturbed by violet waves, which soon turned red, radiating in their presence, force, and life. It continued to flow in an exhale full of conceit into Saman’s pulsating liver. How painful it was, that horrible liver! For a moment, it was refreshing with an intuitive feeling. Then, the man was fully awake.

He looked down with his good eye at the old blankets that covered the bodies of his children, who embraced each other for warmth. He smiled a little. Then he started thinking about the workplace from which he had been sacked the previous day at noon. He swore, his voice loud enough to be heard: “I was struggling with dreaming, and now I’m struggling with anxiety, fear, and apparitions. I struggled with the wind and poisons, using my own hands to dry the leather. I used to cut that leather with a knife; then I dyed it. I used to pierce it and even pierce my own palms with needles. I made thousands of pairs of shoes. I grew more and more miserable, while the boss’s pockets—Philmon the cobbler’s—filled with shiny pounds. Oh, indeed, I covered the feet of the world for many long years, protecting them from the harm of the earth. But Philmon the cobbler sacked me after turning from the boss of a shop and workshop into the owner of a factory. He exhausted me and then fired me after I served him in his new glamorous factory for only three months. His reason? He said I was unable to operate the machines. He screamed in my face: Sam’an! The age of the scalper has passed. The age of using knives is finished, and so is the age of using needles. The age of stitching is over. I am now the owner of a factory. Do you understand?’”

With a deep sigh of regret, Sam’an muttered, “Ah… for three months, I had to stand before a damn machine. I was the one who used to bend my back to make a pair of shoes. I used to sit on a low stool, lowering my head and face to be close to my dirty lap, which was full of leather and glue.
I said to him, ‘Boss Philmon, my back is hurting, and I am trying to learn here.’ I reminded him of the long history of my service, which earned him plenty of money, but he did not heed it.
Sam’an murmured, Philmon cares only about his pounds. Ah, how many times I thought him to be a good man! For decades, I believed that he was a good man who would help me earn my living. It seemed to me… I guess… No, certainly I did not understand people… I did not understand life.’”

 He sighed and exhaled. “In any case, I earned my living for myself and my family… Damn him, that greedy Philmon! I hope the factory collapses on you, cursed Philmon.”

Sam’an remembered how he had burst out in a fit of anger, one episode after another, one outburst following another, until he lost control, and his words became jumbled, unintelligible. He shouted, “Damn you, Boss Philmon.” Then he calmed down, feeling giddy, and the giddiness almost reached his right sanguine eyeball. Then the voice of Ibrahim Awad came back to him:

Oh time, stop for a while,
And give me happy moments,
Then remove my youth, remove my eyes…

He exhaled again, his mind consumed by the sacking incident, becoming obsessed with it. He thought of his colleagues, who had dedicated most of their lives to work. Work! That frightening, cold, and horrible animal! All his colleagues had shared the same feeling, though with variations on the same theme, the same melody, or the same tune. He sighed. That wild struggle that had taken place yesterday, that crazy yesterday with Boss Philmon, could not be resolved. They brawled, using their bare hands. How painful that had been. It was a kind of lunacy—two men who had known each other for more than thirty years, one of them hitting the other, boxing him, and dragging him on the ground.

In the months before the factory opened, and for the first time in his life, Boss Philmon began giving coins to children, offering bread and meat to the locals. He asked them to forget him as a cobbler. Yes, he wanted to become Businessman Philmon, the owner of the factory. The word ‘cobbler’ was no longer appropriate in his eyes.

“Ha… ha,” Sam’an laughed bitterly. Then Philmon’s smile vanished, leaving only the concept of work. Work stood in front of him, naked, engulfed by the fearful air of April, with its sharp shades on the runway of dawn, visible through the glass panes of the small window.

He sighed three times before stretching out his right hand to reach for his pipe on the little coffee table with the broken leg. He filled his fist with cheap tobacco, bought from Jorge Mashraqi’s store, and stuffed it into his briar pipe. He took the matchbox and noticed that it had only two matches left. He struck one against the box, inhaling the smoke deeply before exhaling. He cupped his hands around the belly of the pipe to feel some warmth in the dusty, cold dawn. Still, he shook from the cold air of the coming tense, bellicose day that began to seep into the room. He murmured to himself, “Yes, it will be a cold, very cold day; but who am I to complain?”

Suddenly, he heard a bullet ricochet, its stinging fragments striking the brick walls of the room. The air of April was whistling, throwing its bitterly cold snow against the brick walls and the two thin windowpanes. For a second, he felt a cramp inside his liver, then in his stomach, his small intestines, large intestines, and his colon. He was about to lose control of his bowels, but he managed to hold himself in check. At the same time, Antonius cried, then Samuel did. He caressed them both, and they went back to their deep sleep. Effat, however, was tossing and murmuring in her sleep with unintelligible words, though one could be discerned: “The song. The song.” Silence prevailed.

But silence did not mean stillness! It was that mysterious thing! That thing is full of hidden thorns, muffled noise, and apprehension. He stared at the concrete ceiling. The twins, Antonius and Samuel, laughed in their sleep, and he enjoyed their laughter. He relaxed. He drew some puffs from his pipe, which was no longer lit. He smiled in relief. He looked around, surprised by the strange feeling that the familiar life he had lived was an illusion. Everything felt unreal, like an unpleasant, distressing dream full of longing. That life! That dream! That unreal reality that ascended in cylindrical smoke, like a whirlwind, one puff after another!

Something mysterious, like an itch, consumed Sam’an’s body and soul. He smiled broadly, then laughed to himself, “Haha.” How? Where did all these thoughts come from? His train of thought continued, quickly attracting the attention of his family, his room, and his hopes. With hope came fear. Something inside him asked: Isn’t it possible to breathe air—the air of God—without that controlling fear, the fear that reduces the worry of unemployment and the terror of poverty which Mr. Boss Philmon has created? Philmon and work? Failure meant losing everything you own. And what do we own? Very little, probably nothing. Obedience to him meant suffocation and choking. “Oh, my dearest God, lead me to the straight path.”

At exactly ten minutes past four in the morning, there was a little crackle from the cracked ceiling, which soon became louder, turning into the echo of ascending friction. His eyes followed the paths of the cracks drawn on the concrete ceiling. He could only hear their cracking. Then, the table in the kitchen, blackened by smoke, shook. It was the table he had bought twenty years ago. It leaned on bricks that were supporting the thick beams. It shook for a moment. The worried cooking pots and the old oven on the table trembled. He was upset, but at the same time, he remembered the voice of Ibrahim Awad repeatedly:

Oh time, stop for a while,
And give me happy moments.
Then remove my youth, remove my eyes…

At that very second, the posters of the bed trembled. Was it suffering from vertigo, or was it a sign of fainting? He wondered: Is this part of my dream? My dawn’s dream? Perhaps it’s the pre-dawn dream? Antonius and Samuel screamed. Effat tossed in her sleep, and under the blankets, he could only hear faint, low screams. He put the pipe on the coffee table, cracked his fingers, then cracked the bones in his neck. The ceiling shook twice! He raised both hands and sat up on the old bed, then looked up wildly. At sixteen minutes past, he heard an explosion—a tank bomb. He screamed: “No!”

The children pushed the blankets from their faces, startled. Effat woke up, frightened, and started screaming. Antonius screamed, and Samuel did too. Their throats were filled with cries, which they tried to release but couldn’t.

A moment or two passed, and they found themselves in a scene frozen with tense fear. Then, the earth took over their world. The room trembled violently, and its buttressed columns exploded with a loud thump, like the shot of an old cannon. Then, in a moment that seemed to last forever, the earth threw its innards into the air, leaving behind a deep crack.

Sam’an shrieked in a voice full of excruciating pain, “Effat! What is happening? Ahh, ahh, oh, ahhh…our children…”

In a second Sam’an ‘s room changed in an agonizingly painful manner. Another moment passed and the children who were half-covered with blankets were flying in the air as if they were explosives. Panic jumped onto them with the crazy vein cracking of the walls. The floor tiles along with the beams turned into constant solid waves with flying fragments breaking off from them. They crashed with a loud rattle and crushed them inside the earth; they were united in a deadly bond.

“Death!” Effat screamed; then she released another sharp long scream that tore the heart of the universe, “no. No. No. We will not die.”

Terror was roaring. The horror was widespread. Dust was all over the place. In the dust Effat’s hands roamed and her palms rose praying. Sam’an tried to hold her but the cracked ground below his feet swayed. The concrete that held the beams rattled during the aftershocks. The cooking pots and oven flew through the air. Grey concrete was scattered in the form of dust from the collapsed ceiling; it was surrounding the bodies and wrapping them completely like a shroud.

Chaos created its own world; it was a room full of fear and pain. Antonius and Samuel sobbed. The rest of the children cried. Effat wept. Sam’an was thinking of how to rescue them…how to provide salvation for his family, for the people he loved, for the people which God would be asking him about on the Day of Judgement. But a thick smoke was coming off his mind and filling it. The strong well-built body – which spent its joyful nights with Effat, the body that was complete in its limitless natural capabilities – that body flew into the vacuum of the room like a bag made of air! Like a piece of paper! Like a plastic sheet! A valueless object amid the remains of the ceiling. Nature turned at that moment into avenging evil that crushed flesh and frail bones with its powerful force.

The earthquaking dust of the dawn war wiped the universe. Existence with its weakened resistance was twisted. Therefore, Sam’an himself was thrown in the air in no direction and with no aim; he went like a bullet among the cylindrical dust storms. He was stabbed by the iron bars in the ceiling.

 

 

Sam’an landed in a standing position with his red swollen face pressed against the building material, and close to the dust. His palms opened and closed holding thin pieces of iron bars. They were bars with thin fine solid cylindrical shapes. Effat was thrown away from the room; she rose and fell from a height of 99 meters and landed in the middle of the street. Still, she was writhing like a snake.

His eleven-year-old son, whose name was Shawkat, showed no response when the walls were closing on him. He did not move; he just lowered his head. After one single minute he was hanging in the air, with his chin close to his chest, and his eyes were torn and moved out from their sockets; green froth came out of his mouth in the form of bubbles, while his body was cramped dangling from his arms, crushed by a falling wall.

As for Mervat, who was about one year younger than him, a bar of 7 by 5 cm had pierced her body. When Antonius lifted his angel face, the sharp edge of a brick met him and cut part of his skull; and when Samuel voiced a scream of loss, another brick did what it had done to his twin brother Samuel. As for the remaining three children, Layla, Hamet and Foad, they all flew quietly in the dust of the earthquake. Blood was flowing from their limbs. Sam’an shouted ” Oh Jesus. Oh God. Oh Mary. During that time the song filled the whole space:

Oh time, stop for a while.

And give me some happy moments.

Sam’an’s sanguine eyeball throbbed like a cockerel’s throat. The frozen blood inside the eye started to stream. His liver trembled a few times, then it was compressed. His lungs were stabbed. When he tried to breathe, pain started to choke him till it knocked him almost unconscious. The air was charged and changing between life and the screams and calls that were mixed with moans and the earth. His liver was burning with one thousand fires.

He was unable to see or even breathe, that would enable him to scream. Then he woke up out of panic, out of terror and horror. His liver turned into a bloody stream flowing, warm and thick, clutching with the core of his existence and turning him the way, raw meat would be turned over. It flew like a ray that washed his face and blocked his nose, mouth, and eyes. His liver changed into pus that pumped into his face and made his moustache frowzy with its bloody green colour. That soon moved to seep into every cell in his body. His right hand moved to his face and wiped that substance which turned into jelly: his liver.

A moan that broke one’s heart was going around him; it was not far from him. He wiped his eyes with sorrow, lying unconscious. What was he? Which kind of dream was he dreaming? Perhaps he would not wake up in time to go to work in the new factory, the factory of Philmon the cobbler who would not want to be described: Philmon the cobbler! But Philmon did sack him from the factory. He was unemployed… He had no job… What was going to happen then? But how strange that was! His stomach was beating and hitting him, his chest was burning; he saw nothing but pieces of his liver with its faded bloody green colour. His left good eye was totally disoriented, and his blind right eye was throbbing. He was reduced to his good eye which was straining to see its pupils moving. There was some moaning close to his face… There were voices calling him from a distance. The voices of his family…Akh.

Yes! He was flying in the air and falling! The children were scattered in space, in the vacuum, in the mysterious war of this enigmatic universe. No one was able to locate them. He ought to do his best to wake up from that dream. He was roaming under the feeling of horror, unable to lift his head and get some air. He should regain his consciousness to save Effat and his children. He started to roam in his consciousness, roaming with one eye, his left eye. He gasped and was choking for a breath of air. The pus of his liver stopped. The blood streamed. He swallowed that crimson fluid. Dust wrapped him like a shroud.

He shrieked, “Save my wife and children. Save them. They are flying in space.”

He screamed and screamed, then stopped because he was exhausted; his testicles shrank because a bar went through them, and they started to send a chilling feeling to his spine. He screamed and his screams were full of ambiguity. “Save me… save my family…my injury is severe…their injuries are severe… You can still save me; you can still save us. Save us before it is too late.”

But his screams could only reach his own ears. He fell into the crack made by the war. The war started to swallow him… The earth swallowed him up to his chin. Terror snatched his unconsciousness. He thought, in a few moments the grave would close on it. If only I could breathe, they would have certainly got me. Then his face was covered quickly, and his flesh surrendered to the sharp cutting edges of solid stones in the crack which became a fissure. His lungs screamed, “Air. Air. Air.” One tear came rolling down from his eye, the left eye. The inside of the earth opened with new liver-like redness that covered forcefully his frail, broken and crushed bones. The remains of the liver were scattered at the bottom of the crevice; they scattered in a forceful, distorted, and horrible manner. Out of terror, Sam’an was literally poured forth as if he were heavy rubble. He was surrounded by that terrifying crevice which wrapped him morosely like a shroud, then took him down further; it started to stretch him, then it was making that nasty laughter. But his consciousness was still fluttering like burning coal amid the ashes! He could not die this way, and leave his family unprotected or unsupported. He was responsible for that family, and he could not leave them in that strange shape. He ought to survive. In his life there was also the life of his family. He needed to find a new job away from Philmon the Cobbler.

Yes, Sam’an did not want to die. He wanted to live, to work. But he was falling into a terrible crack! That could not be the answer to his life! His fingers slipped over some sharp bones and dived into a gluey mass, sticky with thick fibers that landed on his fingers like wet pieces of dark dates: Whose body was that he wondered? The dusty light of the earthquake came and gave power to his sight. He shrieked in his own mind, this is Effat! This is Effat. He then shouted, “No.”

Hysteria opened a hole in his consciousness. An iron bar settled in Effat’s chest while her right hand was clasping two horrible human masks: Antinus and Samuel. He then noticed the corpse of his eldest son, Shawkat. It was pulsating and trembling: a corpse with no face.  He murmured in a way that was hard to understand. Then he held the face with no body! With no head! It was the face of his second son, Foad! He released a sharp scream that tore the curtain of his consciousness, but it did not reach Foad’s ears, who was born deaf and dumb. He opened his fingers and the face with no body or head fell and got stuck to his own face, while blood was flowing from everywhere; it was pulsating and throbbing. It was moving faster and faster.

He remained stuck to his unconsciousness with trembling sobs. The hard dawn earthquake dust, which was senseless, hardening quickly and shrinking to a density that was of one strong texture, that was pressured by feeling, leaving it numb and stoney, with no substance. What was left miraculously was his live consciousness. He felt pain and hummed; can this be death? How strangely clear is this. I see nothing and feel nothing. I no longer have a body or feeling. My mind talks like never before. Am I still Sam’an? Or am I not? But I am Sam’an . Can it be that I am in the Hereafter? I have never been to the hereafter I only know this world, the world of struggle, labour and…and shoes. The world of my wife Effat who agreed to marry me, despite my blind eye, despite my poverty, despite my ugliness… The world of my children.

Oh, my God! Where do I start in this new world? Where will I find a new job? Where and how can I move forward? Why? I only remember a confusing life, disappointing in its harshness in every way. The pain was constantly present. Fear was always there, fear of mistreatment, mistreatment of people and the thoughts that I was never able to understand, laws, religious leaders, police, heads of states, colourful flags fluttering above government buildings. I did not hurt any of these things. But what did I do in my life? My life…my own life! Yes, my own life, the life of Sam’an.  no other life but my life…my life… the life of Sam’an …

This is clear! I was born hungry and remained deprived for life; I married and had children; but I did not steal or kill anyone. I believe in God and in Jesus and the Holy Ghost, I believe in Mary the Virgin I believe in the homeland, but I never knew the taste of life that I wanted in my heart. There was always the arm of Boss Philmon raised over me to reprimand me. What did I not do for him? I never wanted him to do any hard work for me. I was the one who worked hard. I worked hard for him. I paid him in blood, in flesh and in bones. There he was! He built a factory full of machines. There he was sacking me from my job. But Effat did not get angry! She offered me dinner and araq. But I became unemployed. How would my children eat?”

The war exploded violently, and Sam’an was furious in bouts, one after the other, till he lost control of himself, and his words became a mixture of chaotic and inaudible talk that made no sense. He shouted, “Damn you, Boss Philmon.” Then he calmed down because of a vertigo that hit him. The old song returned but its lyrics were muddled up in echoes and continued to move in space:

               Oh time, stop for a whileAnd give me happy momentsThen remove my youth, remove my eyes…

 

Sam’an was busy with that long life, a life eaten up by work, consumed by misery. His breathing was still labored, and there he was with no air! Still, his mind was talking, talking in a loud roaring, thundering voice. It was continuous thunder that never took a break or stopped. His crushed bones thought. His torn flesh thought and his dropping blood thought. My mind is the one that is breathing, breathing in a pure manner. Wait, there’s a terrible mistake! A cruel crime! The world is not good and sound… Philmon is a killer. A killer. A thief. Philmon hurt me and my family. He robbed me of my life; I was always having that feeling. Yes. Yes. Yes. He deceived me for more than thirty years, then he poisoned my very existence with fear and work. He scared me all the time. But there I was saying to him you would not be able to take my life. I want to live. I want to live my life. Yes, I admit that I was frightened. But there I was saying to those who were frightened, to get up and fight. Do you hear me? We ought to follow our desires because the world was taken from us, and we were the people who made this world. We have made life.”

The monstrous panes of the universe were roaring, the thorn-leaved winds were silent, and Sam’an, in his silent soul, went on listening to the beating of the dream, of his nothingness, of his unconsciousness and veins. Then he went into the throes of death.  It was then with a desperate explosion, the trapped air in the worn-out lungs was pushed to reach the torn mouth and then it went back in a greedy manner to inhale the dusty air that surrounded the earthquake. He tried to breathe. But that was impossible. The heavy dust was freezing and solidifying no doubt. The horrible fissure in the ground was pulling him down. Oh, Prophet! Oh, Mohamed!… Oh, Lord! Oh, God! All saints of God. I am buried alive. I am buried alive. Save me. Save me…

In this way, calls went out from Sam’an ‘s red unconsciousness covered with horror and dust. Then his tongue was twisted in a trembled twist, and the crazy blood gushed out. Feverish tremors shook him. Then he had cold tremors. He felt pain. Oh, God!… Oh, God!… Oh, God! The voice of his unconsciousness trembled, it was acute, distorted and torn, full of rudeness. He fell further, pulled by the ground. It was pulling him into the earth’s liver. Blood started to search for life in the veins of the liver, the liver of the nonchalant earth. A muffled scream was released from him. It was a muffled scream from a muffled brain: Whe… Whe… Where are you? Quickly…quickly! It is death. I have been cheated! Deceived! You deceived me, Philmon the cobbler or Philmon the non-cobbler. Where are you, killer?… Oh, oh, ahh, ahh. I am buried alive. I am buried alive. Save me…

At that moment, his dumb and suppressed bones rattled, and his unconsciousness went roaming and monstrous in the darkness of his sub-unconsciousness. Then the fighting mind was relaxed with the melodies of the old song which was still throbbing on a hollow ground; life memories started to search for a way out. He started to moan from naïve memories, from his childhood with bare feet. His lifetime days turned into scenes. The scenes snatched him and passed consecutively like a wild unruly pony. The scenes were drowned with clouds that produced alternate lightning that showed unrelated reflection. Words and unfinished words of sorrow, moving up and down his voiceless lips. His unconsciousness which was suffering from hallucination was singing in a competing, servile and breathless manner: I will have to take a detour along the mountains unaware of my fears… The song continued with its endless rhythm calling from afar and then coming so close.

The throes of death squeezed him in waves that brought down the soul, while the dust of the dawn earthquake clasped his skull slowly and squeezed it; suddenly it changed its form to no form. He released a mysterious breath that had no room in the universe of life, I am buried alive. I am dying. Save me. Save only me.

The earth caved in, and he went down further. Above him melodies of that song were slowing down their tempo more and more. He kept quiet and that offending earth closed on him and completed his whole chapter in life. Blood from the blind right eye streamed down, and the eye started to bleed severely, constantly, frightfully, and horribly. It made the liver of the earth shake, and all the aftershocks move. The dawn of the war started to extend further. And further.