Chapter XI. Alleys Will Never Forget You

-You’ll be sleeping in your own room upstairs, right next to mine, starting tonight.

She then turned to Hassan and said, “She’s still young, and your marriage will only exist on paper.” Even if you have to wait until she is eighteen, you will not touch or otherwise interact with her before she has reached sexual and emotional maturity and is prepared to get married and establish a family.

 Do you get that, son? She’ll live with us as a family member and when she’s older, she’ll join you in your bedroom. You made the choice, and now you are responsible for the results.

The preparations for the wedding officially started the following day. For the first time in a very long time, Zainab saw her family. She was visited in the palace because she vehemently rejects going back to the house and the oven.

They were pleased with the events; it appears that all the issues have been resolved, and the water has resumed its normal flow. A bright life is in store for her, but one thing is upsetting Hatshepsut’s peace of mind.

In her new room on the top floor, Hatshepsut is angry, she can’t control her nerves, damn Mrs. Karima, who gave her the right! We are not allowed to sleep in one room with him! Until eighteen! Seven whole years?! Is she mad? I remained imprisoned in the cemetery for thousands of years, I just got out of a harsh experience with that stinky old man, then when life smiles at me, this woman deprives me of it, under the pretext of maturity, who said that we are not ready for marriage, but you and I are fully ready to build our little family, damn her. Were it not for Hassan, we would now be burning in the oven fire. We almost handed her over to them. He must be rewarded. She has no right to prevent him from us and vice versa.

As for Zainab, the matter does not concern her at all. She has already got what she wished for, salvation from death, and more than that. She will soon be Hassan’s wife, even if only on paper. Years later, she will have the opportunity to have children from him, who carry royal Ottoman and Pharaonic blood. What a perfect mixture!

Hatshepsut: Refuse to accept this; we won’t let her separate us from him.

-What’s wrong with that? Why do you keep wanting to hang around him?

-But he is our husband and belongs with us, what an old hag! Screw her.

-Who do you mean by old hag? Mrs. Karima?

-I wish I had used my finger to prick her throat and kill her by strangling her considering she had a small mouth.

-Hatshepsut, what’s going on with you because you’re making me nervous! What’s wrong with you, she’s kind and treats me like her daughter.

-You’re still young, Zainab. You don’t know how evil she is yet. I wish she had stuck a raspberry in her little throat, and I see her choking to death, before my eyes.

-Rather, she has a kind heart, and her mouth, which you bully, is actually the most attractive part of her.

Hatshepsut, is angry with Mrs. Karima, because she prevented Hassan from having sexual relations with her, as Zainab is still young, she must be prepared, before taking such a step, and although it is in Upper Egypt, there is nothing wrong with a girl marrying Zainab’s age, Karima, a different, Ottoman aristocracy, will not allow Hassan to marry a minor, not before she reaches an age that qualifies her to do so, and until then, this marriage will remain a dead letter.

In addition to many stories, which tell of the death of girls in Upper Egypt of her age, on the night of the wedding, who could not bear deflowering them at such a young age, something like this has happened before.

Abdul Haqq removed bundles of papers from the boxes that were arranged beneath various items in the warehouse. He bundled them all together, placed them in a single box, and then carried them to the private meeting room. Nobody should know what’s within them; we’ll keep it a secret between the three of us.

Mrs. Karima lifted a carpet from the ground, under which was an iron door. She took out a bundle of keys from her bag. She opened the door. Underneath was another basement. They went down the stairs. On the wall was a large, well-sealed safe. She opened it with a special key. She turned her dial to the right numbers.

-This antique safe, which we still use for important documents, is empty, as you can see, sir. Our work has ceased following the sacking of the Sultan. Istanbul’s conditions are not good.

Abd al-Haqq stepped forward and placed the file box inside it. He said: Be completely confident that what is in it now is more important than anything that was placed inside before.

Hassan: Can you tell us something about it?

-These files are something that you must keep well. If anything, bad happens, do not allow them to fall into the hands of a stranger.

He added: One open case has not yet been closed, and it must be worked on.

Hassan: Well, fortunately, something important finally appears on the horizon: What is it, sir?

Abdul Haqq: We have assurances that a secret apparatus, whose headquarters is on the island of Malta, we believe are the ancestors of the Knights Templar, they have something important, they had an active role in what happened to us, we would like to complete the work on this case. All the information we were able to gather, and the whole story, their archives, are in these files, they are very precious.

He added: We will try as much as possible to revive this case, despite its difficulty and complications.

He shut the safe and turned to face Hassan, saying, “And if we cannot go on, there must come a day when someone can do this, who can unravel the mystery of what is happening on the island of Malta, and what they have, for here, in this safe, lies the basic building block.”

Hassan: Would you like me to start working on it?
-No, not now. Let’s first settle in and organize our papers. In actuality, it has been on hold ever since the Sultan was deposed. It feels curse-like, Hassan. The more information we gather about it, the more calamities descend upon us, and it brings us disasters.

-a curse? Why did you use this word?

-A metaphorical expression, the curse is an incomprehensible force, we cannot deal with it, and you cannot anticipate its results, so we called this case a curse, and we justify our lack of data and our lack of knowledge about its causes.

An incomprehensible force, as long as humans justify their ignorance and lack of data about any phenomenon that they are unable to understand by unknown power, magic, sorcery, curse, and the paranormal.

In fact, all these superstitions, are no more than an integral part of the human psyche, therefore it doesn’t really matter if Zainab’s curse is genuine or just a figment of her imagination; what matters is what will happen as a consequence of its presence.

What is the difference if it was from a headquarters in “Malta” messing with this world, or if it was an illusion and a mirage chased by Yildiz intelligence service!

What is important is that the empire is about to collapse, or has already collapsed.

Years ago, an officer in the Yildiz apparatus, Abd al-Haqq, tracked down the Union Society and wanted to know its supporters and their true intentions. He stumbled upon a passing piece of information, of little importance, except that his intelligence intuition told him something else. Tracking it, he eventually arrived on the island of Malta, planted a cell of spies there, and managed to discover the existence of a secret apparatus trying to tamper with the world.

They were all killed, and that party pursued Abdul Haqq’s group even in Istanbul, at which point its presence became an irrefutable fact, and its danger is extreme, as it is very serious, and it will chase and kill anyone who tries to search for it.

The Yildiz officers who were treacherously killed, their entire file, and all the information they collected, in addition to the papers of the forgotten prince, are now deposited in a well-sealed safe, in the basement of a palace in Assiut, southern Egypt, that only Abdel Haqq, Mrs. Karima, and Hassan know about.

While the heat of events is raging in the Uskudar neighborhood of Istanbul, a Sufi Zawiya, a new two-story building, freshly painted in light yellow, with a black iron door decorated with Ottoman inscriptions, things have quieted down in Assiut as they get ready for the upcoming wedding ceremony.

The entire building is surrounded by the soldiers of the Union movement, and Sheikh Omar is trapped inside with his men, asking them to surrender, but they refuse. “We will die here. It is enough for us to be proud that we are the last standing men of the empire.”

-Hand over your files, Omar, and we will let you and your men live.

A voice called out to them from outside.

The Sheikh smiled, sitting on a chair in the hall, and said to himself: No, you will not get it, for what you are looking for is no longer here, and you will not get it from me, and you will not know where I sent it.

He grabbed his gun, in a loud voice that was not afraid of death.

-Fight, men, fight until the last soldier, we will die here, we will die today, and who will not die someday?! We will die here, yes, but the dervishes of Yildiz will live much longer than us and our killers. Do not be afraid of death, for the alleys will remember and will never forget you.

They fought as the Ottomans always fought; they did not surrender themselves.

With the onset of sunset, dozens of dervishes lay lifeless inside the Sufi Zawiya and in the adjacent alleys, and they took with them out of this world, hundreds of storming soldiers.

Soon the news spread to Prince Suleiman, he became lonely, weak, completely broken, he entered his solitude, the matter is over, there is no hope of success.

Everything came to an end in the Zawiya, and the alleyways around it were left with an epic image that was deserving of it for a moment. However, soon, these alleys will be the scene of another epic with other heroes and strategies.

As it seems, the war between the dervishes of Yildiz, and that secret party on the island of Malta, is still in its infancy.

Weeks after that, the marriage ceremony ended, and the situation in Assiut was no better than in Istanbul, as Abdel Haqq no longer knew what he was doing! Lost, very far from his homeland, Sheikh Omar was killed, and all the men, ignorant of the situation of Prince Suleiman, there is nothing left for them to work on, his mission has become almost impossible.

There are no more dervishes of Yildiz, except for one thing that still deserves attention, the seal of the dervishes, with a stack of papers in a secret safe in the basement of the palace.

Working on the case has become difficult, at least for the foreseeable future. At the moment, Abdel-Haq is concerned with protecting the cell’s members. Perhaps the union movement discovered anything about the Assiut cell.

The first security precaution is full inactivity, stopping any suspicious work, but it is important to travel back to Istanbul in order to communicate with Prince Suleiman.

A group of files that are no longer of any use now, but who knows!

Maybe one day, it will fall into the hands of someone, made of a mixture of contradictions!

A mixture of angel and demon, faith and talismans, reality and illusion

A mixture that had to be, to make what it should be.