Muezzin (standard:horror, 2556 words)
Author: mr shaw	Added: Mar 11 2002	Views/Reads: 3588/2347	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Cairo. A Muezzin calls the faithful to prayer, and a tourist loses his mind.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

above us, but low, the floor is bare and there is no furniture. I reach 
out to her, but she – 

Day Two 5.58 am 

It is brighter when I open my eyes, and the city is waking up with me.
My shoulders ache from my position, and there will be a red mark on my 
head where it has rested on the wooden baton that holds in the grimy 
glass of the window. 

Rose is on the bed, still on her back. Will she ever move again? I
think. Probably not I have to tell myself, no matter how hard I try to 
get her to. 

When the windows are closed, it is quiet again, morning stillness in the
room that welcomes me back to the real world. Our clothes are strewn 
about the place, so I start to pick them up. As I lift a pair of Rose's 
jeans from next to a chair where I have thrown them, a cockroach 
scuttles away to hide under the bed. Then another follows it from under 
a sock. Then two more, and three and four until a steady, brown stream 
is moving from the chair the bed. 

Fascinated, but disgusted, I watch as a hundred or more make this
journey. I put my bare foot in the middle of them, but they clamber 
over and around, so I move it and bend to look where they came from. I 
cannot see, oh no, they are under the bed. Rose. I look round to her, 
but she has not seen them. Abruptly the stream stops, 

and the Muezzin starts his chant, his incessant plea vibrating the panes
in the window. I am torn. I want to open the window and immerse myself 
in his fervent, calming song, but I have to do something about the 
cockroaches under the bed. Rose would not approve if I just left them 
there. 

There is a brush in the bathroom cupboard. Thinking I could use the
handle to batter the cockroaches away and towards the door, I go to get 
it. As I move, the Muezzin chants louder, as if to call me back. When I 
reach the bathroom door, he is more strident than ever so I turn, just 
in time to see pane in the window crack and break. 

The glass falls to the floor, inaudible over the Muezzin. I go back to
open the window, drawn by the call, but a clicking sound over by the 
bed makes me spin. My foot catches the fallen glass and is cut. On the 
bed the cockroaches are moving down the headboard and up the sides. 

I rush over and sweep them away, but more come and more. I pull the
sheet up and away from the bed, cockroaches flying about the room when 
I shake it. After clearing the bed again I cover Rose in the sheet and 
gather her into my arms. The cockroaches do not stop, and I am covered, 
but she is safe from them. She is safe. 

The Muezzin's chant stops. It is quiet. I turn to look at the window,
the muslin dancing gently in the breeze through the broken pane. The 
cockroaches are gone, and I pull the sheet back to make sure there are 
none underneath where Rose lies still. 

Day Two 3pm 

It is hot today, and I have been tramping round the Khan-el-Khalil
bazaar in the hope of seeming as though nothing has happened. Who am I 
trying to fool? Not the traders and the tourists in the dingy alleyways 
of the bazaar. All they want is gold, bought or sold, baksheesh for 
them. They care little for a dirty tired looking Englishman loping 
slowly around the trinkets and through the tobacco smoke. The only 
person who cares is me. I am alone in this. Literally, now Rose is no 
longer with me on anything. 

She was lying tranquilly on the bed when I got back from the markets. 
She's dead of course, so I was not surprised.  I say a breezy hello and 
sit down to take off my sticky clothes when the silence is shattered by 
the voice of the Muezzin. 

This stops me undressing, and I sit on the threadbare seat staring at
the window. The chant is directed at me, I know this now. I do not 
understand the words, and the meaning is not clear but I know I have to 
listen to discover the secret, the purpose of the Muezzin's song. 

In the haze of the afternoon, the static air in the room overwhelms me
and I find it hard to focus, other than on the chant. It fills the room 
like a foul smell, permeating the table, the bed, the chair, our 
clothes, even Rose lying in state. The room becomes a mausoleum, a 
crypt for my murdered companion. I fall from the chair and curl into a 
foetal position round one of its legs. 

-	and I awake in an almost dark room. Rose is crouched in the corner,
almost snarling. She has a bruise over one eye, a small bloodstain on 
her white shirt. I say something, something I cannot understand and she 
shakes her head, her wild eyes flicking to the door and back to me. I 
speak again, and she stops. I lean over to take a sleeping bag and jam 
it under the crack of the door where light is coming in, and the room 
is dark. I move forward to her and she cowers away as I reach out, 

I am on the bed next to her and she is shrinking away from me. I cry no,
no, please, and she stops. Her eyes are closed. 

She looks as if through me, smiles, and reaches to my face. I notice the
Muezzin has finished, and there is only the sound of traffic, but I 
cannot face her without his song, and I turn away from her. I sense her 
lay her head on the pillow and I sob into my hands. 

Day Five 12.59 am 

It is more than two days since I left the room. I live for the regular
solace of the Muezzin, now I know what I must do. 

The day before last, I left the room to buy bread, water, dried meat. In
the time I was gone I could feel my face become taut as the skin shrank 
and my eyes deepened. It is only here in this room with the ancient 
invocation that I can feel alive, that I can be forgiven for what I 
have done. 

Just before the call starts, I wake from a deep dreamless slumber. Rose
is on the bed and the air in the room is stale from my sweat and her 
decay. I open the window, the better to hear the call and sit on the 
chair I have placed to face it. 

The call starts again, and I am immersed, drowned in waves of relief as
the secret comes to me. I must realise and then I can do penance for 
the wrong I have done her. The repetition of the words is making the 
meaning clearer, and I sit focused on the incantation, drifting into a 
blackened world of my own. 

It is dark in the room, and nothing is light. The sleeping bag behind
the door stops the bare bulb on the hall from disturbing my quarantine. 
The song is here and nothing else. But I can see my shadow now, and it 
moves to one side with the rhythm of the song. I kick back with my 
knees, and the chair falls to the floor. 

On the bed, Rose is sat up and she is casting off a dull yellow light.
She has one hand rested on her belly, which is swollen, distended, 
pregnant. Her eyes are wide open and staring at me, wild like the last 
time I saw them. She stares at me and her hand rubs her belly and her 
mouth moves like a lullaby to her unborn child, but there are no words. 
I cannot move, cannot help her or comfort her. She sits, cooing over 
the child she will not bear, and tears form in her eyes. Her other hand 
moves, holding a knife. It moves up, then down and slashes and the bed 
is soaked and I dive for her hand but it is too late, the baby is gone 
in a torrent with the next stab. I smash her hand against the headboard 
and slap her and she screams, 

louder than the Muezzin who is now almost silent, a murmur in the
background. I switch on the light to look where the knife fell, but it 
is gone, I cannot see it. There is no blood on the floor or on the bed, 
where Rose is still sat up. 

She is old now, older than she will ever be. Her skin is greyed and her
face is lined, like bark. Her eyes are rheumy and sore, and they look 
at me with unbearable pity and hatred. I reach for her gnarled hand, 
but she pulls it away, shaking her head. She raises one hand palm 
towards me, and lies down for the last time. 

The lines on her face fade and the bruises come back to cover her neck
and her head, the crusts of blood reforming on her temple and behind 
her ear. I watch and wait for the succour of the Muezzin to come again. 


Day Five 8 pm 

The call starts, as I lie naked on the floor, unwilling to move. It
offers me no comfort now, as it has not since the night time. It does 
not abate, repeating the same useless words and phrases, a litany that 
cannot help me. 

I take the chair and throw it to fracture against the wall. I smash the
remaining panes of glass with my fist, and blood spots the floor and 
the window. I almost tear one side of the window from its hinges. 
Stepping onto the balcony I look up at the speaker, the sound 
terrifying, always the same, driving itself into my head, my soul. I 
bend double and heave dryly, stars swimming around my head. 

There is a banging, from my head or in the room, and I look in and see
Rose lying on 

-	Rose is lying there, on the hard floor, her head rested at an angle,
her blood congealing and her hands in between her legs and 

the bed, and I can see she is peaceful and I 

-	she is hurt and quiet and I hear a banging 

pass by her as I go to the door as the banging increases 

-	in my head and I open the door and step out into the sun of a desert
morning 

and see two Arab men dressed in beige uniforms, guns at their hips and a
well dressed man, European. 

-	Mr Allan, we are from the Cairo police. This is Mr Nimmo of the
British Consulate. We would like to ask you some questions about a Miss 
Rose Day. She has been reported as missing and we have reason to 
believe she accompanied you on your recent visit to the Sinai. Would 
you please come with us? 

I turn to look at Rose, to tell them where she is, and what happened,
but she is not there. The room is empty. 

The Muezzin is silent. 


Tweet