The sagging shadow was Ahmed’s, and the body was Ahmed’s, but the man who stood in the doorway was no longer Ahmed.
“Tell him I have come.” The lips carried Ahmed’s deep voice and the black eyes held the same calculated coldness as always, yet…
Mustafa jumped from his stool and bowed quickly, eyes wide with surprise, before ducking behind the curtain to inform The Elder.
Nus had taken possession of Ahmed Abadi earlier than necessary, not because his assignment couldn’t wait, but because he had always wanted to experience and feel for himself how a faithful Shia Muslim would handle his final days on earth, especially while knowing that the cancer had all but turned his organs to mush.
As it turned out, Ahmed spent his final hours doting on his grandchildren as they bounded about his bedroom. What surprised Nus even more were the few endearing words Ahmed had finally shared with his wife, who sat low and sobbing near his bedside, cradling her husband’s hand in her own.
When Ahmed had felt too much pain to move, he had tried to sleep. When sleep avoided him, he prayed.
Nus made no argument.
That final night, when Ahmed’s breathing became so terribly labored, Nus knew the end was near. For millennia, Nus had always enjoyed listening to the expiration of human life, that final gasp of breath and its lingering fizzle. A human’s departure to the underworld, whether sudden or belabored, always felt so…satisfying.
Being there in the moment: sheer exhilaration.
With Ahmed gone, Nus felt no more fight in the old man’s limbs. The arthritic joints were far from malleable, and the years of scoliosis remained frustrating, but the man’s will, his underlying antagonism to Nus’ presence which he had sensed since the moment of possession, was now gone.
Nus felt free in this one.
He slowly and quietly swung the crooked legs from the thin mattress, so as not to wake the wife, and padded his feet across the dirt floor. He donned the thobe and headscarf which lay near the door and exited. It would soon be time for worship.
The night was black. This hillside village did have a single electrical line strung in from the city, but the villagers rarely used it. Nus didn’t mind. The darkness was his playground.
Several hours later, as the sun suddenly peeked through a dip in the ridge and announced a new day, Ahmed arrived on a hill overlooking the city. Echoing wails from the tall minaret in the center of town died away, and soon he heard the bustle of morning as he plodded down the dusty trail toward the home which Nus had visited often in recent years, but Ahmed never had.
“Tell him I have come,” Nus had told the boy through Ahmed’s drying lips as he stood in the doorway. Mustafa had exited the room to fetch The Elder. Ahmed entered without invitation and stared at the curtain.
When the curtain finally opened, The Elder himself stood there. Nus almost bowed in reverence at the presence of his own superior, a powerful spirit who had claimed The Elder as his own personal territory nearly fifty years ago, but he refrained. Instead, Nus spoke through Ahmed.
“As-Salaam-Alaikum.”
“Wa-Alaikum-Salaam,” said the Elder. The quick dilation of the pupils told Nus that, while his superior’s control of this human was certainly immense, it was not complete. The Elder’s own will and cognition still mattered. Nus must continue to play his part.
“And what brings you here today, Father?” The Elder asked. His surprise, like Mustafa’s, wasn’t lost on Nus.
“I desire to accept your invitation, Elder.”
“So! Has the cancer finally cleared your mind?”
“In a way, yes. I have come to understand the methods required in this great War of ours. I am willing to make myself a martyr for The Prophet, peace be upon him.”
“I see,” The Elder said. He studied Ahmed. The old man could barely walk let alone carry out the mission of a martyr, but he respected his willingness. He asked the first of many questions that came to his mind. “How long do you have?”
“Half a day at most. I don’t know how long these bones or this disease will let me stand.” Nus knew this wasn’t true. He had made dry bones walk before, and he could carry this bloating corpse for as long as was necessary.
The Elder beckoned Mustafa. “Fetch me Nadir. Tell him I need ‘a complete package.'”
Mustafa exited, leaving the two old men alone. “Tea?” The Elder asked his guest, taking a seat upon the pillow on the floor.
Nus despised opportunities to lavish his dead hosts with food and drink, and he despised even more his superior for allowing the invitation. He opted for diplomacy, if only for the sake of the human in their midst. “I must preserve my body for the Holy War alone, Elder. But thank you.”
The Elder poured himself a cup, the superior savoring the drink with excessive lavish.
Several awkward minutes passed, but Mustafa soon returned, followed by a thin middle-aged man Nus knew to be Nadir.
Nadir carried a burlap sack. Nus knew its contents.
“Because we have but a twelve-hour window,” The Elder began, “we have very few options. My preference and therefore directive is that you hit the American convoy which is scheduled to pass by the north-eastern outskirts of our city before sundown. I think you will have enough time to establish yourself and find the right location.”
“I am at your service, Elder. Whatever you desire, I will fulfill to my dying breath.”
“And this is what intrigues me, Father. Your sudden willingness.” The Elder placed his cup down and stretched his arms upon the cushions behind him. “Four months ago, when I visited your home, you told me in the presence of your own wife some very crude words…places to shove my offer to turn your cancer into an opportunity for Allah. Yet this morning you come back to me with every ounce of humility. What has changed?”
Nus thought the question over. He answered the human and his superior at once with words from their holy book: “‘Do not say of those who are killed in the way of Allah that they are dead—rather they are alive, but you do not perceive it.’ I long to truly live, the way we have been taught by the Prophet—peace be upon him.”
The Elder—and the Superior—beamed at the response. “Very well, Father. Your humility is commendable. I will be certain to let your story be told. You shall be an inspiration to many men, young and old alike, I can assure you.”
Nus knew The Elder spoke these words, and not his superior. No spirit believed such drivel.
Later, Nus stepped off Ahmed’s prayer rug and carefully folded It, as he had seen Ahmed and a thousand others in this region do a million times before. The sun was just an hour from setting now. Afternoon prayers had ended. Nus needed to prepare Ahmed for his final act of worship.
He grabbed the burlap sack which Nadir had given him and stepped into the alcove of a building he knew to be empty. The door was locked, but the entryway provided enough privacy for Nus to place the vest over Ahmed’s torso, connect the wires into the trigger, and cover himself again with his thobe.
Nus padded his chest and wondered briefly at the shape potentially visible beneath the cloth. He cast the thought away, for he knew that ancient men in this region were more trustworthy than children. They had to be, to survive as long as Ahmed had. He lowered his arms to hide the sight and shuffled slowly from the alcove. The burlap sack remained empty on the dusty floor.
While Nus could have run the body until the bones in the legs shattered or until he wore off the flesh from the bottoms of the feet, Nus knew to maintain the appearance of age. He theatrically grabbed at Ahmed’s lower back as he approached the roadside.
No convoy was yet in sight, so he straightened Ahmed’s back with more strength than Ahmed had ever dreamed possible. Loud cracks and pops came from the dead man’s spine, and Nus wasn’t sure how many of those adjustments would have come as relief to a living Ahmed, and how many would have paralyzed him. No matter. He could now stand a bit taller, which allowed him to see the roadway more clearly.
He noted nothing out of the ordinary at first, the distant tops of light green trees suggesting the bountiful presence of water beneath the soil and the heat waves atop the road betraying the reality of life above.
But then he saw it, a peach-colored dust-cloud rising from the horizon. The longer he watched, the larger the cloud became. He enjoyed watching its metamorphosis, as it changed from a tiny dot, to an enlarging circle, to a fading, giant balloon of dust led on its string of tan-colored Humvees which sped along the highway toward him.
Nus noted the lead vehicle and counted through the dust a convoy of eight. In recent years, he had also spent time within the ranks of the American forces as they policed the region. He knew their proclivities. He also knew of their wariness of IEDs, and while he himself had helped local terrorists design new and inventive forms of the roadside explosives, he also knew that the only and best way to ensure mass casualties against “The Great Satan”—what a name!—was the suicide bomber.
As the vehicles approached within a hundred meters, Nus stepped away from the road rather than towards it, resting his back against a road sign. He had long observed tactical warfare, and he observed the convoy now for a position of mass casualty. The third vehicle was his target.
The lead Humvee of the convoy was just fifty meters off now. The roadside was clear of debris, just as American soldiers liked it, yet the buildings on either side were tall and imposing, potential threats to the so-called “policemen of the world.” The convoy didn’t slow, yet the space between the vehicles shortened, almost imperceptibly.
Nus knew the threat contained within these buildings, The Elder’s small band of insurgents. These were men not ready for suicide, yet certainly ready to die.
Before the lead vehicle passed Nus in a cloud of swirling dust, he had caught a soldier’s eye. It was only an instant, but he knew that his ruse had passed the test. The world saw Ahmed as nothing more than an ancient man of the desert, one of very few men who had survived the turbulent decades of war and famine, and who had done so by keeping his nose clean. And such had been Ahmed’s story.
But this was not Ahmed.
The second vehicle had passed now, and as the third approached, Nus dug Ahmed’s heel against the signpost and plunged through the dust cloud into the path of the third vehicle. The instant before the tires rolled over the body, Nus depressed the trigger on his vest and all but vaporized the third Humvee and the soldiers within.
Nus felt not heat or pressure as he flew beyond the black cloud to witness the aftermath. The first and second vehicles hammered their engines forward through the maze of narrow streets and were riddled with bullets and rockets, quickly disabling them.
The fourth vehicle had plowed into the inferno and would have potentially driven itself free had not the fifth vehicle also plowed into the fourth. Now both of the trailing vehicles sat within the burning wreckage and soon caught fire themselves. Most soldiers able to free themselves from the flames were cut down by shots from the roadsides.
The sixth, seventh, and eighth vehicles had slammed on their brakes before the carnage and separated from their convoy, making an instantaneous triangle. Several soldiers ran from the wreckage into the safety zone between the remaining vehicles in order to fire off rounds against the roadside attacks, while others manned the guns from the Humvee roofs, strafing the buildings and killing many of The Elder’s insurgents.
Nus didn’t cheer for either side particularly but reveled in the bloodbath that both sides experienced.
Such death! Such suffering! Such terror!
Such satisfaction.
©2026 E.T.
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