I had had a dream once. Dream being a relatively weak word in comparison to 'Nightmare', which would ring more true in terms of what said 'dream' was about. It was fuzzy and shaky, like a camera being held in trembling hands, but I could remember a man. A man with distinctive features, skin alike to butterscotch and eyes similar to chartreuse. There was also a boy, who scowled at me from behind the man, with a look that could kill (his eyes were full of burning fury, but fury for what I did not know) and I felt as if I knew this boy somehow, as if the boy was a part of me like no other. Everything had been going fine for a while, with new medicines, philosophy and beautiful architecture coming into play. The man had taught me and the boy how to recite the Q'uran, and now we both remembered it as if it was engraved into our memories from the very start. Yes, everything had been fine. Perfect, even.
Until the man had become ill.
By this time, I had learnt that the man was called Al-Andalus and that the boy was my brother, older brother to be exact and that his name was Portugal. We were like a family, a fairly dysfunctional family, but a family nonetheless. When Al-Andalus became ill, however, everything went downhill and suddenly, it didn't feel like much of a family anymore. He was always in bed, with me and Portugal hovering over him, sending worried and concerned glances to one another. Both of us didn't want to admit it, let alone say it, but we were both thinking the same thing:
"Is this when our family ends?"
As the years passed, I found myself becoming more in tune with the Christian teachings, more specifically Catholic, than Islamic. Al-Andalus was still fighting for life, and I felt pity for him, knowing that he wouldn't make it and would eventually fade from existence. Portugal had left before that could happen, so I was on my own with an ailing nation who couldn't do much for himself anymore.
Al-Andalus did fade, and I felt a sadness gnawing at my heart, a sadness that I hadn't felt so strongly before. It was weird yet strangely satisfying, maybe because it had made me feel human in those last moments of mourning. After that, I locked my heart away and became the ruthless empire everyone knew me as. The empire who had left Mexico, Peru and so many other nations without a home to go to. The Spanish Empire. I denied ever having Moorish blood in me, and carried on with the ways my leaders had taught me, the teachings of God and Jesus, instead of Allah and the Prophet Mohammad. Soon after, I had completely forgotten the verses of the Q'uran altogether, and it left me feeling empty inside for some unknown reason. I had learnt to ignore it, and forgot about the Moors' existence completely, carrying on with my own life and looking to the future.
I did realise though, in a World Meeting (pointless, completely pointless), that my hands didn't seem right. The colour was off, a sort of butterscotch colour (and that's when it hit me-)
Laughter rung in my ears, and happier times flashed before my eyes like a rickety old VHS tape. That man, that damned man, showed up again and again and again-
My hands trembled and with a sudden, painful thought, I now realised that I was the one who made him disappear.
I was the one who killed Al-Andalus.