I remember the burning taste of mint rolling on my tongue as the tea goes down my throat.
Rich, sweet, powerful too, and this touch of bitterness…Once, a long time ago, when the sun was warm on my face… I close my eyes to retain the elusive sensation.
Cold --I am so cold, what could they possibly want from me?
Bent-al-Raha, the words roll suddenly in my memory,
the Wind's Daughter…
A derisive snort vibrates painfully in my dry throat but I don't even recognize my own voice as the hoarse sound echoes oddly in the pitch-dark room.
Bent-al-Raha was the name the desert dwellers had given me, for it seemed that I could never keep still. Often did my father note the pertinence of the nickname with a hint of amusement in his pale grey eyes, and perhaps, a hint of resignation too. After all, our name was Alrahan…
I can see, as if disembodied by the distance of time, my body as a little girl, frail and nervous, in that crude blue dress almost glowing against my darkened skin, a little blue flame floating around the camp when all around the Libyan Desert stretched away as vastly as the sky.
I remember the dust – everywhere
The saffron colored sand shoveled away by the native workers, a crowd of faceless shadows shifting restlessly under the blazing sun, maintaining a perpetual haze around them. The women moved themselves with a studied languid grace as if slowed down by the heavy jewelry clinking around their wrists, dancing at their ankles. I watched in awe their dark skin slightly tinted blue by the indigo veils draping their improbable frames as they served the tea.
Among them, I caught a glimpse of my sister and my brother seeking and probing the dry land for the treasures of the past.
Oh, I remember the tarnished gold from the buried tombs, the ragged scrolls, thin and delicate…
She rose from her semi comatose state as a wave of nausea hit her leaving her weak and quavering on the floor. She drowsily forced her eyes open to take in her surroundings. Her head was pounding; her mouth felt thick with the taste of metal… she was still disoriented.
This made no sense…
Just when she was about to let her head drop back down on the floor, she dimly sensed a presence drawing near the place where she was confined. Her instincts were too dulled for the time being to tell her whether it was friend or foe. She struggled to gather what was left of her strength to face whatever was slowly approaching. A cold sweat crept along her back, she was fully aware that if she was attacked she would be too vulnerable to defend herself.
As if on cue, the door opened. She swallowed hard as a flow of light invaded the room, blinding her painfully.
As her eyes focused she was surprised to see a tiny form standing out in the doorframe. It took a few limping steps in her direction.
Her eyes grew huge as a strange coarse voice erupted in the dark room:
"Back to where you belong, you are, Noor Alrahan."
This voice, this annoying backward phrasing, even this very presence invading her exhausted senses--it was him…
"Master Yoda," she whispered and everything went black.
*****