You think: its intimate like this, pushed up against his back, glistening dagger up against his pulse.
"You have a poor father," your father tells you one day, "and I am ashamed of it."
Your little ears strain to hear the validity of his words. You wonder if his shame starts with you, meager stature and meager freckles. At your side, your hands stay lax and immobile. You don't let your tears show themselves in impotent fists.
"You have a poor father, and now you will be poor forever, too."
You are an anonymous face in the streets, another fatherless child, another gaunt face. Around you, merchants fill up a bazaar, food overflowing from crates and crates overflowing into the streets. It isn't difficult for you to pluck a pomegranate, red and fragrant, from an unseen box. You use both hands to cradle it near to your chest as you tread lightly to a forgotten alley filled with remnants of men fucking women and blood spit into corners.
You crack open the pomegranate with a rock, and spill the seeds out and into your mouth. Your fingers tremble, crumbling under the thievery and despair of loss. Carefully, you remove the translucent, milky membrane from where the other seeds lie. Your fingers are stained red and sticky, and the seeds crunch in between your teeth. You continue to chew in this place of unsolicited acts and screams. It is fitting that you sit here, in the dust of the poor and dirty, eating the fruit stolen from a man. Your tears do not come, for you have none left to give.
In only moments, you compress until you rest on all fours, heaving the acidic seeds from your throat. Your lips are stained red, and the pomegranate remains spilled open to your left.
You sit by the fountain one day, legs bundled up by your ribs like something precious. Your hands link together, dirty fingernails but dirtier palms. Brown shirts and brown skin come together to form something completely ordinary, but your face is still reaching for the sun and blue sky. Water splashes into droplets behind you; you hear the water make its sister waves to the sea, echoes of something smaller – never quite the ferocity and resilience you used to watch crash down to the land. This fountain is something tame. This water gives gently when it encounters stone. You continue to stare up at the sky.
"Kid," someone grunts. You turn to stare, with a dropping stomach but level eyes. You've been here before. You know how to handle men, how to get them interested, how to get them to leave you alone.
"Kid," the guard grunts, "what do you think you're doing here in the citadel?"
"I'm tired," you say, "and lost."
Something gleams in the man's face. You're no stranger to his look. He shouts to the other guards, beckons them closer to you and your bundled legs. Maybe you'll get a coin. Maybe you'll get some food, this way. You keep your eyes steady. Guards don't like your tears.
"Look at this one," he says, "lost, he is."
Later, when they're gone and you're beaten, you understand the nature of mankind more than you did after the last time, more than you did the time before that. You spit dirty blood to the floor and wipe your hands on your dirty shirt. You stay there, on the ground, for a while. In any case, there is no one around to help you stand back up.
Your father runs into the shack, cheeks flushed and sweaty. His breath comes in bursts. You can see bloody knuckles, enraged fists.
"Leave this place," he shouts at you, spittle flying from his lips.
You cannot seem to move. Your heart is beating madly in your chest, and you distantly wonder when it began to quicken.
"You cannot live if you stay, they will get you too," he says, with a voice unlike that which you have known in your life.
You stand up, start backing away and whisper, "father, what-"
But then he pushes you out through the back, out into the dirt, and out into the open world. You see men in armor carrying knives burst in through the front. They brandish their blades like one would a lover; they hold them as though the sharpened edge holds the answers they need – seeks commitment in the reflection of death. Their mouths are turned in a cruel grimace, stuck somewhere between joy and madness. Your father is cornered inside, and you are alone outside.
You see a blade lunge. You hear your father scream something intelligible. Your hands threaten to shake, but then you scramble to run. You don't plan to return.
The streets shine during the summer festival. There is desperation in the air, a necessity to vigor and to life. Alcohol colors the sky, crude and undiluted as it is. You walk, unseen, past the crowds of men in robes and women in dresses. Beads rattle in windows – clay, painted, and rounded. Merchants yell through the streets of their goods; the scent of fresh fish, virgin olives, and crisp mangoes is airborne.
In your white hood, no one notices you. No one but one man. One merchant. As you walk towards him, you take pleasure in watching his struggle to swallow. In age, his hairs have turned grey and his face has folded in on itself. His pulse beats irregularly in his veins. You'd smile in satisfaction, but you imagine that you've forgotten how. You haven't smiled since you were a boy.
In your white hood, the man picks you from the crowd easily. He has every year since you returned. Every year, you watch his world fall apart. You watch him wonder if this is the last day he will live. No one visits his stall in these precious moments, the moments wherein the fear is evident on his face and focused on someplace distant. Fear is unattractive here, on this day, during this festival.
No one looks to him.
You walk up to his crates and survey his goods. The foods are fresh, the ingredients clean. You ask, "do you have any supply of fruit?"
He does. He always does, but he knows exactly which fruit you speak of. He nods, as though this situation were casual.
"I know what you seek," he rasps, and then drags his hand to someplace where he keeps the important goods – the ones no one else knows about. Sitting in his outstretched palm lays a plump, red, fragrant fruit. Its seeds will stain your lips and the membrane holding it all together will tear underneath your fingertips.
"How much," you ask.
He shakes his head, as though in denial, "none, you know this, stop this, please, I beg of you."
"How much," you ask again, with a white hood covering your head and blades hidden in your sleeves.
"Two," he shudders, "two coins."
You nod. Of course, it is always two coins. The alcohol is pungent in this part of the street, with fumes darkening the sun. You pull two coins from your bag, and drop them onto the crate nearest to the merchant. The dull clank they make against the wood makes the man in front of you flinch.
You turn around and begin to walk away, already splitting the pomegranate open with a knife. You know that you will only throw them up later, but you start popping the seeds between your teeth regardless.
"Wait," he calls out from behind you. You stop walking, but you don't turn around.
"Wait," he calls, begging for something you don't have the answer to, "why do you do this to me? Why don't you just kill me for what I did?"
You don't tell him that you won't kill innocents. You don't tell him anything. You walk away from his stand and into the crowds where you disappear once more, as invisible as your hidden blades stained with fragrant juice.
The streets shine during the summer festival. You are jostled amongst the crowds, elbowed in the collar bones where you're too short to tower over exposed limbs. Your eyes are bruised and so is your neck. Your own blood is crusted underneath fingernails and wrists, but you give no concern to your appearance, now. Your stomach clamors for attention, carving hunger through your lungs and throat, digging like stones into the soft flesh of your abdomen. You feel your lethargic pulse beat in the temples of your head and in the crown of your neck. Elbows jostle you, and you let yourself be jostled. You have no energy to fight back.
You follow the smells of food in the streets overflowing with the stuff. There is only one fruit you seek; you were here only a few days prior to do the same. With the eyes of strangers straining towards opulence and lavish goods, it is easy for you to slip to the merchant who carries an overabundance of pomegranates. He is drunk and boisterous, like the rest are, so you think yourself lucky in your quest for fruit.
He notices your little fingers reaching, though, and his flushed cheeks become rosy with rage, drunken happiness turning to a blind fervor.
"You," he howls, "thief, get your hands off!"
"You dare steal in my presence? That will cost you your life!"
You cower beneath his accusing finger and further accusations.
The guards start running for you, beat you bloody and senseless. You stare into the merchant's vindicated eyes, and spit at the ground of his feet.
"I'll come back for you," you swear, child with a child's voice, not knowing the weight that your words will bring. The merchant laughs.
"Please, I've done nothing wrong," the woman cries, "leave me alone, won't anybody help me?"
You watch, from your place in the dirt. Bruises are fresh on your neck; blood is flaking off from your cheek. You breathe silently.
"Please," she cries, as the men twist her arms over her head first, and then across her back. Your fists close, fingers pressed tightly against your soft palms, but your legs remain unmoving. You cannot do anything, and first, you feel rage. Then, you feel broken.
"Please," she cries, as the men take her away to some dark place.
"No," the man says, "I am not a thief."
You watch as the guards use their fists and knives to bruise and cut him open. He dies there, staining the ground by their feet with his blood.
"Kid," the guard grunts, "what do you think you're doing here in the citadel?"
"I'm tired," you say, "and lost."
Something gleams in the man's face. You're no stranger to his look.
You hate it. You hate the way his face contorts into something primal and instinctual. You hate the way he saunters closer to you and examines your face and clenched legs. Your eyes stay level, even as he tugs on your hair, pulls on it to move your head this way and that. You're clean enough for him; not covered in blood like the rest are, not yet broken enough to rot away in the barren summer air. He shouts to the other guards.
When they are gone, pants buckled and teeth gleaming, you stay lying on the ground. Your eyes are level with the dirt.
The city has many flags. They're all over the place, claiming pride for nationality and pride for the peoples' names. The flags move with the wind, up on buildings and arch posts. The flags are tacked onto walls, stretched and starched in the sunlight.
You steal one, invisible as you are. You stuff it underneath your shirt, and no one even notices how it is missing from its spot. You sell it to the next vendor over for a gold coin. You do the same thing over a few streets away. Soon, you have enough money to buy a dagger.
When people start noticing some missing flags, you stop selling them. All you needed was a dagger, after all.
"Spare a few coins," you beg and cough wetly. Your sickness sticks in your throat.
"Spare a few coins. I'm sick and hungry and poor."
You say "poor" like the curse your father said it was. You say "poor" as though it thrives like an infection in the beats of your heart. For all you know, it does.
"Spare a few coins," you beg, but a man pushes his hand against your face and knocks you down to the street. For a moment, you stay there and watch his movement. Then, you stand back up and move towards a woman. Her face softens when she sees you and your bruises, but she opens her hands in a show of solidarity. She has nothing to give but empty words, though you saw her only moments before bartering for some bread.
You walk away, begging for something, anything, until your throat is swollen and cracked. You swallow thickly. You will always be a poor beggar. Your father knew this, but now you understand it.
When you throw your throwing knives at men, you make sure to aim for the throat. And, if not the throat, you aim for the belly.
In a cyclical movement, your shoulder pivots in an unyielding arc. Your wrist twists in place – a flick at the last second to give your knife its deadly momentum.
You are unforgiving, unquestioning in the role you now play. The hours you have spent practicing form cannot have been in vain. The training you have undergone has honed your skills to perfection. You aim for the throat, supple and soft, and stand back from the warm blood that makes its way from veins to the surface.
The people here pray. You stopped praying months ago; you have no faith now. The sun is relentless overhead, and so the citizens of this city attempt to retreat to a place of refuge. Your sweat stings your dry skin, and drips slowly into your cuts. Your feet are cracked underneath their cover of orange dust.
You are certain that you will die on this day.
Indoors, people bend with their hands together. They kneel to the ground, whispering reverences to their god. The murmur of voices gives this time of day a restless quality, but you cannot move to escape it. Your hands are feeble, now. Your hair sticks to your skin like leather, unpliant and unforgiving.
Your dry tongue does nothing to aid your parched lips, but it tastes the salt that layers your skin. Your eyes almost water, but you haven't cried yet. You won't cry ever. All you can do is listen to exalted murmurs and rustling robes. You are another broken orphan on these poor streets. People pass by them every day, with faces towards the people in front but never to the side.
There is a man who is not praying at this hour. He walks towards you and you think, no, not again, because you can't even hold your dagger properly. His face is clean, as are his robes. You have never seen a white so pure in your life and for a moment, you remember why you used to pray.
"Child," he crouches, "why do you sit in the dirt with a blade by your feet."
You blink up at him and breathe a little. Something in his eyes solidifies before he picks you and your dagger up. Your skin dirties his white robes, but he appears to give your dirt no notice. Your sweat stings mildly at your eye as he carries you.
You see a blade lunge. You hear your father scream something intelligible.
Your hands threaten to shake, but then you scramble to run. You don't plan to return.
You stand there, beneath robes white like the whites of eyes. You stand there, looking to Al Mualim, waiting for your first mark - your first kill underneath the name of the Assassin's Order.
"Aasim Kazemi. I want you to get close," Al Mualim says, "you must understand, completely, why it is that I ask you to complete this task."
"Get close," he says next, "he has gone through as many summers as you."
With those words, so very suddenly, your gut starts to churn. Pomegranate seeds work their acidic path through your throat. You swallow them down, as you always do, and wonder at the state of the world, giving you a name of one who is like you.
"So young?" You ask.
Al Mualim gives you a strange look, a knowing look. He wouldn't make this easy for you; wouldn't give you the luxury to kill one who is older, easily identifiable as the wrong-doing man on the erroneous side of good. No, your first kill will be one like you – he, who survived eighteen summers, but will not survive a nineteenth.
Without an answer, one that you desperately need but one that you won't receive, you turn your back and raise your white hood. Your blades are hidden. You will get close.
When you first see Aasim Kazemi, you think, no this isn't right; this one is too beautiful to die. He stands in the market, testing the ripeness of an olive-green avocado. He brings it to his nose and checks the smell to see whether or not it is rotten. He pockets the avocado into a bag with the others and hands over some golden coins.
His black hair shines on his head, catches the sun the way the sea used to – a reflection of something powerful and blinding. His eyes rest above slight cheekbones; his lips gleam supple and soft. Freckles line his nose and you first think, no, this can't be right, and then, I need to get closer.
You walk towards the stall, ignore vehemently the fragrant fruit that sit to the right, and smile at Aasim Kazemi as a stranger amongst strangers. Your white robe stands out, separates you from the bustle of the crowd, and catches his eye. He smiles back, something tentative and beautiful. You think that you could come to love this man, under other circumstances.
"And who are you," he wonders.
You say nothing for a beat of silence, think of the proper rules to follow under the gaze of a beautiful man but also as an assassin. You say nothing, and then, "Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad."
He laughs, delighted, "oh, the flying bird without a father! Tell me, Altaïr, does your name ring true?"
Under the gaze of his eyes, you think that anything could be true if he makes it out to be. Your name sounds like a chime falling from his tongue, though you've never known it to be something graceful or hopeful.
"In a manner of sorts," you reply, thinking of the day your father died.
He laughs again and touches the fabric of your robes with his questing fingers. You watch them make a claim to your identity, and you let them.
"I," he says, "am Aasim Kazemi, and I," he continues, "would have you at my house for dinner."
You think his name is without sin or rage. You think, how will I kill this beautiful man?
You and he walk to his house. You watch the streets stretch to accommodate his exuberance and luxury. His hands seem soft, and you know this to be true, because he hasn't worked an hour of his life. Poised and dignified, words overflow and spill from his lips like crashing waves. He questions you with curiosities like, "which fruit is your favorite," "did you know that the sun's path through the sky is eternal, even during the night," and "you truly have no parents to your name?"
His parents welcome you into their home, despite your stubble and dirt. For all that your name means, you feel as though Aasim is the bird always in flight, light on his toes and always in motion. He holds his arm near you when he says, "father, mother, this is Altaïr, and he will stay with us until I say otherwise." He holds his arm near you when you offer to help prepare the avocados and pomegranates, and he steals some of the succulent seeds from the platter on which they rest when you are complete with the task.
When you sit down to eat with Aasim's family you think that you must observe their actions before you claim his life. Al Mualim told you to get close. You will not disappoint.
"You will sleep in my room, with me" Aasim tells you, and you wonder when it came to be that your heart beats dangerously in his presence.
Aasim pulls out a drum the next day, and sits with it in his lap. He raps on its surface with his agile fingertips, and then taps with his knuckles. You watch his hands move to create rhythm with this simple drum. You feel your blood vibrate within your veins and your bones rattle in your body. You have never heard anything so regal and sacred in your life. He watches your watching of him. A smile plays at the corner of his mouth, and you think that you would like to kiss it from his lips. You don't.
"Do you know how to play," he asks you.
"I do not," you respond.
He nods, having expected your answer, and continues to create his divine music.
"I could teach you," he offers, like a secret.
You are rendered immobile. All of the peace you have found listening to his playing leaves you breathless and dazed. Aasim's eyes do not leave yours. They are of a deep brown. You do not think that you have ever seen a brown so deep, you think, and you are the one who lived amongst piles of dirt and shit. You stare for some innumerable moments into his calm gaze. He gives you the time to think over his offer, though he doesn't realize the cost behind it – giving up some part of his self to find life within you.
"I would like that - I - yes," you reply, eventually.
You find solace in his smile like you do with the stars in the night sky. He moves closer to you and places the drum on your legs.
Aasim says, "hold it like this, with the insides of your thighs," while using his fingertips to show you exactly where.
Aasim opens up your right hand with his fingers and says, "use your palm to hit the cover – yes! Exactly like that!" His laugh reminds you of rolling waves before they crash to the shore. His voice is one body of water. His body holds the sea within him.
"Roll your fingers along the lips, here, listen to how it reverberates throughout the drum. This will be your beat, this will be your steady pace while you play," he whispers, and watches your fingers move.
"Little bird," he calls you, one day, "little bird, I have made you flightless by taking you to my home."
You look around, and see the stubble that contours his wide jaw. You look around and see the satin draped across the windows and the beads rolling through the windows. You look around and feel the soft rug beneath your legs, and you wonder when it happened that his home felt like yours, too.
"Walk with me, Altaïr," he says. You stand up to follow his path. It has been a year. You have gotten close, as you were meant to.
Still, your sleeves feel heavy and burdened with their blades.
You walk with Aasim, and you hold his hand. Later, when the two of you are alone and the sky is darkened, you pull him closer. You can taste his breath on your lips, and you can feel the warmth of his hands on your back. You use your fingers to pull out a little blade right by your wrist. As you kiss him once more, you use your blade to swipe it clean across his neck.
His hands make an aborted attempt to rise up to the cut in his throat; his fingers try to close the swelling rivulets of blood sliding down his chest. He stumbles momentarily and falls backwards.
You are covered in his blood. It is done. You take the feather and bloody it. You start making your way back.
Aasim's family is rich. They hold power and sway over the people of this city. Aasim will come into their wealth, one day.
"I often think about the power I will have," he confides in you, thinking your ears to be safe, "and I think I would like to be a warrior."
"A warrior."
"Yes. You know, there are people who would have me killed for it. They think me a dissenter in a time of peace, but I think that we both know that peace is long-gone." Aasim stares at you, and smiles softly.
"You shouldn't say such things," you admonish, thinking of the reason you were sent here, to this place.
"I only mean to keep my people safe," he says, "you should know what safety means to a person; you were a member of the streets, once."
"Yes," you say, "I was, once."
He looks at you, deeply. He looks to your cheeks and fingers before taking them to his lips and kissing them lightly, one kiss for each finger.
"I will keep you safe, my little bird," he promises. You wonder how much longer he will think this. You wonder how much more you could come to love him.
You find yourself in Aasim's bed, early on, kissing him. You open his mouth with your tongue, warm and willing. Kissing Aasim is like a revelation with smooth teeth and an angry idiom.
He holds your face in between his fingertips. You can feel them tremble as they touch your face.
He says, "I thought that you – that we – that –" and you kiss him again. You kiss him until his lips are swollen. You kiss all of his questions clean from his mind; nibble away until the trembling leaves his pure fingers.
You find yourself here, wishing that he will never feel questioned again, that you could protect his bleeding heart forever. Then, you remember the reason you were sent here. That the fates did not smile down upon you for the first time in your life.
You are poor. You always will be. This is only one more thing you will be robbed of.
Your throat is no longer cracked and parched. You have strength to stand once more, and immediately you move towards learning the art of killing.
"Don't be too impatient," you are told, "take your time with the kill; be perfect."
You work on the forms. You spend days perfecting your angles and stances.
"Ah, Altaïr, I had thought that we lost you forever," Al Mualim says to you upon your return.
"So young?" You reply, and Al Mualim smiles, perhaps a bit sadly.
"Do you understand why I told you to get close," he asks you, "do you understand why I made you do it."
You think of Aasim's black hair and tender fingertips. You think that when you sliced his neck open like a pomegranate, you sliced yours open. The difference is that now Aasim is dead, and you are not. You think that you hate Al Mualim with a passion for making you do this deed.
You will never get close again. You know that this is what Al Mualim wanted you to learn, and you hate him for it.
You think: its intimate like this, pushed up against his back, glistening dagger up against his pulse.
You are silent. Subtle. Your marks never make a noise as you carry out your kill. Your form is perfect. You feel nothing, anymore. Each time, when it's all done, you return to the Bureau and play yourself a rhythm on a drum. You play yourself a rhythm to prove to everyone how deeply you feel nothing.
One day, you cry. You eat a pomegranate just so you'd have something tangible to throw up.