Author's Note
I want to keep this brief. First of all my apologies that this was such a long time coming. I never lost my passion for this tale or for these characters, I merely focused my writing elsewhere for a while (a long while, sadly). I also want to send out a huge thank you to all my reviewers, those who have stayed with the story in my absence and those new readers whose support contributed to my return. It means the world to me.
So yes, this is the long-awaited sequel to Wash Away and for those of you who have not read that story I strongly suggest you do. Welcome back and please enjoy.
There were many secrets in the sands of the Sahara desert, but often they were considered little more than the wild whisperings of lost souls. Indeed, such people felt at a home here in the despairing, desolate expanse for they believed that what they bled into the sand would die there, forsaking all other oaths and bonds. So while rumours travelled on the wind to every city and sandy cesspit the locals dared call home, they were merely tall tales on which nothing ought to be wasted but a passing fancy.
It was for this reason that a man of the west, a man with a large camera hanging from his neck in a not so subtle display of his intent, was not simply ignored but largely reviled, and also why his inability to find the answers he sought had little whatsoever to do with the rather sizeable language barrier. The Arabic word for outsider sounded somewhat like phlegm caught at the back of someone's throat, and it was with his last desperate thread of hope that Timothy Franklin clung to the idea that it was the language itself that was to blame and not his intrusion.
By the end of his second month in the broken city of Béchar, that hope had all but fled. His purse was running empty; the hot, sleepless nights were beginning to take their toll; and he was about as close to an epiphany as he was to the sea. There was an old proverb that originated in this town that spoke of the hell he had fallen into. Roughly translated it said: if you do not find despair here then surely despair will find you. Everything was a joke to these people. Everything and nothing.
So he did as he was accustomed – he quit. Marriage, fatherhood, friendship had all been dropped rather easily and unceremoniously from his life, and so he saw little harm in throwing obligation on the pyre. Such reckless disregard for his own future was not a matter to be taken lightly. In fact, Timothy believed such an occasion ought to be commemorated with a toast. And so he crawled towards the nearest and, coincidentally, filthiest watering hole in the area, ordered up a glass of what tasted like snake's piss and raised it into the air.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he bellowed, spilling liquor onto his sleeve as he swayed his arm about, "whilst none of you can understand me I have, over the last month or so, grown a place in my heart just for you." He took a swallow of the drink, grimaced, and continued his toast. "A place containing an unreserved hatred of every single miserable soul in this shithole of a town." He stayed silent then, at least until he had downed the snake piss. Then he stood once more, held open his arms and said in a most jovial tone, a tone punctuated by an ear to ear smile, "May you all suffer and die in the most horrific ways imaginable."
If anyone there was familiar with Timothy's native tongue they kept it close to their chest. His outburst was as trivial to them as the ghosts he chased. They watched him leave, they made their quiet jokes, but what they had not expected was for him to stop by the door, going quite still – rigid, almost – and staring across the room at an old blind man with bandages around his eyes to protect what health he had left from the unforgiving elements.
Timothy approached slowly, almost tiptoeing as if with any sudden exertion his heart would explode. There on the old man's hand and practically winking at him it was… hope, for lack of a word that better suited their surroundings. He fell into the seat opposite the old man and Timothy was scarcely breathing, stunned as he was and suddenly without the wherewithal to even acknowledge the man's quiet, lilting tone – Arabic, of course, but no doubt aimed in his direction.
As with anything of value in an impoverished town, the contrast was quite incredible. Timothy touched the old man's hand and squeezed gently when he felt resistance. It was a risky move in a hostile place, but just as readily as he quit, he was prepared to embrace this hope and burn if cruel fate deemed it necessary. The old man stayed his hand and when Timothy lightly squeezed his finger and prodded the silver ring attached then he began to speak in Arabic, and though quiet and foreign to his ears it was undoubtedly a rant. He listened, he listened like a man who hadn't listened in months, for so surrounded was he by hostility and foreign tongues, and eventually a pattern began to emerge, a collection of sounds he recognised only in repetition. And when the man had stopped, and this was only after quite some time, Timothy repeated these words as best as he could, desperately urging the old man, trying for the first time ever to bridge that language barrier and make sense of this, his only hope.
With his eyes concealed, and the lower half of face thick covered by a bushy beard, facial expressions were particularly difficult to decipher. The reaction to those repeated words, however, could not be misconstrued, and it was with disgust and disdain, but always a lingering note of fear, that he opened his mouth to continue. But Timothy averted his eyes, he peered downwards at the old man's hand and his finger wrapped in the finest silver – silver carved into the meandering shape of a serpent, and in that serpent's eye an emerald jewel, and in its mouth, about to be devoured, the silver letter M.
Then the words crashed over him like waves lapping at the shore for he was too fragile, too easily moved, but make no mistake he heard. Still, his silence was suffocating and so the old man, sensing this, reached out, squeezed Timothy's hand and uttered those words again.
"The white devil."