Читать книгу Rayan - Son of the Desert - Indira Jackson - Страница 28

When the doorbell rang the General himself opened the door. Four weeks had passed since the death of his daughter Clara - four weeks, one day and two hours.

Immediately after receiving the message, he and his wife hurried to the hospital of the base, where Clara’s body had been brought.

He took a last look at his daughter but prevented his wife from doing the same. It had been the most terrible Christmas and New Year’s Eve they had ever had.

He had not seen Yasin once in all that time. Clara’s friend had not even come to her funeral. However, the general was not sure about his tribe’s customs regarding saying a last farewell to the dead and therefore he tried to not blame the boy.

Even in the base no one had seen him since that day and he had not come back to his job as a guide. The responsible sergeant regretted the loss of this particularly able guide a lot, but he was used to having to find replacements from one day to the next. In comparison to other jobs the army paid fairly well and, more importantly, always on time and therefore the positions were sought after a lot.

Jack sent most of his servants away to take a prolonged vacation because what his wife needed right now was peace.

Only a housekeeper came several times per week, who also cooked their meals for them.

Julie, when he made her go outside, sometimes sat in the garden and stared for hours at the same spot. Apart from that, she did not leave her room at all. From time to time the doctor checked in on her, but besides giving her some tranquilizers he could do nothing for her.

What was bothering the general most of all was that all the research on the background of the explosion or to find the perpetrators had led to nothing. That topic was on his mind as he dragged open the door. To his utter surprise Yasin stood in front of him; yet he barely recognised him. The boy seemed to have neither shaved for weeks nor washed himself. His clothes were in rags and dirty; his hair was shaggy. He could not have eaten a lot as he had visibly lost weight, which intensified the run-down state of his garments. His eyes lay deep within their sockets and had a fierce, almost insane shine.

Even though Yasin’s appearance was alarming and his sudden showing-up after so many weeks was more than a little suspicious, the general ignored this and waved him inside without saying anything.

He was glad that his wife was upstairs in her bedroom, fast asleep. This entrance would surely have been too much for her strained nerves.

They had barely walked into the living room when suddenly Yasin blurted out all about the events he had experienced. He was talking in a strange mixture of Arabic and English, which was another sign of his completely disoriented state of mind. Stammering he whispered in a hoarse voice: "I have found them – those pigs! They were just about to build a new bomb … I talked them out of it…“, he giggled like a lunatic. “I have killed them all!”

Then he suddenly grabbed the General’s shirt with unexpected strength: "Do you understand?! I have avenged her!! I have avenged Clara!“

Jack calmly grabbed Yasin’s hands and freed them from his shirt. It slowly dawned on him what It slowly dawned on Jack what the boy’s stammering actually meant. Could it be true? He was just thinking about how to get further information out of Yasin and wanted to ask him some questions, but at that moment the boy just fainted silently and collapsed on the ground.