Steampunk AH in the Philippines
The Marauders of Mindanao
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The Marauders of Mindanao
- Location
- Arlington, Virginia
Note - this was originally written for the Sea Lion Press vignette competition with the theme of 'two-fisted tales.' The resemblance to early twentieth-century pulp stories is very deliberate.
The two American guards stood on the walls of the camp, looking for any sign of trouble. They had been promised adventure and luxury, and all they had gotten was heat and sweat.
To keep awake, they sang:
Neither of them would ever have expected that their deaths would come by the swift application of yo-yos.
From strings held taut in the hands of the Moros in the trees, the wooden orbs bashed into their heads. With the skill of a puppeteer, the insurgents wrapped the strings around their necks, still at quite the distance, and choked the two Americans to their deaths. The last thing they saw were brave Moro warriors leaping down onto the walls.
Amir wound up his yo-yo and put it in a pouch. Sali, his closest friend and comrade in arms, did the same. In their place, the two men brandished their kampilans, longswords found all over the Philippines.
All around them descended more brave Moros.
In the camps, they saw the cowed, the afraid, their fellow Moros locked away by their colonizers. There were the elderly and the women and the infants. They were imprisoned in a suburb of hell.
The Americans fell down like a house of cards. "For freedom!" yelled the Moros.
Many miles away, a shadow loomed over Mindanao. It was followed by other shadows, forming a fleet that blocked out the sun.
For that is what it was: a fleet. From their hulls draped the Stars and Stripes. On their prows were the insignias of the United States Balloon Corps.
On the bridge of one of these airships, these floating leviathans, a white man sat at his chair, overlooking the forest below. His office was filled with trophies of past expeditions. A map and a taxidermied deer's head hung on the wall.
Another white man, this one in a uniform, approached him.
"General Smith," said the man at the chair. "Have you news?"
"Yes, sir. Very good news."
"And this would be?"
"We've found it! The Philippine Scouts have finally found the location of the palace of the Sultan of Maitum, and the Egg of Pah with it! With your permission - shall I give the order to move on the palace?"
The man in the chair swiveled it towards General Smith. He peered through his glasses, his dress impeccable.
"Bully," responded President Roosevelt.
The raiders had come with food. In their long war with the Americans, they had learned that there were many starving people in the reconcentration camps. They were brazen attempts to make any insurgency wither.
The people of Mindanao withered with it.
Amir and Sali went through the cells, breaking chains and locks. Gaunt Moros clambered out.
Amir opened the cell for a young woman, no older than twenty-five. She looked at him, at first with trepidation, and then with shock.
"Is there something wrong?" asked Amir.
"Where did you get that scar?" the woman asked as she pointed to his forehead.
For as long as he could remember, Amir had a gash on his forehead shaped like a crescent, the points towards his scalp.
"I've never known a life without it."
"Who were your parents?"
"I never knew them well. I was raised by an imam who had a mosque in the forests. He never liked to talk about our family, but he said my parents were good people."
"Was the imam's name Farouk?
Amir's eyes lit up. "He was!"
"Brother!" she exclaimed, and hugged him.
"But I have no idea who you are!"
"My name is Zahara. I am your sister. You're also a prince."
"I'm sorry, but this is a lot to take in. I'm the last surviving prince of a sultanate destroyed by the Spanish, you're my sister, Farouk was the court imam, and you were raised by the cook?"
"Pretty much."
Amir was flummoxed. "Furthermore, you tell me that I'm now the rightful Sultan of Maitum, a guardian of the Egg of Pah, and that I'm expected by the remnants of the royal court? Am I following you correctly?"
"Yes."
"And that you're going to take me there?"
"Yes."
"At least let Sali come with me!"
When Mindanao was not being bombarded and plundered by colonizers, it was a beautiful place, a serene place. The forests teemed with life. Birds sang songs far more joyous than the war would suggest.
How Amir wished that he could have lived in that world, of peace, and not the violent world of men.
As they drew closer to the Sultan's palace, a grisly spectacle met them: corpses of Moros dangling from branches. Many were charred, and some of their crotches were bloodied.
The traces of American boots lay in the ground as the whir of American gyrocopters buzzed around them.
They trekked up Mount Melibengoy. They prayed their daily prayers.
The first sign of the palace was a gate at the walls that surrounded the crater.
"Who goes there?" bellowed a guard.
"My name is Amir. Apparently, I'm supposed to be a prince."
"Step up. Let me see you."
Amir did so. His scar was visible in the light of the afternoon.
The guard gasped. He called the other guards, and pointed to them. They were ecstatic. Up they drew the winches, and they beckoned in the small party.
In the crater atop Mount Melibengoy was a city of wood. Its buildings had wide windows, ever necessary in the heat, and pyramidal rooftops. It smelled of the burnt coconut broth ubiquitous in the cuisine of the island, and of many different types of meat.
"Only recently have they rebuilt all this," said Zahara. "The Spanish thought it was demonic. They should have known that we consider them people of the Book."
As if on cue, the sun was blotted out, briefly, by a gigantic bird.
The jubilation of the new sultan's arrival was palpable. The ceremony they had was ornate, and their imam personally delivered a sermon on his coronation.
"What's the giant egg?" asked Amir. The egg was given pride of place in the throne room, standing proudly albeit without explanation.
"Farouk really didn't tell you much, did he?" remarked Zahara. "It's the egg of Pah - you saw him flying over when you arrived. He guards this place. This place was founded by an ancient warrior, Indapatra, whose brother Sulayman slayed Pah, who comes back to life from an egg if he dies." She gestured to the egg.
"Pah was impressed by Sulayman's bravery, and realized the error of his ways when God provided a jar of water for Indrapatra so that he could bring his brother back to life. Now, Pah looks over our Sultanate as guardian."
"And I take it that I'm descended from Indrapatra?"
"We are all descended from him."
Amir was going to ask another question, but a messenger ran into the room.
"Your highness! Your highness! We are in deep trouble! Our scouts have detected the Americans!"
The Balloon Corps had found the location of Mount Melibengoy. Marines had been dropped all around the island. Artillery emplacements had dug in.
The Marines marched in formation up to the gate, the Stars and Stripes flying high.
Roosevelt turned to his general. "Bully! How beautiful. I have waited so long to add this egg to my collection. Wouldn't it look marvelous in my collection in New York, General?"
Smith nodded. "Just give the order, sir."
"Do it," growled the Vice President. "I want my egg."
The general stepped up to the airship's loudspeaker.
The Americans were restless. Their uniforms itched, and they sweated and stank under the scorching sun. It felt to them that the whole enterprise was a miserable lie.
And then came the stentorian voice, as if from all around them:
"I want no prisoners! I wish you to kill and burn. The more you kill and burn, the better it will please me. The interior of this crater must be made a howling wilderness!"
As their grandfathers had done to the Indians, and their fathers had done to the blacks, the flames of hatred burned in the eyes of the white men, pointing them in one direction: into the crater, to kill and burn, to make the wilderness howl.
Like Pah before them, the airships swallowed the sun.
Fire fell from the sky, from the airships and from the artillery. Amir thanked God that his men had lantakas, the Moro's very own guns. The lantakas fired into the air from their emplacements, sending American gyrocopters aiming for the crater careening into the ground.
All the warriors of the Sultanate of Maitum came to battle, armed with swords and guns and yo-yos.
Amir's friend Sali was among them. To his surprise, Sali no longer had any hair. He was clad in robes.
Amir's fear turned to sadness. "You wouldn't…"
"I would. It is an honor to give my life for a rightful Sultan like you, one who would defend us against invaders." His sword gleamed in his hands.
"May God bless you," replied the new Sultan.
Amir had thought he had known battle before this. He had attacked American encampments and freed Moros from their camps.
This was different. The noise from the lantakas and the American guns was like the crackling of a campfire, only a thousand times louder.
The Americans charged the gate, or tried to. They were held up by a web of string that had spat out when the Moros used their yo-yos. The Americans did their best to break out. Before they did, many Moros, including the robed, shaved men who now counted Sali among their number, hacked off many of their heads.
Amir thought Sali would make it. The righteous anger of a juramentado, however, was not enough for an American land ironclad. It belched steam into the air as it battered down the walls.
"Retreat!" yelled Amir.
As they ran back, away from the land ironclad, they saw what looked to be their salvation. Pah, the gigantic bird, was ripping their airships to ribbons. The impact of their hulls was like the beating of massive drums.
That is, until one of the airships fired one of its guns in just the right place, and Pah fell.
But, as Zahara said, Pah comes back.
There was only one option: retreat. The heroic Moros treaded back to the walls of the palace itself, the lantakas providing cover fire until they were obliterated by airship fire.
One, two, three Americans with heads impaled by Amir's kampilan. Four, five, six, more. The chaos became a whir, a haze of violence and death.
An airship came down in the palace, and out of it streamed marines. Amir saw one American dart into the throne room, while one in a fancy uniform stayed in the line of fire to command.
Unfortunately for the Americans, they were outgunned. The few remaining juramentados gave their lives to clear the way for Amir.
The man in the fancy uniform pulled up a pistol.
Without ceremony, the Sultan's kampilan went right through the head of General Jacob Smith.
One on one.
Sultan versus President.
Amir versus Theodore.
The Sultan drew his kampilan. The President drew his sword, the sword with which he conquered Cuba.
"Have you ever heard of Rudyard Kipling? He is a writer." asked the President.
"I don't have time for literature," replied the Sultan. "I have spent too much time trying to survive the likes of you."
"That's a shame," replied the President. "He wrote words that really spoke to me." He advanced towards the Sultan. "Take up the white man's burden, send forth the best ye breed..."
He began to recite this poetry as he slashed at the Sultan. He parried and ducked and dove and struck as the President tried to dismember him.
As he did so, he noticed the egg stirring.
"In patience to abide…" The Sultan aimed for the President's feet, and made him stumble.
"The savage wars of peace…" The Sultan figured out his winning move. He pressed towards the President, who parried.
"No tawdry rule of kings…" The egg began to shake violently.
"Take up the white man's burden - and reap his own reward, the blame of those ye better, the hate of those ye guard…"
The President's back was to the egg. He was still enraptured in the poem, reciting it with great gusto up until the very moment that Pah jumped out of the egg and devoured the President whole.
The Sultan and his sister both gave eulogies for the battle. Without ceremony, they buried all their dead, as is their custom.
As they dug into the night, they heard the call of the muezzin from the one minaret on Mount Melibengoy:
"Hasten to prayer! Hasten to salvation! Hasten to the best of deeds!"
This is the part of the obvious subversion of pulp tropes when I tell you that more of this is based in reality than you think. That being said, a lot of this is a merger of various elements in Mindanao and the broader Philippines in the early twentieth century. I am not Moro; my father is white and my mother comes from a wealthy family in Imus, in Cavite province, south of Manila on Luzon.
The song sung in the very beginning by the American troops is real. Likewise, the camp that is liberated is based on the real American 'reconcentration camps' in the Philippine-American War. The phrase 'suburbs of hell' comes from a camp commandant describing his trade.
It is said by many that yo-yos were invented by Filipinos as a weapon, wielded from trees; that said, that is hotly contested by historians. In any case, I felt it fit the tone of a pulp story.
The United States Balloon Corps was briefly real, during the Civil War; I visited the remnants of its headquarters, Fort Corcoran, not too long ago. It is now a forest park nestled between a car dealership and a cemetery. There, I saw the remnants of drinking and carousing in the night. There, I was inspired to do something with it, but what that exactly was did not come to be until this story. Here, I made it far more powerful than it ever really was.
'Maitum' is the name of a town in southern Mindanao of no huge importance; I cribbed its name after looking at the island on Google Maps. Similarly, Mount Melibengoy is real, although its crater is in reality host to a lake. The settlement described there is influenced by Darul Jambangan, the royal palace of the Sultanate of Sulu on the island of that name. The Battle of Mount Melibengoy in this story is based loosely on the Bud Dajo massacre, where the United States Army slaughtered Moro civilians in a crater.
The story of Pah, which I worked into the story of the Sultanate of Maitum, is based on real Moro folklore.
The practice of Sali having his hair removed and then being sent to die fighting the enemies of Islam is based on the Moro practice of juramentados.
The kampilan is a real Moro sword. The lantaka is a real Moro gun, although to my understanding it was mostly a naval gun. A demonstration thereof can be seen here.
General Jacob Smith was a real Marine general; a cursory perusal of the Wikipedia page on the March across Samar should reveal why I took so much pleasure in killing him.
The last line of the story is derived from the Adhan, the Muslim call to prayer.
The two American guards stood on the walls of the camp, looking for any sign of trouble. They had been promised adventure and luxury, and all they had gotten was heat and sweat.
To keep awake, they sang:
Oh, the monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga,
Oh, the monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga,
Oh, the monkeys have no tails,
They were bitten off by whales,
Oh, the monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga!
Oh, the monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga,
Oh, the monkeys have no tails,
They were bitten off by whales,
Oh, the monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga!
Neither of them would ever have expected that their deaths would come by the swift application of yo-yos.
From strings held taut in the hands of the Moros in the trees, the wooden orbs bashed into their heads. With the skill of a puppeteer, the insurgents wrapped the strings around their necks, still at quite the distance, and choked the two Americans to their deaths. The last thing they saw were brave Moro warriors leaping down onto the walls.
Amir wound up his yo-yo and put it in a pouch. Sali, his closest friend and comrade in arms, did the same. In their place, the two men brandished their kampilans, longswords found all over the Philippines.
All around them descended more brave Moros.
In the camps, they saw the cowed, the afraid, their fellow Moros locked away by their colonizers. There were the elderly and the women and the infants. They were imprisoned in a suburb of hell.
The Americans fell down like a house of cards. "For freedom!" yelled the Moros.
. . .
Many miles away, a shadow loomed over Mindanao. It was followed by other shadows, forming a fleet that blocked out the sun.
For that is what it was: a fleet. From their hulls draped the Stars and Stripes. On their prows were the insignias of the United States Balloon Corps.
On the bridge of one of these airships, these floating leviathans, a white man sat at his chair, overlooking the forest below. His office was filled with trophies of past expeditions. A map and a taxidermied deer's head hung on the wall.
Another white man, this one in a uniform, approached him.
"General Smith," said the man at the chair. "Have you news?"
"Yes, sir. Very good news."
"And this would be?"
"We've found it! The Philippine Scouts have finally found the location of the palace of the Sultan of Maitum, and the Egg of Pah with it! With your permission - shall I give the order to move on the palace?"
The man in the chair swiveled it towards General Smith. He peered through his glasses, his dress impeccable.
"Bully," responded President Roosevelt.
. . .
The raiders had come with food. In their long war with the Americans, they had learned that there were many starving people in the reconcentration camps. They were brazen attempts to make any insurgency wither.
The people of Mindanao withered with it.
Amir and Sali went through the cells, breaking chains and locks. Gaunt Moros clambered out.
Amir opened the cell for a young woman, no older than twenty-five. She looked at him, at first with trepidation, and then with shock.
"Is there something wrong?" asked Amir.
"Where did you get that scar?" the woman asked as she pointed to his forehead.
For as long as he could remember, Amir had a gash on his forehead shaped like a crescent, the points towards his scalp.
"I've never known a life without it."
"Who were your parents?"
"I never knew them well. I was raised by an imam who had a mosque in the forests. He never liked to talk about our family, but he said my parents were good people."
"Was the imam's name Farouk?
Amir's eyes lit up. "He was!"
"Brother!" she exclaimed, and hugged him.
"But I have no idea who you are!"
"My name is Zahara. I am your sister. You're also a prince."
. . .
"I'm sorry, but this is a lot to take in. I'm the last surviving prince of a sultanate destroyed by the Spanish, you're my sister, Farouk was the court imam, and you were raised by the cook?"
"Pretty much."
Amir was flummoxed. "Furthermore, you tell me that I'm now the rightful Sultan of Maitum, a guardian of the Egg of Pah, and that I'm expected by the remnants of the royal court? Am I following you correctly?"
"Yes."
"And that you're going to take me there?"
"Yes."
"At least let Sali come with me!"
. . .
When Mindanao was not being bombarded and plundered by colonizers, it was a beautiful place, a serene place. The forests teemed with life. Birds sang songs far more joyous than the war would suggest.
How Amir wished that he could have lived in that world, of peace, and not the violent world of men.
As they drew closer to the Sultan's palace, a grisly spectacle met them: corpses of Moros dangling from branches. Many were charred, and some of their crotches were bloodied.
The traces of American boots lay in the ground as the whir of American gyrocopters buzzed around them.
. . .
They trekked up Mount Melibengoy. They prayed their daily prayers.
The first sign of the palace was a gate at the walls that surrounded the crater.
"Who goes there?" bellowed a guard.
"My name is Amir. Apparently, I'm supposed to be a prince."
"Step up. Let me see you."
Amir did so. His scar was visible in the light of the afternoon.
The guard gasped. He called the other guards, and pointed to them. They were ecstatic. Up they drew the winches, and they beckoned in the small party.
In the crater atop Mount Melibengoy was a city of wood. Its buildings had wide windows, ever necessary in the heat, and pyramidal rooftops. It smelled of the burnt coconut broth ubiquitous in the cuisine of the island, and of many different types of meat.
"Only recently have they rebuilt all this," said Zahara. "The Spanish thought it was demonic. They should have known that we consider them people of the Book."
As if on cue, the sun was blotted out, briefly, by a gigantic bird.
. . .
The jubilation of the new sultan's arrival was palpable. The ceremony they had was ornate, and their imam personally delivered a sermon on his coronation.
"What's the giant egg?" asked Amir. The egg was given pride of place in the throne room, standing proudly albeit without explanation.
"Farouk really didn't tell you much, did he?" remarked Zahara. "It's the egg of Pah - you saw him flying over when you arrived. He guards this place. This place was founded by an ancient warrior, Indapatra, whose brother Sulayman slayed Pah, who comes back to life from an egg if he dies." She gestured to the egg.
"Pah was impressed by Sulayman's bravery, and realized the error of his ways when God provided a jar of water for Indrapatra so that he could bring his brother back to life. Now, Pah looks over our Sultanate as guardian."
"And I take it that I'm descended from Indrapatra?"
"We are all descended from him."
Amir was going to ask another question, but a messenger ran into the room.
"Your highness! Your highness! We are in deep trouble! Our scouts have detected the Americans!"
. . .
The Balloon Corps had found the location of Mount Melibengoy. Marines had been dropped all around the island. Artillery emplacements had dug in.
The Marines marched in formation up to the gate, the Stars and Stripes flying high.
Roosevelt turned to his general. "Bully! How beautiful. I have waited so long to add this egg to my collection. Wouldn't it look marvelous in my collection in New York, General?"
Smith nodded. "Just give the order, sir."
"Do it," growled the Vice President. "I want my egg."
The general stepped up to the airship's loudspeaker.
. . .
The Americans were restless. Their uniforms itched, and they sweated and stank under the scorching sun. It felt to them that the whole enterprise was a miserable lie.
And then came the stentorian voice, as if from all around them:
"I want no prisoners! I wish you to kill and burn. The more you kill and burn, the better it will please me. The interior of this crater must be made a howling wilderness!"
As their grandfathers had done to the Indians, and their fathers had done to the blacks, the flames of hatred burned in the eyes of the white men, pointing them in one direction: into the crater, to kill and burn, to make the wilderness howl.
. . .
Like Pah before them, the airships swallowed the sun.
Fire fell from the sky, from the airships and from the artillery. Amir thanked God that his men had lantakas, the Moro's very own guns. The lantakas fired into the air from their emplacements, sending American gyrocopters aiming for the crater careening into the ground.
All the warriors of the Sultanate of Maitum came to battle, armed with swords and guns and yo-yos.
Amir's friend Sali was among them. To his surprise, Sali no longer had any hair. He was clad in robes.
Amir's fear turned to sadness. "You wouldn't…"
"I would. It is an honor to give my life for a rightful Sultan like you, one who would defend us against invaders." His sword gleamed in his hands.
"May God bless you," replied the new Sultan.
. . .
Amir had thought he had known battle before this. He had attacked American encampments and freed Moros from their camps.
This was different. The noise from the lantakas and the American guns was like the crackling of a campfire, only a thousand times louder.
The Americans charged the gate, or tried to. They were held up by a web of string that had spat out when the Moros used their yo-yos. The Americans did their best to break out. Before they did, many Moros, including the robed, shaved men who now counted Sali among their number, hacked off many of their heads.
Amir thought Sali would make it. The righteous anger of a juramentado, however, was not enough for an American land ironclad. It belched steam into the air as it battered down the walls.
"Retreat!" yelled Amir.
As they ran back, away from the land ironclad, they saw what looked to be their salvation. Pah, the gigantic bird, was ripping their airships to ribbons. The impact of their hulls was like the beating of massive drums.
That is, until one of the airships fired one of its guns in just the right place, and Pah fell.
But, as Zahara said, Pah comes back.
. . .
There was only one option: retreat. The heroic Moros treaded back to the walls of the palace itself, the lantakas providing cover fire until they were obliterated by airship fire.
One, two, three Americans with heads impaled by Amir's kampilan. Four, five, six, more. The chaos became a whir, a haze of violence and death.
An airship came down in the palace, and out of it streamed marines. Amir saw one American dart into the throne room, while one in a fancy uniform stayed in the line of fire to command.
Unfortunately for the Americans, they were outgunned. The few remaining juramentados gave their lives to clear the way for Amir.
The man in the fancy uniform pulled up a pistol.
Without ceremony, the Sultan's kampilan went right through the head of General Jacob Smith.
. . .
One on one.
Sultan versus President.
Amir versus Theodore.
The Sultan drew his kampilan. The President drew his sword, the sword with which he conquered Cuba.
"Have you ever heard of Rudyard Kipling? He is a writer." asked the President.
"I don't have time for literature," replied the Sultan. "I have spent too much time trying to survive the likes of you."
"That's a shame," replied the President. "He wrote words that really spoke to me." He advanced towards the Sultan. "Take up the white man's burden, send forth the best ye breed..."
He began to recite this poetry as he slashed at the Sultan. He parried and ducked and dove and struck as the President tried to dismember him.
As he did so, he noticed the egg stirring.
"In patience to abide…" The Sultan aimed for the President's feet, and made him stumble.
"The savage wars of peace…" The Sultan figured out his winning move. He pressed towards the President, who parried.
"No tawdry rule of kings…" The egg began to shake violently.
"Take up the white man's burden - and reap his own reward, the blame of those ye better, the hate of those ye guard…"
The President's back was to the egg. He was still enraptured in the poem, reciting it with great gusto up until the very moment that Pah jumped out of the egg and devoured the President whole.
. . .
The Sultan and his sister both gave eulogies for the battle. Without ceremony, they buried all their dead, as is their custom.
As they dug into the night, they heard the call of the muezzin from the one minaret on Mount Melibengoy:
"Hasten to prayer! Hasten to salvation! Hasten to the best of deeds!"
Afterword:
This is the part of the obvious subversion of pulp tropes when I tell you that more of this is based in reality than you think. That being said, a lot of this is a merger of various elements in Mindanao and the broader Philippines in the early twentieth century. I am not Moro; my father is white and my mother comes from a wealthy family in Imus, in Cavite province, south of Manila on Luzon.
The song sung in the very beginning by the American troops is real. Likewise, the camp that is liberated is based on the real American 'reconcentration camps' in the Philippine-American War. The phrase 'suburbs of hell' comes from a camp commandant describing his trade.
It is said by many that yo-yos were invented by Filipinos as a weapon, wielded from trees; that said, that is hotly contested by historians. In any case, I felt it fit the tone of a pulp story.
The United States Balloon Corps was briefly real, during the Civil War; I visited the remnants of its headquarters, Fort Corcoran, not too long ago. It is now a forest park nestled between a car dealership and a cemetery. There, I saw the remnants of drinking and carousing in the night. There, I was inspired to do something with it, but what that exactly was did not come to be until this story. Here, I made it far more powerful than it ever really was.
'Maitum' is the name of a town in southern Mindanao of no huge importance; I cribbed its name after looking at the island on Google Maps. Similarly, Mount Melibengoy is real, although its crater is in reality host to a lake. The settlement described there is influenced by Darul Jambangan, the royal palace of the Sultanate of Sulu on the island of that name. The Battle of Mount Melibengoy in this story is based loosely on the Bud Dajo massacre, where the United States Army slaughtered Moro civilians in a crater.
The story of Pah, which I worked into the story of the Sultanate of Maitum, is based on real Moro folklore.
The practice of Sali having his hair removed and then being sent to die fighting the enemies of Islam is based on the Moro practice of juramentados.
The kampilan is a real Moro sword. The lantaka is a real Moro gun, although to my understanding it was mostly a naval gun. A demonstration thereof can be seen here.
General Jacob Smith was a real Marine general; a cursory perusal of the Wikipedia page on the March across Samar should reveal why I took so much pleasure in killing him.
The last line of the story is derived from the Adhan, the Muslim call to prayer.
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