DAY 42

Despite the echo of The Man’s good advice, I return to The Messenger’s point of view.

He sits on the opposite end of the private jet, closer to the pilot. Kashif is sitting at the back of the plane, nearly face to face with the child. All The Messenger can hear is, “Cookie. Cookie. Not all done. Cookie.”

Kashif whispers something to him and the child finds it funny, beyond hilarious. He keeps repeating himself: “Cookie, Cookie, all right. All right.”

Kashif leaves him and finds a seat across from The Messenger.

“My instincts aren’t aligning. I feel like we have been tricked, or will be tricked.”

“Should we get him some cookies?”

Kashif does not find this funny. The Messenger reads worry on his face. Now his skin colour is changing. It resembles a shade of green with purple on the edges.

“I don’t want to sound condescending, but I believe it is a matter of faith,” The Messenger hints.

Kashif is listening.

“From my experience, the answer to life’s paradox is faith. Tragedy will become comedy, pain will become love, death will become life, and the only common ingredient is faith that something will happen outside your understanding of it.”

Kashif smirks.

“I have to kill you by my word.”

“I have always had faith you would. I am ready, whenever you are.”

“I am not ready.”

“You want to see if he can save your daughter first. You don’t want to jinx it with more blood on your hands.”

“You have changed,” Kashif interrupts.

“And you are starting to look the same to me,” The Messenger says.

They are quiet for the remainder of the flight. The child is not. He is repeating the same words over and over again and laughing to himself.

When they reach the hospital in Bsharri, Kashif carries him up the stairs. Although the boy is only five years old, he is heavy as he straps himself to Kashif’s torso with an octopus grip.

Kashif’s daughter is right where they left her. She is lying in her coma, asleep. The room is clean of footprints. The Messenger glances around with the expectation of seeing Sabal, except she has disappeared for good. Even her memory is disappearing into a mythical reference or lesson.

The child is relentless.

“Cookie, cookie, cookie. All done now.”

Kashif places him on his daughter’s bed and the boy reaches back. He doesn’t want to stay. He has a goal in mind and it appears to have chocolate chips. For some reason, The Messenger imagines the boy’s favourite cookie as chocolate chip.

“What do I do?”

This is the first question Kashif has ever asked The Messenger. He is confused. He doesn’t know all of the answers and by virtue of that fact, he isn’t invincible to himself anymore. He is vulnerable in this moment, exposed for his humanity. He doesn’t know how to communicate to this child with a mental disability, with physical disabilities, and his lack of faith overpowers his accumulated strengths. In The Messenger’s eyes, his ­murderer will find it difficult to commit the act now. If anything, Kashif is self-afflicted, unsure, reborn you could argue, or just mortal.

The Messenger has no answers either. He tries to help Kashif force the boy to touch his daughter’s nimble arm. The boy is resistant. He wants a cookie. He wants it all done, as he puts it. He introduces a new demand.

“Ride in the truck. Ride in the truck.”

This request confuses Kashif some more. He didn’t expect this challenge. His instincts didn’t prepare him to take care of a disabled child. Everything is uncertain now. Everything is fear in the moment. The possibility of his daughter dying from her terminal disease. The possibility of not saving her. The possibility she is dying because of his sins. His faith in karma above a real creator.

“Help me,” he says out loud.

It is then the boy becomes quiet. His slanted eyes become watery just as Kashif’s eyes do the same. The Messenger realizes the boy with Down syndrome is sensitive to Kashif’s weakness. When a tear drops from Kashif’s eyes, an ocean blankets the boy’s face. His nose sniffles. He reaches for Kashif’s much maligned face and with his awkwardly shaped fingers, which resemble fleshy claws, he pats him on the cheek. He then reaches for Kashif to embrace him again. Kashif lifts him off the bed. He is crying into the boy’s shoulders. He is squeezing him tightly, for life. The air in the room is heavy with silence but for the choppy exhale of breaths from the both of them. The Messenger can hear Kashif whispering in a singing voice to the boy.

“Here I am, Lord. It is I, Lord. I have heard you calling in the night.”

As if listening in on the song as well, one her father must have heard countless times as he hid amongst his Catholic enemies, her eyes open. They are glossy and black. She sees him with the boy. She recognizes the voice above the face or she is just watching the impenetrable embrace. She doesn’t signal awareness until she rises to the sitting position.

Kashif doesn’t notice his daughter is awake until The Messenger forces his attention with his eyes.

The boy talks. “Cookie now. Cookie now? All right. All right.”

He chuckles to himself and doesn’t let Kashif see his daughter. Wherever Kashif’s face moves, so does the boy’s in this childish game. He wants assurance.

“Yes. Yes. Cookie, yes.”

The boy releases his grip and his weight collapses to the floor. There, he claps his claw like hands in glee. He repeats the words again.

“Cookie. Cookie. Cookie. Yay!”

It is then the space is interrupted by an intruder. I don’t see him coming. Neither does The Messenger, because he wouldn’t be able to recognize him. He enters the room nonetheless. It is The Man. I try my best to delete what I am about to write before I write it but my fingers hold the story now outside my brain and heart’s control of it.

The Man is dressed in a brand new three piece suit—black. His silver pocket watch is exposed and glimmering. In the silence of the stare, the one between Kashif and his daughter—that one, permanent, recognizable stare—The Man walks up to Kashif, pulls a gun from behind his back and puts a bullet in his head.

Kashif collapses to the floor as the child had. The sound of his weight dropping dull and dead.

The Man stares at The Messenger and The Messenger is fully aware he will be shot next. He wasn’t allowed to see him in the first place. Now he can paint a description of the Man’s face. His skin is pocked and his chin is sharp and the man appears to be missing a part of his tongue.

This Man is The Military Man from Kashif’s childhood story. The one who stole him from his home, made him kill his own brother. The one who trained his instincts, who hardened him against the world so he could break it into pieces one day with fear and terror. This is The Military Man who has returned to destroy his creation.

The Man points the gun at The Messenger.

The Child asks for more cookies.

The Daughter believes she is in a dream.

And his last words spill out.

“I’m sorry.”

Instead of firing, the Man buries the gun in his pocket, lifts the child from the floor and leaves through the door from which he came. On the child’s shoes is the blood of the murderer he could have saved if there was only enough faith in the room.

Kashif’s daughter finally sees The Messenger in the room. She lies her head down on the pillow and closes her eyes.