“Today, we know that this country is inhabited

by two races of people. The first is the spectral-eyed*

race who live in this town, and the second

is the gray-eyed race who live in neighboring villages.

However, there used to be a third human race living

in this country, specifically in this town, known as

the black-eyed race. Because they weren’t able to live a

happy life, many members of that race were ending their

lives—and for some at a very young age. This made their

population shrink significantly over time. To avoid losing

them completely, the country council at that time issued

a law prohibiting them from ending their lives before

completing the age of twenty-five. The council hoped that

________________

* A spectral color is any color (or color gradient) of the traditional

colors (the colors of the visible spectrum) except for white,

black, and gray.

the victims would change their minds by then. They also issued another law that mandated the tool of ending their lives to be an extremely painful poison made by me so that the fear of pain would make them give up the decision. However, these laws did not help much in stopping them from ending their lives, and the population of the third race continued to collapse until only a husband, his wife, and their newborn child were left behind. One day, the three of them came to my house, and the wife said:

‘Absolute, my husband and I have already completed twenty-five years, and we have come to you today to end our lives.’

‘Are you both sure of your decision?’ I asked.

‘Totally sure,’ the wife responded.

‘Alright,’ I said.

‘But before we end our lives, we want to leave our child with you to take care of him. As you know, he is the last of the Black-Eyed People, and there is no one left to look after him,’ the wife said.

‘I will do my best,’ I said.

‘We also want to use our wish to avoid the pain of the poison,’ the wife said.

‘I see,’ I concluded, and then I gave them two glasses of poison. They drank it and died right away.

Thus, only a newborn baby was left of the black-eyed people, and that baby is you: Qamar al-Zaman*,” the Absolute said.

Qamar al-Zaman was shocked to hear all of this and did not know what to say, so the Absolute said, “Well, Qamar, that is your background, which I do not think you are qualified at the age of ten to deal with the truth about it, but you insisted on learning the truth. Now, go to bed so you can wake up early and go to Mr. Yaghlub’s house. You have just started working there, and you must leave a positive first impression about your punctuality.”

Qamar then left the Absolute’s room and went to an abandoned bathroom in the Absolute’s house. This was the only bedroom he ever slept in. In the morning, Qamar got up, put on his clothes, picked up his school bag, and went out to Mr. Yaghlub’s house.

When he got there, Qamar began his job of doing housework chores. His first task was to clean the living room floor, but Mr. Yaghlub’s son was sitting there. As soon as he saw Qamar, Mr. Yaghlub’s son ordered Qamar to stop whatever he was doing and go clean his bedroom. As ordered, Qamar stopped what he was doing and went to clean the bathroom. This made Mr. Yaghlub’s son so angry that he said to him, “I ordered you to clean my bedroom, not the bathroom!”

___________________

* Translates into “The Moon of the Age.”

“Isn’t this your bedroom?” Qamar asked.

“Of course not. How dare you?”

“Where is it then?” Qamar wondered.

Mr. Yaghlub’s son led Qamar to his bedroom. Once Qamar entered the bedroom, he saw a beautiful room with a fluffy bed.

“This is so cool,” he said in awe. “Do all the kids in town sleep in rooms like this?”

“Yes, to my knowledge,” said Mr. Yaghlub’s son.

Qamar then cleaned the room while thinking only about how he must work hard until he could have a wonderful bedroom like this in the future. “For anyone who sleeps in such a room must live a happy life,” Qamar told himself. After he finished cleaning this room and had completed all the other chores, Qamar went to school. Though there were shorter routes, Qamar always took the longest road to school. This cost him two hours of walking every day.

Qamar arrived on time to his first class which started as usual with a series of enthusiastic chants. All students—except for Qamar who was prohibited from participating—would chant the following phrases once the teacher had entered: “Long live the greatest inhabitants of Earth!” “Long live those who are above all!” “Long live the spectral-eyed people!” After the chanting, the philosophy teacher, who was named Bint-Khair, began her lesson. In a nutshell, she taught that the best way for the country to improve the conditions of the weak was to improve the conditions of the powerful, as this would accelerate the country’s economic growth, which would automatically ameliorate the conditions of those weak.

After Qamar completed this first class and two other classes, he went to the dining hall for lunch. In the dining hall, Qamar ate the lentil soup assigned to him while standing, as he was not allowed to sit. Then, he left school and returned to Mr. Yaghlub’s house where he would resume working until midnight.

On the way to Mr. Yaghlub’s house, Qamar saw a new restaurant that he had never seen before. He was still hungry. So, he decided to try with this restaurant. He hoped that they would let him in after all the other restaurants in town had refused his entry. Qamar wanted very much to try eating at a restaurant, because the food there, according to what he’d heard, was really tasty. “And even if the food is not delicious,” Qamar said to himself, “it’d definitely be better for me than the lentil soup and dried figs that I eat in school and at the Absolute’s house.” However, his attempt to enter this new restaurant was no better than its predecessors. As soon as the restaurant owner saw Qamar, he gave him a nod to move away. Qamar complied and continued walking.

As he walked, Qamar saw a man taking a chocolate candy out of his pocket and taking a bite out of it. As soon as the man did so, he flew in a spin for a few seconds, and then sighed loudly to indicate his great enjoyment of what he’d just eaten. This scene looked familiar to Qamar, for he had seen the same thing happen to other people from time to time. Whenever Qamar saw that, he would say to himself, “Chocolate must taste so wonderful that no one can help but fly because of it.” Today, Qamar decided to try chocolate. He went to a store and bought some. When he ate the chocolate, though, he tasted nothing and he did not fly in the air because of it. So, he went back to the store and asked the storekeeper to try it. The storekeeper tried Qamar’s chocolate and flew in the air like all the others. Qamar then asked the storekeeper why he did not enjoy chocolate like him. The storekeeper replied that Qamar’s sense of taste seemed incapable of tasting chocolate, a condition he had never seen before.

Qamar left the store feeling very sad. All he needed to enjoy a wonderful pleasure like this was to have a simple thing that everyone else had—the ability to taste chocolate—but he did not have this.

At midnight, after Qamar had completed his work for Mr. Yaghlub, he returned to the Absolute’s house. On the way to his bedroom, he overheard a guest with the Absolute. Curiosity overtook him and he peeked to see who was there. He saw the Absolute making a wonderful game and giving it to a woman for no cost. Once the woman left, Qamar al-Zaman went to the Absolute and asked her, “How did that woman get the game for no charge?”

“Everyone in this town has one wish in their life, and they can get whatever they want, as long as the wish does not include any of the forbidden requests,” the Absolute said.

“And is enabling my sense of taste for chocolate one of these forbidden requests?”

“No,” the Absolute said.

“Then I want to use my wish for this purpose,” said Qamar.

“If you want my opinion, I advise you not to.”

“And why not?” Qamar asked.

“So that you can save your wish to avoid the pain of the life-ending poison in case you decide to end your life in the future. The pain of that poison is so severe that if you collect all human suffering, it still won’t exceed it.”

Qamar took the Absolute’s advice and left the room.

In the morning at Mr. Yaghlub’s house, in addition to the usual housework, Mr. Yaghlub ordered Qamar to wash his wedding suit and have it ready and ironed upon his return. When Mr. Yaghlub left, Qamar thought that there was no one home. He was hot, and so he took off his shirt. But Mr. Yaghlub’s son was still there, and as soon as he saw Qamar, he said to him in disgust, “What are these spots on your skin?”

Qamar quickly put on his shirt, annoyed that someone had seen his body in such a condition. He answered, “It is leprosy.”

“And what is leprosy?”

“It is a skin disease.”

“By the way, we the spectral-eyed people do not get sick,” Mr. Yaghlub’s son said.

“And how is that?” Qamar asked.

“We are genetically modified, which gives us a special immunity against all diseases.”

“And how do you die then?”

“We only die due to aging or external causes,” Mr. Yaghlub’s son said.

“It is a great thing for a person to not get sick,” Qamar said.

“It certainly is,” Mr. Yaghlub’s son said.

Qamar went back to work. As he worked, he started developing a migraine headache. This was another chronic disease he had to live with in addition to leprosy. It was very disturbing to him as it recurred periodically, causing severe pain in his head that could last for days. Reluctantly, Qamar completed the rest of his work and went to school. On his way there, Qamar was unfocused. The pain he was experiencing caused him to deviate from his usual path and enter a street that he had never set foot on before. When Qamar realized this, he ran away as fast as he could out, for this street, like most of the town’s streets, was forbidden to the non-spectral-eyed.

Qamar arrived at the school and reluctantly attended his classes. He then returned to Mr. Yaghlub’s house. As soon as he returned, Qamar realized that he had forgotten to wash and iron the suit that Mr. Yaghlub asked him about due to the pain that he’d been suffering from at the time. He rushed immediately to take care of that task, but Mr. Yaghlub returned before he could finish. As soon as Mr. Yaghlub discovered this, he kept beating Qamar until the boy passed out.

When Qamar woke up, he found himself in the Absolute’s house. The Absolute told him that he had to go back the next day and apologize to Mr. Yaghloub because Mr. Yaghloub beating him had caused Mr. Yaghlub to get physically exhausted.

The next day, Qamar went to Mr. Yaghlub’s house to apologize. When he got there, he found Mr. Yaghlub seated with his son, motivating him, saying, “Always remember that if you were not special, you would not have been born spectral-eyed.”

“Alright, Dad,” said Mr. Yaghlub’s son.

Qamar waited for Mr. Yaghlub to complete his conversation, and then he went to him and apologized. Mr. Yaghlub did not respond to his apology by anything other than delegating some work. Mr. Yaghlub gave Qamar a look implying that this is your last chance, and if you fail, you’re absolutely done. After that, Qamar went about his work with all the concentration he had, but his migraine interfered, and he found himself dropping a plate. Fortunately, it did not break. After this incident, Qamar was determined to get medical treatment as soon as possible to get rid of his sickness.

“Do you know a place where I can get medical treatment?” Qamar asked the Absolute upon his return home.

“You can go to the fortuneteller of the town. She makes certain recipes, but you must know that these recipes are very expensive,” the Absolute said.

Qamar realized that these recipes might cost him all his salary, especially since half of his salary already went towards HELPING THE POWERFUL fund, but he did not mind that, as he was ready to do anything in this world to get rid of his sickness.

The next day, Qamar went to the fortuneteller, taking with him what was left of his salary. The fortuneteller then gave him a recipe made of colocynth to treat leprosy and another made of lavender to treat migraine.

“Is it true that you tell people’s destinies?” Qamar asked the fortuneteller.

“What do you want to know about your destiny?” the fortuneteller asked.

“Am I destined to end my life at the age of twenty-five?”

“Yes,” the fortuneteller answered.

“And is there a way out to avoid this destiny?”

“The way out for you is to be born spectral-eyed.”

“But I wasn’t born like that.”

“Yes, and that is your bad luck.”

As Qamar was leaving, he overheard the fortuneteller’s husband telling her:

“This has nothing to do with luck. If he deserved to be spectral-eyed, he would’ve been born as one.”

“I know. I just said that out of courtesy,” the fortuneteller said.

After visiting the fortuneteller, Qamar then went to school and joined the last class which was philosophy. The class started with the usual series of enthusiastic chants. After the students had finished chanting, the teacher began to explain a particular subject. Qamar, however, didn’t manage to grasp any of it because she explained it so quickly. When she was done explaining, she asked the students questions. When she saw that Qamar, unlike the other students, had not raised his hand to answer, she went to his desk and beat him repeatedly with her teaching stick while the other students laughed at him. Then, she kicked him out of the classroom.

Outside, Qamar sat crying in a corner. His sobs were so loud that a math teacher giving a class next door came out of her class and approached him. When Qamar saw her coming, holding a teaching stick, he raised his hand in an attempt to avoid possible strikes. She did not hit him, though, but rather asked him, “What is your name?”

He lowered his hand and then answered, “My name is Qamar al-Zaman.”

“It’s a beautiful name. Well, Qamar, why are you crying?”

“The philosophy teacher beat me because I could not answer her question.”

At that moment, the math teacher sat beside him, wiped his tears away, and said to him, “Well, Qamar, I promise you that this awful thing will not happen again, but you have to promise me first to stop crying.”

When Qamar promised her so, the math teacher, whose name was Shajar al-Durr, sent Qamar home to rest.

Following the philosophy class was an exam that was to be conducted the following day. Since Qamar had not understood the exam subject, he approached a few boys in his class on the exam day asking them to explain the exam subject to him. His attempts were unsuccessful, though. The first boy replied: “No,” and the second did not even bother responding. Qamar’s attempt with his female classmates did not have better results. None of them showed any sympathy towards his condition. One student, who was the prettiest girl in the school, even threatened him by saying, “If you don’t leave now, I will call someone to beat the hell out of you; you know that everyone here is at Buthaina’s disposal.”

Qamar was left with no choice but to ask Mr. Yaghlub’s son for help. His response was, “I have no time, but you can sit next to me and I will try to help you.”

When the exam started, Qamar sat as planned next to Mr. Yaghlub’s son who said to him, “I will write the answers and then we exchange papers and I go back and write them for myself.”

“Wouldn’t that be too exhausting for you?” Qamar asked.

“Not at all. I write fast, and this subject is my favorite.”

When the exam was over, and in a matter of seconds the papers were marked by an automatic marking machine. Mr. Yaghlub’s son got eight out of ten, and Qamar got zero.

The philosophy teacher Bint-Khair did not beat Qamar or kick him out of the classroom. However, after the class ended, some of the students in his class called him stupid and accused him of being the reason behind this class ranking last in terms of grades. They kept throwing school supplies at him amidst the laughter of everyone else, including Mr. Yaghlub’s son.

That evening, Qamar was washing the dishes when Mr. Yaghlub arrived with his new wife. Curious, Qamar peeked to see who she was and he was surprised to find out that she was the same math teacher who had been kind to him. The ecstasy of the happy surprise drove him to mistakenly drop a plate he was carrying. The plate broke this time and made a lot of noise.

Mr. Yaghlub got angry because of this and approached Qamar to beat him, but Shajar al-Durr stood between him and Qamar, and said to him, “Let us not disturb the peace of this beautiful day of ours.”

Mr. Yaghlub gave in to her words and left Qamar alone.

In the morning, a friend of Mr. Yaghlub’s son called Yazdan came to Mr. Yaghlub’s house carrying a game with him. When Mr. Yaghlub’s son saw Yazdan’s game, he was amazed and asked where the game came from. Yazdan replied that his mother sacrificed her wish to get it for him.

Mr. Yaghlub’s son and Yazdan went outside to play the game. This game was similar to the virtual street soccer played on video game consoles, except that it was real. It consisted of a field, a ball, and four players (two players on each team) with dimensions close to those of a foosball. The players were controlled remotely by the same joysticks that were used to control players across consoles, and the players were empowered with a high level of artificial intelligence that enabled them to play the same way real soccer players do. They started playing. Qamar was in the meantime cleaning the floor of one of the nearby rooms. When he saw them through the glass, he left his cleaning supplies and watched them play. When Shajar al-Durr spotted him in that state, she knew that he wanted to play too, so she told him to leave what he was supposed to be doing and go out and play with them.

Outside, Qamar sat watching them, but neither boy invited Qamar to join the game. Qamar waited until he had gathered enough courage to ask if he could play with them. Yazdan did not answer him, but Mr. Yaghlub’s son said, “We will let you play with us only if you take off your shirt first.”

Although Qamar felt bothered at the thought of showing his leprosy-afflicted body, he agreed to that condition as he didn’t want his childhood to end without playing with anyone. When Yazdan saw his leper body, he expressed his disgust, and then threw Qamar with the joystick amidst the laughter of Mr. Yaghlub’s son.

By chance, Shajar al-Durr had witnessed this interaction, and so she went outside and ordered Mr. Yaghlub’s son and his friend to go back inside. She then made Qamar put on his shirt and asked him, “Did you enjoy the game?”

“No, I did not try it,” Qamar replied.

“Alright then, let’s play it: me and you,” Shajar al-Durr said.

They played the game together and enjoyed themselves a lot. After they finished playing, Shajar al-Durr took Qamar inside and then told him to take the day off and go home.

The next day, while Shajar al-Durr was teaching her class, she fell suddenly to the ground. Hours later, her death was announced. This was the only time a spectral-eyed person died for a reason other than old age, external causes, or planned external causes.

Qamar was prevented from attending her funeral, but he sneaked in and went to where she was lying. He kissed her forehead, and then he took out a paper on which he had drawn himself and Shajar al-Durr playing happily with Yazdan’s game and placed it on top of the flowers that were resting on her body.