"We were both broken glasses, how could we have touched each other without bleeding?",
Shroud
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We were both unfinished stories, getting dusty on this chessboard of life. For a long time, we were in a stalemate, then...
Jazira -e-Darusha, the island that was nowhere and everywhere. That was under no one's rule and yet it entertained all the rulers of the world. And therein their hearts of heart an eternal wish to conquer it. But how do you conquer the unconquerable? That which does not occupy a space. And so it remains an unrequited love to all that beholds it. Forever a dream, just out of reach.
It was not bound by a single culture, religion, ethnicity, language, nationalities and race or even species.
It had people of all castes, all creeds, all nature, the magical and the non-magical. Here you can be anyone, you can be anything. You can shirk your identity like a second skin. Peel it off _wear a new one. Only God knew how many I have worn over just in the last few years. All the differences die here. Enemies could be sitting on the same table in an inn, armed to the teeth but they were never allowed to kill each other. Only the head of the order can kill on this land and that too when the few but firm laws were broken. Others who do break these thousands of years old rules are put to death swiftly. No matter how justified his or her actions are.
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Surprising isn't it? that the world's most nefarious creatures reside here and yet it is the most peaceful place in the entire world.
I never had a home, not a real one at least. So I don't know what the feeling of coming to one could be like. But here on this piece of land, right in the lap of this unknown ocean, with the sounds of the crashing waves and the thunderous flapping of the wings of the Gharob, I breathe a little easier. The numbers of nights where I wake up in cold sweats are fewer. It is as if even my nightmares fear venturing here.
If getting to this Jazira was an easy thing, every criminal, every damned creature would have sought it for their salvation, most do. I had. But not everyone finds it. The Jazira finds the people itself. It opens its doors itself to the deserving. It decides the deserving. I have often wondered that it was more twisted than me. No way would it have let me in otherwise. And to my knowledge, not a single person here has anything to do with innocence.
I had to leave Miraj early. Part of me felt sorry for leaving Verso with Zanoon. I can not wish that fate on my worse enemy. Maybe that's not true. Maybe I would have enjoyed an encounter of Zanoon with my worse enemy. The thought gave me a pause. My lips turned up of their own volition.
The order from Riaz came late that evening, long after that uncomfortable dinner with Zanoon, while I was staying in a room in the pleated blasphemy with the rest of my group members. I was to join him in Darusha before the Shehzada's arrival.
And so here I am enveloped once more by this piece of land that has never closed its doors to me.
What you have to do is hold a feather of Gharob close to your heart and whisper a piece of poetry,"
