I dedicate this book to Salah ad-Din for inspiration and to my friend Janeta for invaluable help.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoWmS01gQmA
- Ah, what a damn weather, - said the tall attractive blonde as she slammed the the apartment door behind her and put down her wet umbrella in the corner of the entryway. She shivered - the black T-shirt and thin jeans clinging to her slender figure turned out to be far too light for the chilly day outside, which didn't befit a summer. A faint grey drizzle hung over the city; gusts of wind swept trash from the cans and scattered it along the sidewalks, and there was nothing in this scene that made one want to call it summer. Yet it supposedly was.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPdxoRyMtQK
Anzhelika - that was the girl’s name - flipped back her long, waist-length natural platinum hair and, without taking off her sneakers, headed for the kitchen. There was no need to remove her shoes - after yesterday’s celebration of her 30th birthday, her apartment still needed cleaning anyway.
It was well past noon, and the last of the poor souls who had stayed the night had already left her apartment, downing aspirin or a beer on the way out. And today those of them who made fairly successful recovery from the previous evening, had planned to go to the shooting range, but the weather had ruined their plans.
The girl put the bread, which was the cause of her leaving home, to the bread bin, sat on the sofa near the table and pulled her smartphone out of her pocket. A brief look at various weather sites yielded no encouraging updates: the cold drizzle was predicted to last for a week or even more.
Anzhelica wrinkled her thin nose in displeasure, put the smartphone on the table and began to ponder. Only one conclusion came to her: she had to “fix” this so-called summer by going on vacation. Anzhelica was a freelancer, a Russian-Arabic translator, and an excellent one at that, and could take a a vacation any time she had the money and desire. And she had enough money and desire right now.
“Where should I go?” Anzhelika mused contentedly, fiddling with a ring she’d bought the year before at a Tunisian bazaar. It was silver, with a stone of entirely unknown origin. Still, she liked it: it had a delicate light-green hue that perfectly matched her eyes. The seller assured her that the ring would bring her good luck. Her Syrian friends had bargained the price down for her - she’d never quite mastered haggling. “Maybe Dubai, or should I go somewhere else…somewhere in the Arab world…” she murmured dreamily, turned the ring on her finger and then felt the sofa is slipping out from under her.
"Hey, I hadn't drink as much last night", she managed to think at the moment the light in the room blinked off and whole the world had shaked. Without a sound she flailed her arms, trying to keep her balance, and softly fell onto something that didn’t feel particularly soft.
…She opened her eyes after realising they were closed. She blinked again. She was sitting on a stone floor - real stone, rough masonry. The walls were the same, visible in the dim glow coming from somewhere off to the side, in the corners she could see something vaguely resembling bunks, and all this unfriendly space merely three by three meters in size was walled off by a thick iron grate.
“Looks like a prison…” thought Anzhelika, standing up very quietly - just in case - and edging over to the grate. "And this is not enough. Even if I fainted, woke up and did something naughty, all this doesn't look like Russian pre-trial detention center to me".
On the other side of the grate, in an empty corridor, the meager flickering light came from a torch affixed to the wall. Anzhelika gave the door a quiet push - locked.
“Why lock the cell up, you morons, if no one was supposed to be here?" she thought angrily, sitting down on the nearest bunk. She pinched her arm and felt the pinch. "Well, at least I'm not hallucinating", she comforted herself, holding on to the usual sarcasm. “So then, what is this - did I time-travel somehow? But how exactly?” She clutched at her last conscious memory in her apartment - and at the ring. She reached for her hand, but the ring was gone. Very carefully, she inspected the entire cell to confirm it wasn’t there. It was lost on her kitchen or maybe somewhere between time and space.
Crossing her fingers, she whispered, “I want to go home!” No effect.
But Anzhelika wouldn’t be Anzhelika if she simply gave up. Sliding her hand through her hair, she pulled out a hairpin. She’d once learned invaluable lock-picking skills from her cousin in the village, picking the padlock on the shed where their uncle kept his old motorbike.
Bending the hairpin and sliding it into the lock - which, from the look of it, shouldn’t have been too complicated - she quietly turned her makeshift pick. The lock started to yield but unfortunately gave a rather loud squeak. Anzhelika froze - and immediately jumped off from the grate: she heard a man's voice from aside.
“Did you hear that? What is it?” a gruff voice barked in Arabic very close to her. Heart pounding, Anzhelika slipped behind the bunk in the shadows.
"Maybe those assholes returned", someone else hissed angrily.
"Those assholed got drunk and fell asleep, Mustafa", said the third man wearily. "We won't see them 'til morning. It only seemed to you".
Anzhelika exhaled in relief, but her unrest didn’t subside. She focused on the voices - and suddenly realized.
She knew the dialect. This was the old Arabic - medieval one.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPPlgpX5kpE
