Soleiman woke up just as the sun was about to rise. He was greeted by a cold breeze across his face. The birds had just started to acknowledge the arrival of the new day. He was satisfied to notice that his inner clock was working just fine. He took off for the river bank to wash himself and get ready for the Fajr prayer. He was cautious walking out of the dense vegetation as he knew that he was not the only one who needed water first thing in the morning. He slowly walked to the edge of the river and drank from it and washed himself. He refilled his water bottle and hurried back to his camp to pray.
After Soleiman had finished praying, he sat on his prayer rug contemplating his future course of action. He did not have the slightest of ideas regarding what waited for him. He wasn't even sure how he had survived for this long. Soleiman had been successful in smothering his pessimism until now but at that moment he was feeling edgy. Soleiman was stranded in a hostile territory, with supplies worth a day or two, no experience of surviving in forests, with the natives on the hunt looking for him like mad dogs. All his hopes were drowning and he was just waiting for something other than the obvious to happen. He gathered all the optimism that he could find and tried to imagine a favorable outcome. He couldn't.
He desperately needed the soft voice of his mentor to guide him.
Sheikh Abdul Haadi had miraculously helped Soleiman memorize the entire Holy Quran in under a year, after which he had enrolled Soleiman in a Hadith course in which he excelled as well. As soon as he had mastered the books, he was given the duty to teach the junior classes as he turned twenty. Soleiman loved that job. He studied more and more to learn the answer to every question a student may ask him. That hard work paid off and there was hardly a question that went unanswered at the spot. In a few months he had earned a reputation that many spend years to achieve and all of this was being closely observed and highly appreciated by Sheikh. Soleiman was turning out to be quite an asset for the organization. The organization was comprised of two groups of preachers, one group was of expert debaters, who had extensive knowledge of other religions and were deployed to the places where other religions were dominant and Islam was in minority, while the other was of expert teachers, who were not skilled in the knowledge of other religions but had extensive knowledge about Islam and had excellent teaching skills, impenetrable patience and astounding charisma, and were deployed to those far off places where the people have never even heard of the religion Islam. The former kind could be developed by sheer hard work but the latter kind had to be god-gifted. And Soleiman was exactly that.
One day, Soleiman was teaching a class of juniors, aged around six to ten, that had just been enrolled when another teacher came to the door of his class room and informed him that Sheikh Sahib had summoned him. He excused his class and appointed a student as the custodian to keep maintain peace in the class, which never worked, and he went to Sheikh's office. Soleiman was not nervous because not once had it occurred to him that he might be in trouble for something. Partly on account of Sheikh's tender nature and partly because Soleiman hardly ever committed a mistake worth summoning him. He knocked on the door to the office and received prompt permission to come in. Sheikh Abdul Haadi was busy in preparing some important paperwork relating to the utilities of the mosque. He asked Soleiman to take a seat and used the intercom to call Yaqoob Khan, the Khadim cum Watchman of the mosque. After which he had all his attention focused on Soleiman.
"How is my prodigy doing?", Sheikh asked informally with an ear to ear grin on his face. To which, Soleiman respectfully nodded. "So which class are you assigned these days?", Sheikh casually inquired further.
"Just the juniors", Soleiman muttered trying his best to hide the complaint in his tone. He had been satisfied with the task of honing the juniors but it had been years now since he had started teaching yet he had only been trusted with a class of grown-ups for a year before being assigned back to the children. But this had never affected Soleiman's behavior in the class.
They were having this casual gossip when there was a knock on the door followed by the easily recognizable voice of Yaqoob. He was called in and the bills and other paperwork was handed over to him to be submitted. He gladly collected bundle of papers from the desk and was on his way to hit the road to fulfil the task when Sheikh called out to him.
"Yaqoob bhai? Who do you think should lead the team of preachers heading to the Iceland in a few months?", Sheikh casually asked him. Yaqoob had always admired Sheikh and his rock-solid decision making so he was taken off guard by such a question. He had never taken part in any of the organization's institutional decisions and had been content in knowing that the organization had the best set of brains to carry out that task. Sitting across the table, Soleiman was also surprised to hear that. It was well-known that Sheikh was very humble and respectful towards all his staff but this was unexpected.
"What did you have in mind, sir?", Yaqoob hesitantly asked.
"I think our Soleiman will fit the title quite nicely, don't you think?", Sheikh asked while jokingly squinting as if in deep thought. Soleiman felt the ground slip from under him. All of this conversation was an indirect way to announce to Soleiman that he was being promoted to the big league now.
"But I have never even been on a foreign tour before", Soleiman instantly retaliated. "There is a first time for everything", Sheikh calmly replied.
"I only have ever preached the locals", said Soleiman, too nervous to accept the responsibility.
"Don't worry, the human beings are pretty much the same everywhere. Besides, why do you think you were stuck with the children for so long?", asked Sheikh. Soleiman had no answer to that. "The one year we promoted you to an advanced class, you did OK there but the progress of the new batch of juniors was badly hurt. So, we were curious if you were the reason that we were getting better and better juniors passing out to the advanced classes. We sent you back and you proved are suspicions to be correct", Sheikh calmly explained. Soleiman had nothing to say. Sheikh continued, "I firmly believe that you are gifted with the teaching skill that can never be taught and you shall prove to be a great addition to our fleet. What do you say?"
Soleiman was silent for a moment. He gathered himself and nodded with a respectful smile. "I will not fail you", he dutifully said.
Yaqoob witnessed all of it and was delighted to see the best student become a traveling preacher. "This calls for a celebration, I'll bring sweets on my way back", he said with a chuckle and went out of the office.
Soleiman cleared his thoughts. He realized that he had been in the state of deep thought for an hour. He stood up and resumed his walk alongside the river. He soon depleted his water supply. He walked back to the river for a sip of water or possibly any fish. As he was about to walk out of the woods, he felt something odd about the place that he was just about to barge in. He just couldn't place it. The moment he stepped out, it dawned on him. The birds were aggressive. A murder of crows was creating more fuss than usual and was hovering in the sky with their eyes on something on the ground. Someone must have pissed them off or more to the point, someone was there. He ducked behind the trees and peeked outside to steal a glimpse of whoever was there. He sat there for minutes until he saw a boy trying to hunt birds with a slingshot. The clothes, or lack of clothes, hinted that the boy was definitely from the same village. That was bad news. The village he was running from had their children casually play around in area where he was considering himself to be safe from them. The child was attentively aiming his slingshot at the birds, oblivious to Soleiman's presence. Soleiman decided to wait him out. It took ten minutes or so to tire the kid and he headed back to his supplies to collect them and take off back to the village. Soleiman noticed late that he was putting his weight on frail branch of a tree. It snapped letting out a loud crunch. He hastily composed himself and recalibrated his sight to check back on the boy. The boy was staring straight at his direction. Soleiman's heart sank. The boy kept on staring until he suddenly ran off. Probably the boy thought that it was a predator of some kind in the woods, Soleiman thought. As soon as he made sure that the boy had vanished, he went to the river and quenched his thirst. He found small fishes in the water. He grabbed a few and decided to cook them in the daylight and eat them till the next day because lighting a bonfire in the night might give him away.
As soon as he had replenished his supplies, he started to walk on along the river. It troubled him to realize that time was flying as he ventured on. Salah times came and went in what felt like minutes. The faint sound of the birds singing, the bugs chirping and the leaves rattling with the wind would have somehow turned the scene into a pleasant one if only he wasn't being hunted down. He took a short rest every few minutes to catch his breath.
Dusk didn't take long. It kind of depressed Soleiman to witness another day slip by like nothing. He traced himself back to the river to wash himself, more carefully this time around, and came back to offer the prayer in the darkness of the woods.