Soleiman was satisfied that he was a fair distance away from his aggressors. He had slept well after a while. it was a dark night ready to transition into a dawn. The birds had started chirping and a fragrant cool breeze swept the woods. It was time for Fajr prayer. He traced his way to the riverside to wash himself up. He hung his satchel on his shoulder because it had a bottle that needed to be filled and some clothes that needed to be washed. He stopped halftrack. He felt a presence on the other side of the woods. Perhaps it was the same boy. But the preacher had walked a significant distance since that incident. Dawn was about to break but it was still dark enough to make a person use a torch to see the ground he stood at. He crouched near the last layer of trees to steal a glimpse of whoever was out there. The same child from yesterday stood there idly. Soleiman was relieved but also a bit confused wondering what was he doing there at that hour. The child was not even playing with his slingshot like before. He was just standing still, blankly staring at Soleiman's side of the forest. Something in the boy made Soleiman think that is wasn't just a coincidence that the same boy had followed him for the same direction without any reasonable cause. Soleiman decided to wait him out again. He felt a yellow light approaching the boy from his left. A group of hunters accompanied the boy as they emerged from the darkness bearing flaming torches, bows and axes. Just their presence sent a chill down Soleiman's spine. The child had spread the news in the village and brought company this time. One of them came to the boy and apparently asked him something in his ear. The child stood and stared blankly right at the preacher. Preacher lost the last fragment of calmness that he had the second the boy pointed straight at him. The moment the hunter looked at his direction, Soleiman took off running away from the river without caring about any covertness.
The hunters rushed after him. Soleiman could barely see anything in front of him but he couldn't stop running. He felt the wind of an arrow that passed him near his ear. His fear increased. The group was fewer in number as compared to the mob he had evaded earlier but the people in the mob were random villagers trying to participate in the hunt while the men chasing him now seemed to be trained in this field. They didn't make a lot of sound nor did they chant anything. They just meant business. Suddenly he saw an orb of light in the distance. He didn't have the luxury of time to understand what it was, so he ran in the direction of the sole source of light. As he neared the orb, it vanished and another appeared further away. He continued the run in its direction. The orbs reappeared again and again. The preacher ran with all his might in the dark until he failed to see an obstacle in his way. The hurdle tackled him to the ground. The fall was so sudden that he had a concussion and felt himself fade away as he sat on the ground resting his back against a tree while he was being relentlessly hunted down. He waited for his mind to get back in its place. His head felt like it had been filled with rocks and shook afterwards. His legs were badly bruised, one arm felt dislocated and he had lost the rest of the minimal vision that had thanks to the dizziness. For a moment he forgot about the danger he was in and looked to the sky. The hunters were quickly closing in on him.
A pair of hands emerged from the darkness behind him, grabbed him by his shoulders and shoved him into a bush near him. Soleiman recited the first verses that came to his mind when he felt the grasp of the man. He knew he was done for. As he fell into the bush, he realized the bush was an entrance to a shallow, four feet deep hole. The man grabbed a bushy branch and swept the tracks as he made his way to the hole. The man jumped in after him, put the bush back on top of the hole and made a shush sound as they peeked out of the bush. For a while they couldn't make out anything in the darkness but soon the ominous torches were visible. The group didn't take long to understand what had happened when they saw the obstacles and lot of scrambled marks in the dirt in front of it. They simply thought of what would they have done if they were outgunned, outnumbered and were being hunted down by a group of trained trackers. They would have run. So, they continued in the same direction assuming, quite rightly so, that he wouldn't have gone too far.
Moments later, when the danger had passed, he was sitting out in the open on the sheet laid out by his savior. It took a while for the preacher to collect himself and calibrate his mind to make sense of what had just happened. The forest was now bright enough for him to actually see something. The man in front of him, mashing together some leaves and herbs, was a fair skinned lean man, standing above five and a half feet, wearing a burnt white kurta suit with a badly slashed yelek and a relatively intact red fez cap. He had a long beard which looked like it might need some shaping up. The man looked at least a decade older than his actual age. As soon as Soleiman looked at the sky he sprang up instinctively to go and pray. He let out a groan of pain when the bruised skin on his knees stretched. The man stood up and came towards Soleiman to calm him down.
"Have some rest brother, there is still half an hour left till the end of prayer time. Besides you have been running for so long you need a break", said the man with his hand on Soleiman's shoulder. Soleiman felt a hint of relief when he heard the man speak a familiar language.
"How long was I out?", asked Soleiman in frail manner. To which he replied, "Thirty or thirty five minutes tops". He mashed the herbs for a few more minutes then spread the mixture on Soleiman's scraped knee. Soleiman winced in pain. The man comforted him. They waited another ten minutes then went to the river side to get ready for the Fajr prayer. They prayed for a while even after they were finished with Fajr. Soleiman wanted to ask him so many questions but didn't even know where to start. Just as he was about to, the man stood up and started packing his stuff.
"I know you have a lot of questions but we need to keep moving. Those trackers won't be fooled for long. We can chat on the way", the man urged. Soleiman agreed and strapped on his satchel. He was happy that he had decided to bring the bag with himself the last time he went to the river. The gear might prove to be useful. They ventured deeper into the forest to further secure themselves. There was a danger of losing track of the river this way but they had to take that risk. They took off.
"Mustafa", the man said while walking with a great limp without making eye contact. "I am a preacher like you. I came from Ankara, Turkey, weeks before you did, to the village neighboring the one you just escaped from", he continued.
"But what are you doing in the woods?", Soleiman inquired.
"You are what I was about six days ago. I too am on the run from these savages but for longer than you have been", replied Mustafa with an indication of discomfort on his face.
"Where are we headed?", asked Soleiman. He wanted to know if his companion knew the landscape better than he did or if they were doomed to run around like headless chickens.
Mustafa kept on moving, hauling his supplies as he did. He wanted to talk as less as he could because his chest seemed to hurt. Soleiman could also sense that his companion was in pain. Soleiman didn't mind the silence and went on after him. Mustafa decided that it was better to let Soleiman in on the details.
"I remember seeing this river falling all the way through the border to the neighboring country. I don't know why you were following the river yourself but this actually is the best and probably the only way for us to survive", Mustafa explained.