Khalid felt shocked when the boy told him that on Zikula day, the poorest person in the city would be slaughtered... and he realized that he was poorer than them all...
And his money wouldn't help after he was certain of his previous stances that they didn't recognize the value of the papers he held... And if the boy's words were true, he would certainly be slaughtered…
Until the boy interrupted his thoughts when he continued:
"On Zikula day, there is a competition between the poorest three people in the city... But unfortunately, tomorrow, the person will be slaughtered directly without competition after the other two succeeded in escaping... Ah, if only i saw them with my own eyes!…"
Then Khalid remembered meeting those two in the desert... and he said aloud:
"The madmen?!"
The boy looked at him, and Khalid corrected himself, asking:
"Do you mean the poor person was actually chosen?"
The boy replied:
"Yes."
Khalid breathed a sigh of relief, let out a long breath, and the boy continued:
"It's customary in Zikula for the poorest three to be prisoned few days before the slaughter... Then a competition between wealth and poverty takes place among them... And whoever loses gets slaughtered... And of course, since the other two escaped, the third person will logically be the loser... "
Then he pointed to a neighboring house:
"He's from our area…"
Khalid looked at the house and wondered: "'How is this a poor house?"
Then the boy left him and went to play with others...
Khalid sat again in his place... Thinking about what was happening to him, and remembering what had happened to him since he found himself in the desert... And his question increased the urgency that he always intentionally ignored…
Where is he?...
And where is Zikula, which he had never heard of before...
And about its astonishing people?...
Some of them seem rational...
And many do not belong to rationality at all…
Then his body trembled when he asked himself what if time transferred him through the tunnel to the past as he always read in foreign literature...
What?... Is this true?! No.. No.. It's fictional.. I haven't heard of Zikula... And I haven't read about it before
That's how he answered himself…
Then he raised his voice:
"But why not? The horses pulling carts... and the people's attire here... It's impossible for someone to be dressed like that in the twenty-first century...
These things have been gone for centuries."
Then he returned to himself:
"Maybe this is an isolated country that I haven't heard of... l"
Then he shouted to himself:
" What country?.. All I've walked is about a kilometer or two through the tunnel...
Surely, I've moved through time... And the evidence is that they speak Arabic and don't know Egypt... Is there a region in the whole world that speaks Arabic except the Arab world?!!"
Then he held his head in his hands:
"I feel like I can't think... I was smarter than this…"
Then he looked into the distance:
"But... this is evidence that I've moved to the past…"
He said that when he found a group carrying swords and shields as if they were soldiers... and walking in a single line…
He stood on his feet... and hurriedly approached the boy who was playing with his friends... and pulled him by his hand:
"I want to ask you one question... What year are we?"
The boy answered him hastily:
"It seems that you drank too much alcohol... We're at the end of 2009, sir…"
Khaled stepped back... and turned his head until he fell as if he lost consciousness... Then the boy laughed and spoke to him:
"Yes, sir, I see that sleep might help you" then he left him and went away…