Far Away [Part 1] – Five Animals

A brutal childhood under a violent father forges young Darius into a skilled fighter, setting the stage for a life shaped by hardship, survival, and a search for meaning.

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Author’s Preface

I woke up recently with the idea for this story in my head, and immediately sat down and began to write. Maybe it was a dream I had, I don’t know. I’ve never been short of ideas, alhamdulillah. I have more ideas than I know what to do with.

If you’re a long-time reader of mine, you’ve noticed that my early novels focused heavily on action and international intrigue. Later stories, such as Day of the Dogs, The Things He Would Say, and the most recently completed Moonshot, were more about family dynamics. All That Is In The Heavens is, of course, straight-up sci-fi. I do plan to return to that, by the way.

I like changing things up. I’m not one of those writers who churns out dozens of novels based on a single formula. Maybe I should be, since some of those authors make a lot of money. Speaking of which, I met Danielle Steele once at a charity auction at Fort Mason in San Francisco, and bought her old antique typewriter. Another time, I made a delivery to her mansion, which occupies an entire block in Pacific Heights. There’s someone who took a formula and alchemized it into pure gold.

But no, I prefer to push myself and explore new fictional territory. This next story is a first. I hesitate to call it a fable. It is based in the real world, and rooted in the culture and historical circumstances of 1700’s rural China, featuring a Hui Muslim family. The Hui are an East Asian ethno-religious group that is predominantly Muslim. Today, the official Chinese census says there are 10 million of them. They are not segregated, but live intermixed with Han Chinese, and their practice of Islam tends to be low-key.

I did a lot of research to keep the story historically accurate. However, I never name China as such.

The narrator’s tone is brutally honest yet distant, as if narrating these events from a time many years removed. As such, it is not extremely detailed. That’s why I almost call it a fable.

It won’t be a full novel. Maybe 20,000 words, of which 10,000 are already written. Eight to ten chapters. I hope you enjoy it. – Wael Abdelgawad, Author

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Father and Son

When my father, whose name was Yong Lee, wasn’t in prison, he taught me to fight and to steal. He was a small man and a drunkard, and he treated my sweet mother badly. I despised him. When Mother died of a breathing disease, all I could think was that instead of taking me with her into the realm of silence, she had left me behind. I was seven years old. I remember that I cried for many days, and struck my father, blaming him for Mother’s death. He was a violent man, yet, when I hit him he did not react.

Someone had taught my father to fight very well – not street brawling, but a fighting style that he called Five Animals, that consisted of rapid, fluid movements, deep stances, dramatic leaps and kicks, and the use of the spear and sword.

The sword was curved, single-edged, and about as long as my young arm. My father called it a dao. He had long since sold his genuine dao to buy wine, but he’d made two replicas out of hardwood, and a pair of spears as well. We owned a small rice paddy that had gone to seed, and was a rat-filled nest of weeds and mud. My father would take me out to the paddy and run me through dao and spear forms, and then we would fight. He was not gentle, and by the end of the session I was always bleeding and bruised.

Failed Defiance

One time, I defied him, throwing down the dao and screaming that I hated him and would not do it anymore. He seized my shirt with both hands and put his face very close to mine. His breath reeked of wine. “This is the only thing of worth I have to give you, Darius,” he said. “You will take it, or I will kill you, then kill myself.”

I believed him, and I never refused to train after that.

Once, when we went into town to steal, the Mayor approached us. He looked me up and down – my ragged clothes, split lip, cut cheek, and a gash on my arm – and told my father plainly that if he did not treat me better, they would take me away and send me to live with my aunt. This was the first time I knew that I had an aunt.

My father raged that the Mayor could not do that. The Mayor cowered, for everyone knew my father’s fighting prowess, but to his credit, he held his ground and said that he would do it anyway. After that, my father treated me a little better, for though he still forced me to train, he did so less violently.

My father stole food from local vendors, cheated at card games, and picked pockets. He excelled at these things, and on the rare occasions he was caught, the locals would decline to press charges, for they knew my father’s temper and abilities.

In the town there was a temple with a great statue, and the people went there to pray, meditate, and leave offerings. My father scoffed at this, saying these people were brainless idiots, and he would sooner stab himself in the eye than waste his time and money on a hunk of bronze that could not see, speak, nor even defend itself. “The only one to worship is Allah,” he said, but when I asked him about the meaning of this word, and who was Allah, and where was his temple, my father fell mute.

Wake Up Hungry, Sleep Hungry

My father was not foolish enough to steal from nobles, but some traveling nobles dressed plainly so that you did not know their status, and every now and then, my father would be caught stealing from such a one; or from a traveling businessman or functionary. These people had no fear of him and always pressed charges, whereupon my father would be whipped and sent to prison.

Whenever this happened, I was left to fend for myself. After seeing my father whipped, I was not brave enough to pick pockets, so I confined myself to going out at night and stealing corn, potatoes, and tomatoes from local farms. The amounts I stole were so small that either no one noticed or they pretended not to, for they feared my father even in his absence. When I was younger, I had sometimes helped my mother cook, and I knew enough to boil the vegetables, which I ate plain with a bit of salt.

I was very thin, and my clothes were so tattered they were nearly falling off. I was lonely, but I did not despair. My days of crying myself to sleep were long past, and I knew my father would return. I did not know how far away the prison was, but I did not feel that my father was far away. His presence was commanding and inescapable, even in his absence. In addition, I was long since used to waking hungry and sleeping hungry. To me, it was a normal state of existence, and in fac,t I could not imagine what it might be like to have companionship and a belly full of food.

Hiding

Three times, the Mayor and a few others came to the house looking for me, but each time I hid. I barred the door with a chair, doused the candle, and crawled beneath the straw mattress, which was silly because if they managed to enter they would see my form anyway. I held my breath and watched the movement of shadows beneath the door as the men stood outside calling, “Darius Lee!” But they did not enter, for they knew better than to enter the house of Yong Lee without permission, even in his absence. Eventually, they went away.

I did not know if they wanted to punish me for stealing, or to send me to live with my aunt. I did not want to be sent away. Though I hated my father, I also loved him and missed him. I cannot explain this except to say that he was all I knew, and I felt a strange loyalty to him. He had spent countless hours teaching me Five Animals style, and though he was brutal, it was personal and intense. In his twisted way he cared about me and perhaps even loved me, though he had never expressed such a thing, and I had only ever heard that word – love – from my mother.

There was an enemy invading our lands from the south. It was said that they came on great ships, and wore armor of a kind our weapons could not penetrate. Wherever they went, they massacred our people and burned our homes. They were said to be tall and ivory-skinned, and fought with long, straight swords. I had never seen such a person, and could not imagine why they wanted our hardscrabble rice and corn fields. But every time I went into town to beg for a little money to buy salt, I saw more and more refugees either passing through or living in shacks on the outskirts of town.

There were posters in the shop windows. I knew how to read and write, as my dear mother had taught me. The posters said that anyone who volunteered to fight the invaders would be paid five gold pieces upon inscription, and one gold piece a month. The minimum age was fifteen, however, and at that time I was only eleven.

Return

My father came home from prison. He’d always been a strong and hard man, yet he returned from prison with new scars, and a terrible rage in his eyes. I thought he might take his anger out on me, in training, but when he saw my condition – I was so thin that my cheeks were hollow and my ribs protruded – he squatted down, covered his face, and wept. I had never seen my father crying, and did not know what to do. Torn between comforting him – how would I do that exactly? – and walking away to preserve his dignity, I sat down in front of him and said nothing. He suddenly seized me. I tensed up, ready to fight or flee, but he only embraced me and whispered, “I am sorry.” At this, I did flee, for it confused and saddened me more than all the beatings.

My father had quit drinking. He was not an affectionate man, and he still stole from time to time – but our training, though still exhausting, was no longer bloody. Furthermore, he began working the land. He would wake me up at dawn, and we would labor and sweat, clearing weeds, planting peanuts, and fertilizing. My father worked feverishly, as hard as any horse or donkey, and I understood that this was his way of pouring out of himself the terrible anger that – like a horse carrying a millstone – he had carried home from prison.

When the first peanut crop came in, he took me into town, where we sold the crop to a merchant. Then he took me to an eatery, where we sat at a table like normal citizens. My father ordered a huge quantity of food, and we gorged ourselves on rice, beef, green beans, sesame buns, bean cake, broccoli, and egg noodles. I had never even tasted some of these things.

When we could eat no more, my stomach felt like it would burst. I felt sleepy and content for the first time in many years. “So,” I thought. “This is what it’s like to be full.” I felt something I could not identify, which I later came to understand was contentment, and it frightened me because I knew it could not and would not last.

Infestation and Enlistment

My fear was premonitory. An infestation of rats destroyed our crop, and we were left destitute. My father stomped through the field, hacking at the rats with a plow and screaming foul words. He seemed not angry but despairing, and this shocked me, as I had never imagined my father this way.

The next day, he went into town by himself. I was afraid he had gone to drink and would return to beat me as in the past, but no. When he returned, he wore a scabbard hanging from his hip. He sat me down and handed me a small purse. I looked inside and saw five gold pieces, shining like the sunrise. “I have enlisted to fight the invaders,” he told me. “With this money you can buy traps and poison to kill the rats, then plant a new crop. You know how to raise the crop, how to harvest, and where to sell it. You will be fine. I will send my salary home to you.”

Then he removed the scabbard from his hip and drew a shining steel dao with a razor-sharp edge and a pommel wrapped in green cord. He re-sheathed it and handed it to me with both hands. “I bought this for you,” he said. “Never let anyone take what is yours.”

I begged my father not to go. I debased myself, throwing myself on the ground, crying and clutching his legs. But he left.

Robbers

I killed the rats and planted the crop. I lived simply, never wanting to let anyone know of the gold I had. The dao remained with me at all times, on my back when I worked in the fields, and by my side as I slept. At times, I took it out and practiced. It was lighter than the wooden version I had trained with, and was very sharp. Once, I cut my own thigh by accident. The cut became infected, and I passed two days in a fever, thrashing on the little straw-stuffed mattress, until I got up and dragged myself to the medicine man in the village. He cleaned my wound and slathered it with something sweet-smelling, and I paid in gold, receiving some silver and copper coins in return.

That night, two men broke into my house seeking the gold. They were young, rough-looking men who wore no masks, and were armed only with knives. I was still unsteady on my feet. Nevertheless, I drew my dao. The men laughed. “A boy with a shiny toy,” one said. “That will soon be mine.” He lunged at me with a knife. I parried it easily with the dao, and in a single smooth motion, thrust the sword into his throat. The other, shocked, took a step back. When I went after him, he threw the knife at me. I dodged it, then leaped forward and slashed him across the belly. Clutching his hands to his belly, he turned and stumbled away, and I let him go.

Evil Banners

The floor of the house was no more than baked earth, and was now stained heavily with blood. I went out to fetch a bucket of water from our small well, to clean the floor, and saw a blood trail from the second man leading into the peanut field. I found his dead body in the field, his hands still clutching his belly as his entrails hung out like evil banners, and a portent of bad things to come.

Leaving the man in the field for the moment, I scrubbed the floors inside. Seeing in my mind the point of the sword entering the man’s throat, remembering the slight resistance as it penetrated, I vomited, then cleaned that up as well.

Then I dug a deep hole in the field and buried both men. This took two days of labor, as I had to use a pickaxe to get through a layer of limestone and shale. When it was done, I collapsed into bed and slept for three days and nights, waking only to drink water. When I recovered, my leg wound had healed. No one ever came to ask about the dead robbers.

New Songs

I continued to practice with the dao. I cycled through all the moves my father had taught me, then improvised. If movement were a song, then I broke the words apart and put them back together in random ways, creating new songs that sometimes made no sense, and other times struck my own soul like gongs, leaving it shivering. I cut myself a few more times, but not seriously, until there came a point where that was no longer a concern. The dao was part of me. I would no more cut myself with it than I would poke myself in the eye, or punch myself in the stomach.

My father had taught me to count the days from planting, and harvest the peanuts at 130 days. The crop came in full and heavy, and I sold it for a good price. While I was in town, I went to see the Mayor. My father had said he would send my salary, but it had not arrived.

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Come back next week for Part 2 – Alone

Reader comments and constructive criticism are important to me, so please comment!

See the Story Index for Wael Abdelgawad’s other stories on this website.

Wael Abdelgawad’s novels – including Pieces of a Dream, The Repeaters and Zaid Karim Private Investigator – are available in ebook and print form on his author page at Amazon.com.

Related:

Zaid Karim, Private Investigator, Part 1 – Temptation

No, My Son | A Short Story