The Forever Man

The men of my hometown used to speak of a beast whose hands were stained with blood of thousands. They say he could not be tamed and he could not be killed. He was Babylon's sword and shield. A man who could defeat an entire army. These stories were simply rumors and had no evidence to back them up, but for some reason, I could not get the tale out of my head. Not when I was about to sleep. Not when I was eating with my family. Not when I inevitably found myself on the battlefield. I was recruited into the Assyrian military against my will. In my village, it was a proud, noble thing to do. However, I did not want to die. There were too many things I enjoyed, too many people I loved. Doubt clouded my mind even as I stood in rank against the Babylonian army.

"It's smaller than I thought, their army." I found myself thinking out loud.

"Never judge an army on its size. These Babylonians have the will of a lion. They believe in their revolt, making them dangerous." whispered Khalil, the other soldier from my village.

The battle began at dawn. The two armies that had stared each other down for hours finally went to battle. With my own sword I must have killed at least four, no five men. I felt as my sword tore their flesh. I felt as my blade broke through bone and cut through organs. It was not a good feeling.

I looked around to see how my allies were doing.

We're...winning?

Surprise and gladness took over the dark feeling in my heart.

I'll get to go home. I'll get to see...her one more time.

*********************************************************************************************************

"Do you have to go?" cried Atourina.

"If it was my decision, I would choose to stay by your side," In truth, my heart ached.

"Please, come back to me. Promise me, if you come back, we will get married."

"Atourina, my return has no bearing on that. I cannot promise it. You are destined to marry my best friend, Khalil, and nothing is going to change that. Our feelings cannot be recognized."

"Please Eilram, you're all I want. I will back out of engagement. For the man I love is not Khalil, but you, Eilram."

"I am not alone going into battle, but rather it is I and Khalil. Speak your words of love to him, not to me."

My heart burned and felt heavy. Was this truly what I desired? Why did it have to be him, why did it have to be Khalil? In truth, despite our "relationship" with each other, I have always despised Khalil. His family took me in when I was a boy and I am eternally grateful for the opportunity I received, but I could always tell. Khalil always received the attention, the love, the praise. And even when I finally gained something he desired but did not possess, Atourina's love, he still was given it in the end by none other than the parents of the two. An arranged marriage, just my luck. I do not know if my love for Atourina is real, or if it is just my competitive nature with Khalil. However, when she looks at me with eyes so full of gentleness and kindness, I feel as if my heart grows lighter.

*********************************************************************************************************

As I reflected on my past, a Babylonian came sprinting at me with a spear. He pierced my left leg, stabbing through it onto the ground, where it got stuck. I swiftly beheaded him, but my leg was no good. I was losing a lot of blood and was pinned on the ground. In the chaos another Babylonian had noticed me on the verge of death. He was not alone, however, as Khalil jumped to defend me. As he fought hard with the enemy, I saw the fire in his eyes, the warmth. The hate I felt was one-sided without a doubt.

I am undeserving of Atourina's love. I am selfish, hateful, and greedy. Perhaps it is my fate to die here.

"Run away, Khalil! Go! NOW!" I shouted with all the might I could muster.

"I refuse! If I run away here, how will I face her?"

"Atourina loves you, Khalil. It is my responsibility to make sure you're there to tell her that too!"

Khalil notices an opening on his opponent and takes it, killing the enemy instantly. He then breaks the spear and drags me away from the battle to tend to my wounds.

"Do not try to lie to me Eilram. I am fully aware of Atourina's feelings for you. I am not angry, but rather, I am happy for you."

What? How? Why? Why is he so nice? Why is he always the better man? Get angry. Please, please get angry. I cannot live with myself if you do not get angry. Feel hate. Feel jealousy. Like I do. Please, stop making it so hard to hate you.

"Do you feel good about yourself now? You belittle me, acting mighty and proud."

"Does it surprise you to know that I also am aware of your hatred for me?"

"Well if you already know then I'll say it, I hate you Khalil. I hate you for being the loved one. I hate you for being the smart one. I hate you for being praised by the village. I hate you."

"And Eilram, I love you. You are my brother, no matter how you feel about me. I would be happy to die for you."

Before I could respond, I noticed that the screams and sounds of war had stopped. I quickly rushed to get a view of the battlefield, only to be horrified at what I found. The entire Assyrian army had fallen, and a single man remained on the battlefield. He was wearing no armor and carried no sword, yet he was drenched in blood. He noticed us atop the ridge we were on. I saw the look on his eyes, the bloodlust. Khalil told me to run.

"I'll buy you time." He spoke coldly.

The man stood still for a moment, staring at the two of us.

"Why? Why do you sacrifice for one who hates you so much?" the man sounded quite angry.

"I am aware of Eilram's hatred for me, but I care not for what he thinks and more of what I believe. And I believe that Eilram wants to hate me and has convinced himself so."

"I know little about love, but I know much about hate. So much that I can see hate in that man's eyes. It is my existence to extinguish hate, that is how I have interpreted my life. It is unending because hate is unending."

"Unending? What is the meaning of this?" I inquired.

"It matters not. Answer my question, why do you sacrifice for someone who despises you so much?"

"It is because we are brothers, through love and hate, this much remains true."

"How curious, how interesting," the man's voice calmed.

The man dropped his blade, kneeled on the ground, and surrendered himself to us.

"Please," he said, "Please take me to your home."

"What?!" I was in utter shock.

"I wish to see the home that made the boys who stand before me. I wish to know the truth of bonds, and how a bond in which one hates the other can be formed."

In the end, we surrendered to his request and brought him home as a slave prisoner of war, an attendant to me and Khalil's entire household. Despite the utter embarrassment of being chained and brought to our home uncleaned and unclothed, he seemed heartbreakingly used to it. What has this supposed forever man seen? What has been done to him? These are the things I wished to know.

"See what the spoils we have brought home! We have tamed Bablyonia's unkillable beast! Tonight we cheer and feast!" Khalil announced to the village.

Still the celebrity of the village, I see. What can be done about it? But what is this I feel? It isn't disgust and disdain anymore, but rather something warm. It fills me up. Like how I am with Atourina. Is this love?

"I see. I am ashamed of how wrong I was," the man sounded rather unhappy.

"Eilram!"

I could hear this voice through any crowd. The voice I loved. The voice I always wanted to hear. She ran towards me and Khalil with her arms open. Oh, how I longed to be the one inside of them. As expected, she had to keep her public image clean and went to hug Khalil, her fiance. My chest ached, I wanted to hold her tight and tell her of my war story. All during this, the man we captured continued staring at me. His gaze was unbroken. This was when I realized that past the dirt and mud on his naked body, there lay not a single scratch. The only blood on him was that of blood that was obviously from killing another.

Later that night, our village held a festival in honor of their hero, Khalil. Me and the rest of the men were honorary guests, but Khalil was truly the center of the village once again. The other men did not care, however, as they had their own wives and families to return to. Me, however, was alone. Atourina was treated with equal love and respect as Khalil and had to be by his side the whole night. It was just me and my new slave.

"I would like to apologize, my understanding of emotions is still not mature enough as it would appear."

"What do you mean?"

"I believed with all my heart that you despised Khalil, but now looking at you, all I see is adoration. Or at least so I think, love is still an emotion I have neither felt nor received."

"I've been wondering this for a while, but is your name? And what is your story?"

"My name is that of a curse. My story is that of hatred. If you require a name, call me Sibuna, for that is what the Egyptians to the south called me."

"Egypt? You have visited the grand nation of Egypt?"

"More than a visit, I was a gladiator in the Egyptian army."

"Please, Sibuna, tell me more of your life. Where were you born?" I needed to know what could make a man like Sibuna.

"I was, let's say, illegally born. My dad was never supposed to meet, let alone sleep with my mother. And, my mother was already married and was forbidden to sleep with another. Because of this, I was cursed by those I knew as family. I was banished from not just my house, but the nation of my birth. They chased me out, sword in hand when I was but a boy. Seeing the hatred in their eyes is still burned onto my memory. It was there I decided that I would kill those plagued with hate, an endless war against those people who hated others. This was where I found the theater for my crusade, war. It is in war that you find senseless hatred, pure hatred, even those who remember whom they despise before they die. It is pure, untouched hate. This is why when I saw you and your brother-in-arms share such an unbreakable bond, I was curious. I see it now, however, why you were so convinced you hate him."

"I would like to thank you, Sibuna, for you were what brought me to realize my love for the man I consider a sibling."

Our conversation was interrupted by Atourina, who had finally escaped the crowd.

"Did you wait long for me?"

"Yes, far too long," I joked with her.

"Oh no! Shall I bring you wine to make up for it?" She took it seriously, as usual.

"I jest, I jest. I love how you are this way," Ah, my heart was truly at peace.

"Do you...remember our promise?" She spoke softly.

"Of course, how could I forget?"

Her face was red, and her words were slurred. She was very drunk.

"I think you need to sit down, Atourina"

"No, I think you and I need to get married," She was being too loud.

"Stop talking, Atourina. You are going to make a bad situation for Khalil if you do not quiet yourself."

"It is okay, I just came up with a plan."

What? What plan? Is this just her being too drunk to make sense?

Very suddenly, she began to vomit. She was always a weak drinker, which is why I was taken off guard by her being drunk. Surprising and confusing me further, she seemingly purposely vomited on Sibuna.

"I am so sorry! Please follow me, I'll wash you off."

"No, allow me," I said.

"No! I will do it, it is my fault!"

Not wanting to argue, I let her do as she pleased. She took him to her house and was gone for quite a while. I decided that I would go pay a visit to Khalil. He was the center of attention, of course. But I found myself unbothered by it once again.

I like this, this feeling. I hope our life can continue like this moving forward.

Suddenly, I heard a deafening cry. This sound, it was unmistakable. It was Atourina. I rushed over to her house to see what was wrong.

"Atourina! What happened?!"

She rushed into my arms.

"He...Khalil's slave, he just pushed me down and tried to have his way with me!"

The crowd was right behind me, roaring into an outcry after hearing Atourina's words. There was no way this was possible, however. A man like Sibuna, a man who has been let down and broken by his own people and his own beliefs would never be interested in something like lust. No, Sibuna is the type of man to always seek something greater. My opinion, however, could get me in trouble.

"She...She's wrong! She simply vomited on me and wanted to wash me!" cried Sibuna.

"Shut up, rapist! We should execute him immediately for trying to have his way with a precious daughter of our village!" screamed a man from the crowd.

The men of the village surrounded Sibuna, chaining his arms and legs and dragged him out of the house.

"I see. So you have chosen to remain quiet," he said to me as he passed me.

Atourina's purpose in accusing Sibuna of rape seemed completely hidden to me. That was, at least, until the next morning when Atourina used the fact that Khalil's slave tried to rape her as an excuse to get out of her engagement with him. Did I want this? Do I want to be added to the list of those who have let Sibuna down?

The afternoon after his arrest, Sibuna was unsurprisingly sentenced to death. He was to be tortured for a week first, however. The whole village wanted to watch as their "villain" got the justice he deserved. His body was suspended on a tree branch where he was to be stabbed in the sides of his body 20 times. When the time of the torture came, the village was met with a surprise. As they viciously stabbed Sibuna, the spears remained clean. He did not bleed. In fact, the wounds that should've been caused by the spears were completely nonexistent. The cuts continued to instantly heal. But, I could tell by his face that the pain was still there. Perhaps this was much worse. The next morning, they altered his sentence, now making it so that he was to be suspended there indefinitely and that the people had free reign over what they would do to them. If they had a bad day, they could toss rocks at the undying man on the oak tree. If they had a good day, they could enjoy target practice with their bow on the undying man on the oak tree. He was still there when Atourina and I got engaged. He was still there when we got married. He was still there when we had our first child. On that cursed tree he remained for a decade.

"My true name that you asked for a while ago, it's Elad," he once said to me.

I knew the truth behind him telling me his supposed cursed name. He now considered me and the village to be the same as his home. Every time I saw him, I wanted to reveal the truth to the village . But every time, I stopped myself. What would happen to Atourina? What would happen to our children? Would they forever be the embarrassment of the village? This I did not want. Luckily, it would never come to that. After 10 years and 200 days on the tree, Elad disappeared. The chains were broken into pieces, making it clear that he could have escaped at any point. Why didn't he? The answer to this I would never know. In time, it seemed as if the village forgot he was ever there. As my children grew into adulthood, they merely remembered him as the Forever Man. Soon enough, the Forever Man became a tall tale told to kids to keep them in check.

"If you aren't careful, the Forever Man will emerge from the Tree of Eternity and take you to Hell!" they would say.

As ashamed as I am, I am glad that Elad was accused and wrongly punished. For he gave me true happiness. The love of my life, my own children, and my children's children are just a few of the things I was granted through his sacrifice. I'm sure that Khalil felt the same, may his soul rest in peace. I, as well, feel my life drawing near its end. Even when writing this, I am bedridden. When I pass on, I wonder if I'll see Elad? Probably not. I would guess that he is some far away nation going through tragedy once again. A man like him, granted the blessing of eternal life, must be cursed with misfortune. No man should be allowed the power to be God without being hated by God himself. My father once told me that he who outlives his enemies is the true victor in war. In his endless war against hatred, will Elad win? I hope so. I spent so many years plagued by my hatred for Khalil before Elad came. Even if he doesn't know it, I hope he'll one day realize that he saved at least one soul from hatred in the end. It is funny how the kindest man of all is the one who will be soaked in the blood of thousands, no, millions. His crusade against hatred will bring unimaginable pain and loss. He is willing to take on the suffering of the world all on his shoulders. What a sad, lonely path to tread.

I wonder if I'll see him again?

...

I hope I see him again.

*********************************************************************************************************

One day, I hope you can come to forgive me. I stole from him so much more

than he could ever steal from me.

If you ever come face to face with the Forever Man, please be kind to him.

Just for me, 'kay?

From the bottom of my heart,

Your Grandfather