Chapter 193
Arya recited them one by one, his voice growing quieter each time he mentioned the name of a religion.
Beside the fifth scripture was a symbol he did not recognize.
It did not belong to any religion he had ever studied in school or at headquarters.
Instead, it resembled a question mark, or more precisely, a question mark stitched inside a broken circle, as though it represented a question that could never be answered because the answer itself was too horrifying to speak aloud.
Hearing Arya struggle to identify the symbol, Nirma immediately pulled the clay cellphone from her pocket.
She pressed the red, yellow, and purple buttons in the same sequence as before.
When Ashita answered from Jerusalem, her voice still heavy with exhaustion, Nirma wasted no time.
"Ashita, there's a symbol... a circle with a question mark inside it, surrounded by a broken ring. What does it mean?"
The silence on the other end of the connection became so heavy that Nirma could hear Ashita's strained breathing.
It sounded like someone who had run too far, or someone who had spent too long holding back tears.
When Ashita finally spoke, her voice resembled a whisper rising from a grave.
Or a prayer that no longer knew whom it was meant for.
"That... that is the symbol of Sinta's atrocity, Nirma. In the novel Abnormality given to us by that old man, the symbol appeared in every chapter that told the story of the genocide of the Ningsih family. The massacre Sinta committed at the age of six. She killed ninety-eight percent of her own family. Her father. Her mother. Her grandfather. Her grandmother. Her uncles. Her aunts. Her cousins. Everyone who had ever loved her. Everyone who had ever given her a name. Everyone who could still remember her as a human being. Not as a goddess. Not as a monster. Not as a name too terrifying to utter for fear of inviting a curse. That symbol is a warning, Nirma. A warning that if you see it, you are standing in a place where Sinta once committed the most horrifying act a six-year-old child could possibly commit. She killed everyone who had ever made her feel loved."
They left the stable with hearts heavier than before.
Not because of the symbol.
Not because of the sleeping animals.
But because they were beginning to see a far greater pattern.
A pattern that was no longer merely about kidnapping or manipulating history.
It pointed toward something deeper.
Something older.
Something far more terrifying than anything they had ever been trained to confront.
When they stepped into the main room, where Amr usually taught the young men of Banu Salamah to read the Qur'an, Nirma immediately noticed the wooden writing board hanging on the farthest wall.
It was the lawh, the board beginners used to write down the verses they had just memorized.
The place where the earliest traces of a growing faith were preserved in imperfect ink, yet filled with an earnest desire to learn, to understand, and to draw closer to the God they had only recently come to know.
"Here," Arya whispered.
His voice nearly broke as his invisible hand pointed toward the wooden board.
When Nirma stepped closer, she saw something that made her chest tighten.
It felt like a room deprived of oxygen.
Like a heart suppressing its own tears.
Like the crushing realization that they had been reading the map incorrectly all along.
Written upon the board, perfectly preserved, were verses 1 through 4 of Surah Al-Ikhlas.
"Qul huwallāhu aḥad. Allāhuṣ-ṣamad. Lam yalid wa lam yūlad. Wa lam yakul lahū kufuwan aḥad."
The four verses formed the very essence of God's absolute oneness.
The foundation of tawhid.
Words recited by every Muslim every day and every night whenever they wished to remember that there is only One worthy of worship.
Only One who depends on nothing.
Only One who neither begets nor is begotten.
Only One without equal.
But at the bottom of the board, written in red ink that refused to fade no matter how many times Nirma rubbed it with her invisible fingertips, was an additional sentence.
"And Sinta is the witness to His Oneness, the servant who never sleeps before uttering His Name a thousand times."
"This red ink won't come off," Arya said.
His voice carried the certainty of a conclusion that no longer required debate.
After taking out his analyzer and illuminating the writing with a pale blue light, the composition of the ink was identified within seconds.
"It was made from materials that did not exist in the seventh century. Perhaps from the thirtieth century. Or the fortieth. Perhaps from the very same laboratory that produced that sweet-smelling sleeping gas. This wasn't written by Amr. Nor by any of the young men who studied here. It was written by the same hand that left the notes at the end of every surah in the Qur'an found in Abdullah's house. The same hand. The same ink. The same intention."
Hearing that, Nirma grasped the wooden board.
Not to take it away.
But to feel the cold surface of wood that had existed for decades.
Wood once touched by the fingers of young men learning to read the Word of God for the very first time.
Wood now stained by red ink from the future.
Ink bearing the name of a woman they had never known.
Never seen.
Never even heard of.
Yet one they would remember if they read this board again tomorrow morning.
And if they remembered it, they would inevitably ask a single question.
"Who is Sinta?"
Within the context of learning the Qur'an, that was a question that should never have existed.
Inside a place of learning.
Upon a writing board.
Among sacred verses.
There was no place for any name other than the name of God and the names of His Prophets.
No place for a woman who had no connection whatsoever to revelation.
No place for words that were not divine scripture, yet had been written as though they were.
"This is different from what we found at Abdullah's house," Nirma said.
Her voice emerged from behind her veil, cold with the precision of an analysis that refused to be tainted by emotion.
Yet beneath that coldness trembled a vibration she could no longer conceal.
Like the string of a violin pulled so tightly that its sound cracked along the edges.
"At Abdullah's house, they had already modified a complete Qur'an. The leather binding. The paper pages. The notes at the end of every surah. That was a finished product, Arya. Something ready to be distributed. Ready to be discovered. Ready to alter history if it fell into the wrong hands. But here, in Amr's house, the modification exists only as an addition on a beginner's writing board. This isn't a finished product. This is a trial. They're testing how deeply they can implant Sinta's name into teaching materials. Into the wooden boards the young men look at every single day. Into the memories of students learning to recite the sacred verses. Into minds still innocent enough not to question why the name of a woman appears beside the name of God. This is a laboratory, Arya. And the young men of Banu Salamah are their test subjects. If this succeeds here... if these young men begin remembering Sinta's name every time they recite Surah Al-Ikhlas... then they'll repeat the same experiment on a much larger scale. In more houses. On more writing boards. In more copies of the Qur'an. Until no one remembers that her name was never there in the first place."
To be continued…