Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Shorn ❯ 04 ( Chapter 2 )

04

 

Rashid smiles at me as if I were his own son. A passerby might think the same.

 

Here, all barriers are gone.

 

Here, there is no status, no false pride, no differences.

 

I have waited all my life to come here, and it is fitting that my time should be now, at the end of my battles. I am so glad that Rashid and the others chose to come with me. They have been before, they guide me as brothers.

 

Together we chant the prayers, with a thousand other men who are not strangers within this holy place.

 

Together we perform the rituals, and I am aware suddenly that many of us were warriors together on a battlefield that happened to be a just one. But for the will of Allah, we could have been serving the wrong cause - it has happened so many times before in the life of the Earth.

 

And now it is the tenth day, and I have made the sacrifice myself. The meat will serve to feed the poor, while I vow before mankind and Allah that this blood on my hands shall forever be the last.

 

When the ritual shaving of my head begins, to show the world that I have made my peace and cleansed my soul of killing, I cannot help but weep.

 

 

[A/N: look up “Hajj” at Wikipedia]