Bane

December 31, 1964

Amir Sharif sat at the kitchen table staring at Nida as she rocked with Nadjia in the living room by the radiator. He finished pulling his socks and, and started with his boots.

Amir was angry. Not only angry, he was disgusted. He was disgusted with the complacency of his American counterparts, though he too was now a citizen, and their simultaneous ability to be lazy and work just hard enough to get by. He saw it everyday at the quarry; men like him going to a job they hated - as he did - running out the clock in their mundane tasks as they crushed rock with their heavy machines, and hauled it off to Allah knew where in their loud, poisonous trucks.

He hated the quarry at Bishop's Gully, he hated the mines, and he hated not knowing why they were quarrying, and what they were mining... and again, why.

His official title was foreman, but all he did was sit in an office and sign off on shipments. He had no hand in the actual duties, and every time he asked what they were quarrying, someone gave him a different answer: gypsum, marble, chalk, granite, ore (of no specific kind), gritstone, limestone, or sandstone. When he asked what they were mining, he was told they were looking for gold, silver, tin, copper, and sometimes they told him they were not mining for anything in particular at all.

Clayton Walker even advised him during a site inspection ot was better not to ask questions.

Better not to ask questions!

Why someone of Clayton's station was performing an inspection, Amir would never know... but at least Clayton was more direct with him than his superiors.

Even his own employees ignored him, often telling him to just sit back and enjoy the paycheck. It was not a handout Amir wanted; he wanted purpose. He wanted to do his job, and contribute to the operation.

Every day he grew to hate the quarry a little more. Every day he responded less, and less when greeted by the miners, the laborers, and the equipment operators. There were never injuries, not that he would wish injury or death on another, but there were no injuries or deaths. There were no accidents, or incidents. His employees were never disrespectful, his superiors never demanding, or micromanaging.

The Judge of their order even suggested on more than one occasion it was not necessary for him to come to work. The terrifying old man insisted if he were needed, someone from the quarry would send for him.

Love them, or hate them, Amir was no one's whore in any way. Perhaps the men of the west we're happy to collect a paycheck for doing nothing, but he would at least try to put in the effort of his station. He had a family. He had Nida, whose respect meant something to him, even if he never acknowledged it, and he had Nadjia - at least until the pigs from The Order came to claim her - and whatever memories of her true father she may have, they would be memories of a man who worked by the sweat of his brow. She would know Amir Sharif as a man without any outward complaint, who rose each working day to do his duty at a job he hated so that he may provide for his family.

Of course he would never voice his disgust for the quarry, but they would see it in his grim expression in the morning, and hear it in his bitter voice when he arrived home.

Amir felt heat rising up in his body, the slow embers of outrage beginning in his heart, and spreading into his veins.

Nida rocked with their infant daughter, unequivocal in her contentment, happy in their halfway house, rocking Nadjia by a radiator older than either of their parents. Nida, who seemed to forget Islam; Nida, who all too easily slid I to the comforts of Western lifestyles.