Hey guys!
I’m thrilled to share the first chapter of Sarim, my fantasy adventure novel about Omani teenagers fighting jinn and having adventures in Muscat, 2019! Sarim is currently out through this website and in the following Bookstores in Oman for OMR 5:
Pages Muscat- Qurum: The link takes you right to the order page. You can also message them on IG or Whatsapp.
Suika Art Café- Boushar: You can message them about the book and they’ll tell you to come to their beautiful cafe in Boushar to buy it.
Rudhat Al Qurra- Al Khoudh: You can message on IG and order the book directly with delivery.
Booklands- Mazoon Street: Just Message them about the book and they’ll ask you to come to the nice bookstore in Al Khoudh to get it.
Minerva_om: You can message them on IG to direct order with delivery.
If you’re not in Oman, the novel is available on Amazon!
Chapter 1
Mishal Al Balushi was ten years old when he first met demons.
Sweat fled down Mishal’s neck as he stood a few hundred feet away from Al Khoudh Dam, which looked like a hill of round rocks and mesh wire, on the edge of the city. The sun beat down on his delicate hair, and he gazed in horror at a beat-down house in the distance.
The boy knew the legends. Should someone venture into the hidden places of Oman, there was terrible surprise in store, jinn just waiting to grab your body and steal your soul. And now he was there. In an area close to Oman’s glimmering northeastern coasts, in Al Khoudh to be precise, a rock dam stood in the middle of the rocky wastelands, which were now filled with white and brown flat-topped buildings. Twenty meters in height and kilometers long, Al Khoudh Dam rarely saw enough rain to crack a smile. Near the dam there was an abandoned house, a cracked brown ruin that the children in Al Khoudh whispered about.
It was called the house of the mughayab, or undead, and it was a few hundred meters away from this house that Mishal stood that day.
The ten-year-old boy trembled. He could feel his knees buckle rhythmically at what he was about to do. Behind him, four older boys stood like watchdogs – sneers painting their ugly faces.
“Come on,” Suhaib, the leader of this group, yelled from far away. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked when Mishal didn’t budge. “Move it!”
“Poor thing’s afraid,” one of the other kids teased, and Mishal turned to look at him. The boy’s shirt and khakis were stained by dust, which he slapped off into little puffs while glaring at Mishal. “What are you looking at?” he growled.
“Nothing,” Mishal replied, turning back to look at the house. The kids had ganged up on him, when he first refused to come here. They’d wrestled him to the floor, ground his head into the dust, and now blood trickled from where a rock had cut him. He couldn’t run, he knew. They were bigger, stronger, and faster. Worst of all, they knew where his house was. They could just wait outside, until he ventured to the shop, and grab him then. There would be no escape until he did as they said.
“Go on!” Suhaib shrieked and, in terror, Mishal moved towards the haunted house. Once the first step came, others followed suit. It was like he was outside his own body, watching the house loom ever closer. Its windows had been smashed, a crack ran down its front, and the door lay a few meters off to the side, a forlorn relic. He was going to go in. Oh god, they were going to make him go inside. The kids talked about jinn, demons in the house. What if the demons got him?
No such thing as jinn, he told himself, but he didn’t believe that. Jinn existed, he knew that from school; even his teacher hadn’t explained what they were.
He crept closer and closer to the house, until it grew to fill his vision. It had no lawn to speak of, as it lay amid the wastelands, but tired bricks lay strewn around in front of it. The small boy could smell dust and slowly rotting garbage. His heart beat faster until it drummed, a musical instrument caged inside of one terror-filled boy. His hand trembled visibly as it inched closer to the doorway, a narrow wooden jamb that sprouted splinters. This was it. If he touched it, the jinn would be able to find him.
“Do it!” Suhaib and the others screamed from afar.
Mishal closed his eyes as he first touched the wall and then the broken side of the doorway, feeling splinters on the tips of his fingers. Now the noise of his heart deafened him, and he kept his eyes closed as he took another step forward into the musty ruin of the house.
Mishal accidentally kicked a pebble as he came forward and it clattered in the darkness, startling him. The boy opened his eyes to see the small cottage from the inside. Trash covered the floor and he saw the faded grey of the walls, looking… Scratched, as if some long-clawed beast had been caged here. He waited for the jinn to appear or to even possess him suddenly, but nothing happened as he stood panting inside the house.
Something smacked hard into his back and Mishal yelped. He turned to see Suhaib’s smirk, standing uncomfortably close. “See? Nothing there,” the older boy said to one of his companions, Khalid.
“Boring,” Khalid murmured, then looked around the house before turning back to Mishal. “Why did you take so long? When we tell you to do something, you do it like this,” he added, snapping his fingers.
“I-it was nothing!” Mishal said, trying not to let them know that he remained afraid. They’d just tease him if he sounded scared, he knew. “I went in, right?”
“You took too long,” Suhaib replied, giving Mishal a long look. “Khalid’s right, you’re just a coward. Stupid, useless coward.”
“I’m not!”
“You are.”
“Then how come none of you came in first?” Mishal replied, now more angry than afraid, even though he knew that this line of dialogue would put him in jeopardy. Now, however, the anger burned too hot for his mind to follow. These boys constantly harassed him. They made him get cola for them from the shop with his allowance. His money. He stepped forward. “You were scared too, weren’t you?” he asked, smiling smugly when shock registered on Suhaib’s ugly mug with its broken nose and the gaps between the teeth.
A fist cracked into Mishal’s face, spinning it to the side so that he was facing the wall, then the gray wall came closer as Suhaib shoved him from behind, hard. Mishal turned his face, taking the wall’s impact on the side of his head as the older boy took Mishal’s hair in his fist. “You don’t insult me,” Suhaib growled, punching the wind out of Mishal’s midsection and hurling him to the ground. As soon as he tried to get up, Khalid and Ali each pinned down one of his arms. Suhaib loomed above him, large like a giant because his uncle let him work out at his gym, and he leaned down with both fists raised.
The first blow glanced off Mishal’s chin, but the other caught him straight in the nose, making everything blur, and the third got him in the stomach. Again and again Suhaib struck, until Mishal couldn’t feel the beating anymore. His mind was free to wander.
This isn’t fair, he thought to himself in that haze as he watched Suhaib’s grin, emblazoned against the moldy ceiling behind him, as well as the swinging fists. They’re older, bigger. And now they take me to this haunted place and they’re going to kill me. I know it. It’s not fair that they’re going to kill me. I’m just a kid. What did I ever do to them? I want to…
Another punch shattered his train of thoughts, and then Suhaib stood and gestured at the two others to let him go. “Leave him,” he said, rubbing at his hands. “Let the jinn have him.”
“No, wait,” Mishal croaked. Fear began to rise again, and Mishal flipped himself onto his stomach. If there was something really here, he didn’t want it finding him. He knew about jinn; they’d slither into his body, wear his skin, turn him insane. He’d be trapped and fed on, until there was nothing left.
But what was he, anyhow? Weak and useless, just like Suhaib had said. The only demons Mishal could see before him were these three boys, grinning now with delight, bodies deformed by his confusion. They’d beaten him, taken his money, and would now leave him to either get possessed or crawl home alone in shame.
Lying on the ground, Mishal could see Khalid’s foot in his sandals, which were scratched and brown, and he wrapped his hand around the boy’s ankle in a desperate grip. He didn’t want them to leave him. Inside of him, the roots of fear began to be set aflame by something hot and roaring. He wanted to make these kids pay for what they did to him.
Oh? A voice said in his head, but it didn’t belong to him. By then tears of rage had blurred his vision and he didn’t care about himself.
“I want to break them,” he hissed.
Interesting.
“Get off me, you- ow, hey!” Khalid said, and the others turned to him. Mishal saw fire engulfing his hand and burning at Khalid’s leg. He moved his hand and the fire moved with it, but it didn’t hurt. It felt… Good, even as Khalid shouted.
The last thing Mishal remembered of that day was looks of horror on the boys’ faces.
****
And that’s that! I hope you guys enjoyed this first chapter. If you feel like reading something fun and easy, buy the book and dive into Mishal’s adventure. If you liked this part of the story, comment below or share it on Twitter or Instagram. It helps a lot when you let other people know that the book exists.
Just in case, here are Sarim’s purchase methods again:
Through my shop
Pages Muscat- Qurum: The link takes you right to the order page. You can also message them on IG or Whatsapp.
Suika Art Café- Boushar: You can message them about the book and they’ll tell you to come to their beautiful cafe in Boushar to buy it.
Rudhat Al Qurra- Al Khoudh: You can message on IG and order the book directly with delivery.
Booklands- Mazoon Street: Just Message them about the book and they’ll ask you to come to the nice bookstore in Al Khoudh to get it.
Minerva_om: You can message them on IG to direct order with delivery.
If you’re not in Oman, the novel is available on Amazon.
Thanks for reading me writing. Don’t forget to read for joy!
Love,
Ammar