Chapter - 3
“The Man in Black Robe”
The battle ended as suddenly as it had begun.
The pickup trucks that remained scattered across the desert retreated westward again disappearing into clouds of dust .
Several of them were left behind to burn.
The tanks did not chase quickly as they couldn't catch up to the trucks anyway .
They rolled forward slowly, like metal elephants claiming new territory as they shook the ground beneath them .
Soon , smoke drifted across the valley , yet the children stayed hidden behind the rocks long after the sound of gunfire became distant and eventually stopped.
No one child spoke.
Eventually the youngest one began to cry.
The boy lowered his binoculars and looked around .
Once more the battlefield had gone quiet again.
But the silence was of a different kind this time .
The desert smelled of smoke - from burning wires , rubber tyres and metals .
He stood and looked toward the narrow canyon behind the ridge , this was the path leading back towards the compound .
The other children followed him down the rocks and none of them said anything , they didn't need to .
They all knew where they were going.
The compound sat hidden between two steep canyon walls , while from above it looked nothing more than broken stones and scattered tents , but only those who walked through the canyon knew the truth.
Nearly thirty children lived there.
Some old and some very young.
None of them had arrived here in the same way , some had been brought by strangers , while some had simply appeared one day with the man in black robe .
Two years earlier there had been many more children here - about fifty .
But that number had slowly become smaller every few months when a convoy arrived .
Not with soldiers but different men.
Foreign men.
They spoke English, French, and sometimes other languages which children could not understand at all .
They came with guarded trucks.
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Inside those trucks were heavy wooden crates covered with thin yellow grass and papers .
The chests always made the same sound when they were opened - metallic.
Gold bars stacked carefully in cloth wrapping.
Sometimes silver and rarely diamonds.
The men spoke quietly with the man in black.
The conversations lasted for hours.
The children were never allowed close enough to hear what was being discussed .
When the negotiations ended, the trucks would leave and so did one or two of the children with them . Even though at first the others had cried when this happened.
But the man in black always spoke calmly afterward telling them - “They are going somewhere important to someone important” “You need not to worry”
For what else could they believe when it was the only thing told to them , and so they believed him and awaited what would be their fate .
Eventually the children stopped crying.
The boy had watched every exchange carefully.
He noticed something.
The men who brought the gold never smiled.
They inspected the children the same way merchants inspected animals in a market.
Checking teeth.
Checking posture.
Looking deep into the eyes .
Sometimes asking a few questions in languages most of the children could not grasp .
The boy understood some of those questions.
Because they were asked in English.
“What age is this one?”
“Can he read?”
“Is he obedient?”
“Does he remember anything about his family?”
The answers were always given by the man in black , and never even once did the children speak in front of them . No one ever asked the children what they wanted , but the children did not know that this was supposed to be strange in anyway , after all they had all been raised here by the man in black as far as they could remember if anything at all they had only known the desert - its dry wind , the hot sun and the compound .
Most of them had never known anything else.
When the group returned to the canyon entrance, the sun was already falling behind the cliffs.
The man in black stood near a fire pit at the center of the compound .
He was actually quite tall.
His robe moved slightly with the wind.
His face was calm like always.
He watched the children walk into the camp.
One of the younger boys spoke first.
“There was a battle.”
The man in black nodded slowly and replied with a yes .
“We saw flying machines.”
While another child pointed upwards .
“They killed many .”
The man in black looked toward the darkening sky .
For a moment he said nothing at all and soon he spoke in a quiet tone .
“The world is full of powerful men , and when they want something - they do not ask .”
The boy stepped forward slightly.
“What … do they want?”
A faint smile appeared on the man’s face.
“Everything.”
He looked down at the boy .
“Still … they are only people …. And people … can be controled ….”
As fire crackled softly between them , in the fading light, the man in black’s shadow stretched across the sand .
Behind the canyon walls, the distant echo of aircraft engines still drifted through the sky.
War was spreading across the desert , and somewhere far beyond the battlefield, powerful men were already deciding what that war would be worth.
Gold.
Land.
Power.
Or perhaps something else entirely.
The children did not know.
They only knew that every time the trucks arrived with heavy chests of gold…
Someone disappeared.
And then never came back.
