My heart is heavy as I watch the news of USA bombarding Yemen, the tenth-poorest nation in the world. I haven’t revisited Catallaxis since I published it in 2019. I was swimming upstream trying to promote a novel series based on the premise that a microorganism emerging from the poor safety practices of Chinese laboratories could change the world, back when there was a concerted effort to censor the idea that anything dangerous could emerge from a Chinese laboratory!
I can only hope that this latest obscenity of warfare is a harbinger of the eupocalypse, of underthrow, of panarchy, of the great awakening of the world.
The reunion in Catallaxis takes place in Yemen, of the star-crossed lovers whose story is one of the threads of the Eupocalypse tapestry. A map of the Middle East and Northeast Africa brings the eye naturally to the Red Sea’s strategic position, and Yemen at its mouth. Let the chapter below speak for itself in presenting Li’s quest through the sere, hungry land to find his lodestar, the pirate warrior Meala:
Chapter 39:
Sometimes the Sun
The sun rose over the ocean, illuminating the sky with lavender and rose-gold fluff, high clotted-cream clouds that would soon burn away in the morning light. Li had dozed lightly in his spot propped against the tree trunk, and now the growing daylight was revealing just how desolate his surroundings were.
It had been thousands of years since Yemen had been anything but a desperately poor, isolated place, a starving nation among its petrowealth-replete Arab neighbors. The proxy wars of the Saudis, Russia, and China in the few years prior to the eupocalypse were an escalation of torture and neglect that had ended abruptly with the transformation of petroleum to water and carbon dioxide. The kleptocracy that thrived on black money and military aid faded into the woodwork, leaving an ungoverned and ungovernable indigenous population.
None of them were here where Li stood, now. There were: barely-discernible sand tracks; low vegetation similar to the twisted; venerable evergreen he’d slept under; the ocean; and nothing.
He got to his feet and brushed the sand off his body, emptied out his flotation bag and folded up the cloth. Li sipped at the fresh water remaining in his skin bag and walked to the beach for a splash. A ctenophore approached his feet in the water, and he scooped it out.
Meala. Her hash came up in the readout. Send.
He had no real hope of reaching her, had messaged her so many times in the last few days with no response. But hope sprang eternal.
She didn’t respond. He stowed the beast in the pouch at his waist, where it trilled and settled. It wasn’t one custom-grown for him, but in this sparsely populated area, it hardly needed to be.
He continued walking. The sun was beginning to get painfully hot, and he improvised a keffiyeh from the bag.
Presently, he reached a place where the road widened. An open wooden fishing boat sat high on the strand with its oars stowed. A few driftwood shelters had been jammed into the sand, and some metal buckets sat in their shade. A man with a grey goatee and muscles that belied the greyness walked in the shallows. He was surrounded by three youths, all caramel and chocolate skin and eyes, with the agile grace and strength that came from rowing boats and hauling nets—except for the youngest, a grinning slender boy of just ten or so.
They hailed him excitedly and chattered at him in Arabic, but finally abated when they realized he couldn’t understand a word of it. They gestured towards the buckets in the shelters, and he looked in to see fish, crabs, and octopus. He turned out his pockets expressively. They looked at him gravely, offered him a tiny shotglass from their water supply, and sent him on his way, still hungry. As he crested the next gentle dune slope, he glanced back and saw that three camels had come along the track from inland. Their riders, swathed in white, were talking to the fisherman and his sons.
Those men probably don’t even understand how much things have changed. Because they haven’t changed much, not for them. Maybe they can’t get cooking fuel anymore, and their mother has had to go back to burning dung and scraps of wood. Maybe they used a motorboat before and now they’re back to rowing.
He walked on and on, happy to have the sun at his back instead of blinding him. When the path diverged from the shore, he looked at the sand that was devouring the track ahead and at the ocean to his right, and chose to follow the sea, keeping it in sight. At least I won’t wind up lost in the middle of this endless desert.
Close to nightfall, he came upon a fishing village. He approached its outskirts cautiously. He’d been incredibly lucky to pass that night in the open and unmolested by man or beast. He was unsure, though, whether this village would view him as a guest, a predator…or prey. This was a harsh part of the world, and he didn’t know the way of it.
He swayed softly on his feet, silhouetted against the sun that set at his back, casting a long shadow towards the cluster of enclosed yards of goats and chickens. Suddenly, he heard a loud whistle. He squinted and resolved the fisherman waving at him from in front of one of the houses. The ten-year-old boy scampered towards him across the dusty earth, too lightly for the end of a long day in the heartless sun.
The boy took his hand and tugged him along into the family’s abode. A woman wrapped in colorful cotton cloth knelt there, cooking flatbreads on a grill over a small stick fire in the courtyard. The men and boys came through a break in the low adobe wall and joined her. She pushed away the cloth over her arms and sorted through the buckets, looking for something to make for dinner.
The males beckoned Li inside and made him sit on the floor with them. The men sipped Karak cardamom tea served by a sister who’d appeared magically from somewhere and vanished the same way. Li smiled and nodded, understanding none of the conversation, but grateful to be included as a guest. The smell of fish on the grill wafted in through the open doorway, and Li thought he might faint from hunger.
Soon the females came in—Mom in her colorful hijab, and the young daughter in a simple sari-like wrap. The fish had been transformed into a savory spiced stew of tomatoes and okra, and they scooped it up with the soft folding bread.
When they finished, the women vanished again, and the men and the two older boys began to pass about a sack of khat and chew it. Li tried to pass it on, but the oldest son became quite insistent. Li relented, took a small leaf and nibbled it lightly, then pantomimed taking more each time the bag went by. The others became animated, chattering and laughing. The young boy fell asleep sprawled at his father’s feet.
Li wished he could understand the conversation. It was apparently quite hilarious, as each appeared to try to outdo the previous man with some sort of story or other. False voices, cryptic dramatic hand gestures, and belly laughs abounded, so infectious that Li laughed along despite his incomprehension.
Finally, exhaustion overwhelmed him, and he reclined against a cushion and closed his eyes. Drifting off to sleep lulled by conversation he couldn’t understand had transported him to childhood. He dreamed of his parents, left behind in China when he’d left for Georgetown as an exchange student so long ago.
He woke up the next morning alone, on the carpet where he’d apparently fallen asleep. He went outside, blinking in the morning sun, and saw the whole family around the yard, eating dates and dried fish and sipping red tea. The old woman brought him a suit of clothes, a simple galabia and heavily-patched drawstring pants, and gestured that he should take them and put them on. He complied, and got a round of hooted approval when he emerged. He wadded up his filthy clothing into his bag.
The girl spoke, urged by her father . “Speak English?” she said, to Li’s surprise.
“Yes, I do! I do! Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
She stared in incomprehension.
He tried again.
“Yes. English.”
“Go…that way?” She pointed east.
“Yes, I go that way. Look for African boats.” He tried to speak slowly and simply.
“My papa and brother take you to Aden.”
“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” He pressed his hands together and bowed in what he hoped was a universal gesture of gratitude.
“Why take me? Why clothes? Why food? Why?”
“You bring luck. Stranger bring good luck. Good fortune. Inshallah.”
Li could only repeat his thanks again and again. He nodded and bowed to each family member in turn.
Finally, the man and the oldest son boarded the boat, and Li found he was expected to row as well. Of course, he didn’t mind at all, but the boat kept veering to the side where he sat because he couldn’t match the teenager’s powerful oar strokes. With a disgusted expression, the youth eventually shooed him away.
Li sat and watched the sea, the sky, and the coastline, feeling useless and helpless, until they came around a point of land as they approached the coastal port of Aden.
He scanned the harbor eagerly, but didn’t see Meala’s fleet.
His heart sank. If they were planning a rendezvous with the Sana’a contingent, Aden was the logical place to do so. If Meala had died, at least the sailors in her fleet could tell him, release him from this sharp-edged, shrill unknowingness. If they weren’t here, where could they be? Attacked by pirates (he didn’t think they would take on boats so well-armed and fiercely crewed, but one never knew)? Perhaps they’d been and gone?
He extracted his ctenophore for the millionth time and texted: Meala. Send. Silence.
This is the hardest choice I’ve ever had to make. But I have been extraordinarily lucky here so far. I don’t belong in this part of the world, and it will be the death of me. I need to go home.
After many more bows and professions of gratitude, he left his benefactors. He walked Aden’s main street, stopping everyone he met, addressing them in Mandarin and English.
“Can you tell me if there are any ships leaving for the far east?” Person after person shrugged and moved on, refusing to meet his eyes.
A wizened man finally responded, in English. “Where?” the man asked. “Korea? China?”
“I’m going to China, but anywhere east of here is a first step. Anywhere in Asia will get me closer than here!”
“Have you checked the secondary harbor?” the man asked. “Most of the long-haul freighters dock there.”
“Secondary…harbor?” Li asked, not daring to hope. The man pointed, and in his eagerness Li almost knocked him down.
He jogged along the road, towards what he’d assumed was the city center, past a village of squatters in shipping containers abandoned since the eupocalypse. He found, instead, a second, smaller cove. And in the center of that cove, he saw ten beautiful, elegant batwinged ships, armed with cannons and flying the flag of Mother Isis.
“Meala,” he breathed. He ran towards the shore, shouting her name. “Meala!” Louder! “Meala!”
Of course, the ships were anchored too far out for anyone to hear him. He sank to the sand, digging his fingers into its silky dryness in frustration.
He sat there all day, disturbed occasionally by food and trinket vendors, none of whom spoke either of his languages. He watched a troop of women glean the shore for its thin accumulation of seabutter. He watched wading birds scavenge the shallows.
About halfway through the afternoon, a man in a boat rowed up to where he sat and hailed him. He spoke English.
He also, he explained, made his living ferrying people back and forth to boats at anchor. “It’s two drachmas or the equivalent in trade. Which ship you going to?”
“That one there.” He pointed out the fleet’s flagship. “I need to visit its captain. But I have no money or trade goods.”
“Admiral Meala? You know her?” The man was impressed. Inside, Li was elated—Meala alive!—but he still had to get to the boat.
“Yes, I know her well.”
“A likely story.”
“No, really! She’ll be glad to see me! She will.”
“Hmph. I could row out there and ask her.”
“Yes! Please do!”
“Too much work. Then I’d just have to row back here and get you. Climb aboard.” Li waded out to comply, and the boatman put up a hand. “You’re lying, you’re swimming back.”
Li nodded. The boat ride seemed to take forever. He scanned the deck impatiently. He saw crew women at the rail, but none with her familiar physique and bearing.
She could have changed. It’s been almost a year. And she’s young. So young.
But then she stepped out on deck, resplendent as he’d remembered. His heart leapt to his throat. She came to the rail and saw him, and he was close enough to see her face light up, her shoulders lift, and her smile break out like the sunrise.
She commanded a ladder be thrown down, and the boatman be paid. Li climbed deliberately, anxious not to ruin this moment with a clumsy slip in his eagerness.
When at last he stood on the deck, face to face with her, he could see nothing else. She was in that moment not a commander, but just a lover. She closed the distance between them and enveloped him with two strong, supple arms and one muscular leg wrapped about his body. They kissed, warm and gentle, and then pressed their cheeks together—savoring the touch, the smell, the sound, and the sensation of each other’s breath. His hand strayed across her side and she flinched and drew back slightly.
Their attention returned to their surroundings and they realized they were surrounded by Meala’s aides. Four fierce faces scowled at him. The fifth smiled. It was not a nice smile.
“When will we place your new concubine’s spur and scarab, commander?”