Where is Manar?
Book Two: Sorry, Ma'am — This Body Is Not for Rent
Chapter Nine: "Silver Bullets"
Dajja looked at Maytham's transformed appearance — his long hair and beard. "You've changed your style, dog. You look better now. All you need is a pair of sunglasses to be as cool as me."
Fidda nodded in agreement.
Cool? Dajja is cool? This frog from the reading book? Your taste is broken, Fidda. You ruined your grand entrance with that sentence.
"So, Dajja, what brings you here? Did Abu Rady invite you to a dinner celebrating your wedding?"
"Yes. And I told him to invite you specially. I want to introduce you to my new family."
We exchanged words in that way men master — throwing veiled insults wrapped in nonsense, yet continuing the conversation because "manners" demanded it before the real business began.
He asked, exhaling smoke: "You came for big merchandise, dog... have your ambitions grown?"
"Circumstances grow."
"True... and circumstances sometimes need someone to explain how to handle them. Someone who knows more than you."
"I think I follow." What did he mean? Doesn't matter. What matters is that you're convinced we understand each other. So you can look cool.
"Smart." He said it with genuine recognition. "That's what I've always liked about you... a quick-witted pup."
"The pup grows."
Really, Dajja... are you sure we're talking about the same thing?
Dajja laughed a short laugh, then pointed his finger at me like a teacher correcting a stupid student: "But annoying stray dogs in Iraq — the municipality runs poisoning campaigns against them. You're no stranger to seeing the streets filled with rotting dog carcasses."
"Yes... which is why you and your pack should be careful."
He looked at me for a second, then burst into genuine laughter — uncalculated, filling every corner of the warehouse: "This is the dog I know!"
He turned to Abu Rady, who was trying to melt into the wall: "Thank you, Abu Rady. You can leave."
Abu Rady moved quickly to exit, but he had to pass between us. Here, I decided to end the romantic atmosphere.
I fired the grenade from the M203 into the space between us. Dajja took the shock, while I grabbed Abu Rady as a human shield, jumped back, aimed at the glass, shattered it, and threw myself out the window.
"Hahahahahaaaa!"
The cold winter air of Basra hit me in the alley. I heard no shouting behind me — just Dajja's laugh chasing me from the broken window. A dirty laugh that made me doubt the quality of the grenade I'd fired. Tsk. That was worse than any threat. If Sami heard that laugh now, he'd laugh along with him — at me.
The back door. The side alley. The second warehouse where I'd left "the old girl." One kick to the rusted door. I leaped onto the bike, started it, and the engine roared back like a man waking in a hurry. I shot forward, and Dajja's voice still filled the air behind me:
"This dog — I know him!"
—
The road from Abu Al-Khasib ends quickly when you ride with this kind of madness. Asphalt vanished, replaced by dirt, then barren land — brown wet mud, wild grass, tamarisk bushes fighting to survive. I noticed these details while trying not to die.
The car nearly cut me off, but I swerved skillfully into alleys too narrow for anything but my bike. When I emerged into the open land southward... I heard it. Not an engine.
I looked in the side mirror. Dajja was no longer in the car. He was charging on all fours across the mud, claws sinking into the earth with every leap, his red tattoos glowing like wet embers under the rain, his eyes closing the distance with predatory focus.
And from the right, Fidda appeared.
She was different in daylight. Not running — walking with confident steps across the slippery mud as if on a casual stroll. Her blue tattoos had awakened, cutting paths under her skin like turquoise rivers flowing from her neck to her arms.
Her face — that beauty that "doesn't reassure you" was clearer here. And the scar above her left eyebrow looked like the final signature on an explicit warning. Her black eyes watched me, the pupils ringed with cold, steady blue light. She didn't seem angry — interested. Which frightened me more.
Her voice reached me through the damp air directly into my ear: "The Kid is clever... but the wilderness is bigger than him."
I looked at the M4 in my hand, then at the muddy ground, then at Dajja in the mirror gaining distance with every leap.
Right then.
The bike wobbled beneath me, but I was locked onto it with old muscle memory. The M4 in my hand, the M203 underneath, waiting for permission.
"Old wives' tales..." I whispered, fixing my eyes on the target.
I didn't use the bullets. I used the second grenade from the M203. A 40mm explosive round launched with a kick that nearly tore my shoulder off and almost flipped the bike.
Dajja didn't stop. Didn't swerve. The grenade exploded directly into his chest. I saw black mud spray into the air like a curtain hiding the beast, saw his body fly backward from the blast.
"Goodbye, Dajja. It's been fun," I shouted with satisfaction.
Dajja tore through the smoke and mud. His red-tattooed body wasn't scratched. His claws dug deeper into the earth with every leap toward my tires.
"Why goodbye? The day is still young."
I slammed the throttle to the max.
Time for a different kind of stupid.
The muddy ground beneath my tires was stealing half my speed with every meter. Every turn became a gamble. Every pothole could end the story here. And Dajja was gaining.
With great difficulty, I loaded another grenade and fired.
BOOM.
The blast tore a hole in the mud and raised a cloud of dust and steam.
I looked back.
Dajja emerged through the cloud as if it wasn't there. Brown mud covered half his face, staining his red tattoos, but they still glowed beneath. His sunglasses had mud droplets on the frames but remained on his eyes.
This time, when I tried to reload, the bike wobbled beneath me on the slick mud — one hand on the handlebar, the other fumbling with the new grenade that refused to seat properly.
Three attempts.
Four.
"Tsk."
I left the launcher empty.
I looked at my leg. Four grenades in their pouches. Backup plan.
I pulled the first, pulled the pin, and threw it behind me toward Dajja without stopping.
The blast was closer than I expected. Mud flew in every direction — heavy, sticky chunks cutting through the cold winter air like black shrapnel.
I looked back.
Dajja stood in the center of the blast circle. Brown mud covered him from head to toe — face, hands, chest all black with thick wet earth. His red tattoos tried to glow beneath the layer of mud but looked like dying embers under ash.
And his sunglasses. Buried in mud on every side, nearly hidden.
He took them off. Wiped them on his sleeve. Put them in his pocket.
"This," he said in a calm academic tone that didn't suit a man covered in mud in a rainy wilderness. "This is exactly why I don't wear sunglasses during chases." I didn't hear what he said, but I'm sure that's what he said just now.
And to his right, right beside him —
Fidda.
Clean.
Not a single drop of mud on her black panther-skin armor. No trace of the blast on her silver braids. As if she was standing in a room, not in a muddy wilderness after three grenades.
She looked at me with her black eyes and blue-ringed pupils. She didn't say anything. She didn't need to.
Dajja looked at her. Looked at himself covered in mud. Looked at her again.
"Not a word," he said to her. But she didn't reply.
Her sharp ears, though, twitched in a way that said: if she could laugh, she would.
—
They continued the chase, but faster this time.
I pulled the second and threw.
The blast was closer than the first. Mud flew harder — heavy black chunks in every direction.
Dajja emerged from the smoke. More mud. More tattoos beneath the mud. But the same pace — steady, measured.
I pulled the third. This time I threw it directly in front of him.
The blast lifted him off the ground for a full second and threw him back five meters.
I looked back for a moment, watching. He got up. Slower this time. Dusted the mud from his shoulders with the motion of a man whose patience had reached its limit.
I saw something I'd never seen in Dajja before.
The red tattoos beneath the mud began to glow differently. Not the usual steady light — something faster, sharper, like embers suddenly stoked.
"Maytham."
He said it in a different voice. No sarcasm. No teacher-to-student tone. Just my name.
And he leaped.
I didn't see how he closed the distance.
One thing I understood: his hands on the back of the bike, gripping the rear wheel frame with a force that made the metal groan. The bike stopped as if it had hit a mountain, but inertia didn't stop with me.
In that second I separated from the seat, I saw Dajja fixed in place, his feet buried in the mud like ancient palm roots, his locked arms unmoving, his hair flying back in the wind. A terrifying sight — stopping a bike at full speed with his bare hands.
I flew into the cold winter air, saw the Basra horizon flip before me, felt that cursed lightness that comes before impact. For one second, I hung between sky and mud, watching Dajja let the bike fall quietly behind him while his eyes tracked my body's arc through the air.
Then... the mud.
My face in the brown wet mud of the Basra wilderness. Mouth, nose, forehead — all in mud. Arms stretched before me like I was trying to embrace the earth.
Silence.
Then the sound of the engine behind me, still running.
Then Dajja's voice.
Not a laugh. Worse than a laugh.
A smiling silence.
I peeled my face out of the mud. Looked back.
Dajja sat on the overturned bike like it was his council chair. Leg crossed. His muddy hands moved quietly — took his sunglasses from his pocket, wiped them on his sleeve, put them on. Then took out a cigarette and lit it in one motion.
The bike beneath him still ran. The engine groaned under his weight. Fidda stood beside him. Clean. Not a drop of mud.
He looked at me from behind his glasses, mud covering half his face. He exhaled slowly. "I know what you're thinking," he said, with the calm of a man sitting in his council, not in a rainy wilderness. "Dajja is unbeatable."
Trust me, Dajja. That's not what I'm thinking right now. I'm thinking why you're covered in mud from head to toe and she doesn't have a single drop.
"Tsk," I said, wiping mud from my face.
"Maytham." He exhaled smoke into the cold air. "You're right. I'm bored of weak opponents."
He looked at clean Fidda beside him. Then at his muddy hands. Then at me in the mud.
"This," he said in a calm academic tone. "This is exactly why I always wear sunglasses. Even during chases. To hide the boredom."
I sat in the mud, wiping the rest from my face. Man... the boastful part of him is waking up again. If I don't shut him up, he'll keep going until evening. I might live longer, but my mind will die from his nonsense. I need to stop him now. Let life go to hell.
—
Then I remembered the silver bullets.
Dajja sat on the overturned bike, exhaling smoke, delivering his lecture about mud, sunglasses, and respect. My hand went to my pocket slowly.
The pistol. I clicked off the safety. The silver bullets glowed with their muted, quiet shine. An hour and a half at the jeweler's. Real silver. A price I didn't want to remember.
I looked at Dajja. I thought: Maybe.
I fired. One bullet. Directly into Dajja's shoulder.
Dajja stopped talking. He looked at his shoulder. He looked at the bullet that had ricocheted and fallen into the mud before him. He looked at me.
Then he erupted.
Not his small calculated laugh. Not the teacher-to-student laugh. A genuine laugh from his belly, filling the wilderness, echoing off the flat ground, stretching into the winter air until the cold swallowed it.
"Silver." He wiped a tear from his muddy cheek. "Silver, Maytham."
I looked at the pistol in my hand.
I remembered the jeweler's face in Souk Al-Simir as he handed me the small velvet pouch. He wore his magnifying glasses, looked at me from over their edge with a long, suspicious look, scanning my face as if pitying my sanity. He asked me coldly while weighing the bullets on his precise scale: "Are you sure, boy? Silver is expensive. One bullet could buy you a sheep." I thought then he was worried about my wallet or being stingy with precious metal. But now, watching the bullet roll in the mud before Dajja like cheap candy, I understood the meaning of that look.
The bastard knew. He worked in silence for an hour and a half, polishing the bullets with meticulous care, while inside he was bursting with laughter at this "rookie" who thought movie fantasy was real.
Tsk... you sold me an illusion, old man. And you charged me silver for it.
—
And at that exact moment, from the corner of my eye, I saw something I hadn't noticed all this time.
Fidda's ears.
Her sharp ears twitched suddenly. Not a twitch of fear — it was her way of laughing. A silent, contained laugh that found no outlet except through the tips of her ears, trembling with mockery.
Her face didn't change. Same calm. Same black eyes and blue-ringed pupils.
But her ears betrayed her.
Dajja looked at her, still laughing. Then looked at me. "Silver bullets, Maytham." He said it in the tone of a teacher closing a long lesson. "I'm starting to like Sami more now... seems his madness has reached you."
I put the pistol back in my pocket.
And I thought to myself: I will never tell Sami about the silver bullets. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not in this lifetime or the next.
End of Chapter Nine