Fire in the Unnameable Country Read Online Free PDF Page B

started with.
    Realize that to hold onto his thinashair miraculous lead over the American army through the capture of the highest individuals of the governing council, Nasiruddin Khan would have no choice but to call upon the favour of Alauddin the war magician, who was handcuffed before he was brought secretly to the Presidential Palace through an old subterranean hallway because they were unsure of whether he would be willing to lend his services, or, even if he said he would, whether he would not simply disappear, because they knew so little about him and could not trust him.
    In those days, the magician wore a sharp-ended moustache he spent a long time sculpting each morning, and Nasiruddin Khan remarked to himself how ageless was his skin, how anachronistic his whole appearance/ look at those loose pantaloons and the brightly coloured shirts that went out of style centuries ago/ but first he uncuffed, apologized for the necessity of the restraining appliances, and told him what he wanted: within twenty-four hours they will bomb Victoria and the Presidential Palace; we need you, please, to repeat the Miracle of Alexandria: make us disappear from the sight of the American pilots.
    Nasiruddin Khan stated his offer, which was so exorbitant it made Alauddin’s throat bob up and down, and after an instant’s submersion into deep thought, they became partners.
    Then Alauddin the Magician immediately got to work on the greatest disappearing trick of his life. For twenty hours, he dictated they gather the most absurd items: ten thousand tons of aluminum foil, eighteen hundred fluorescent lights, Noh theatre masks all bearing the same emotion, forty-two caftans, an ancient sandalwood palanquin. They did not bother asking for a plan when they started canvassing the rooftopswith metal sheets or even stop to think when he requested seventeen thousand kilograms of rancid coconut water and an equal quantity of camel shit. Then he disappeared. Though they had posted two guards outside the door of the room in which he paced from wall to wall and from where he gave orders, the guards were found sleeping, drugged, and they could not find a trace of him anywhere. In fact, Alauddin had actually fled seventeen hours prior and had them believe by the use of a double, who constantly shadowed him and who was the greatest disguise artist on the continent, that the magician was engaged in the task for which he had been advanced half his pay in platinum bars. He realized how doomed was Nasiruddin Khan when he observed the way the cola emperor suspired when he uttered the desperate sum, a fifth of his kingdom’s worth, as noted in publications, and in the instant before he said yes, the war magician had already formulated his escape.
    In the darkened city that cowered in fear of fire and of the talons that would rend it irreparably, no one noticed a solitary flying rug recede into the distant sky, weighted with enough riches to last the escapee forever. That was how Nasiruddin Khan realized that he had no hope in the world of retaining Victoria. They captured him when he tried to flee to the Karkaars, and his body was sliced into thin vertical steaks and all the pieces sent to the various centres of the nameless rebels, which were by then known. His tenure in the Presidential Palace lasted a grand total of forty-two hours.

CAPSICUM CANDIES
    The nameless rebels continued to explode various government outposts, harassed American positions throughout the country, left smashed mirrors everywhere as signs of their continuing resistance. But Xamid Sultan, head of National Security at that time, declared victory against them at a press conference in which he warned neighbouring nations not to harbour the criminal elements that had fled the unnameable country and would no doubt begin to destabilize their own states if not captured and eliminated. Though he insisted the nation was sailing in peaceful weather, it continued to rain metal and