Rain Born

Zoha Kazemi

Description

Rain Born takes place many years in the future. After a natural apocalypse, the world is drowned in water and people live on the ships and islands. They have constructed a new religion and a set of rules and have based their political, cultural and economical structure on these beliefs. But these beliefs do not bring prosperity for people. Instead they have made them into victims of the vicious religious leaders who always seek more power and more wealth. It is the people who have to pay for the greed of their leaders by fighting in a war that is based on a lie. Although people are struggling between their faith and survival, drowned in the complexities of their self-constructed and controlling rules and values, nature is taking its course. Evolution is seeking to select the new, evolved babies that seem to be more compatible with the new water world. TIRAD is one of the disciples that teach the religious NARRATIVES OF THE SAVIOUR--the man who was the founding symbol of the post-rain world. He is a keen and dedicated follower and a true believer who has decided to ignore the corruption signs and waiver the possibility that his religion is based on no true facts. But in a turbulent path set forth to him by the Saviour Circle, he faces many challenges that shake his rock-hard beliefs; it is a journey of love, loss and fate that changes his destiny.

Sujets

• Science fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 31 janvier 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528972383
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Rain Born
Zoha Kazemi
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-01-31
Rain Born About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38
About the Author
Zoha Kazemi is a young Iranian writer and the first writer in Iran who has written professionally in speculative fiction, especially the genres of science fiction and fantasy. She explores fundamental concepts like love, immortality, death and religion in her soft sci-fi novels. She creates and depicts estranged and self-sufficient worlds with complex cultural, economical and political structures in her novels where she puts to test many challenging ideas and thoughts about the nature of mankind, its socially constructed beliefs and values and their effects.
Rain Born is Kazemi’s eighth novel but her first book written in English. She has written and published in Persian before: seven novels, a flash fiction collection and a three-volume children’s novels.
Dedication
To my Mother and Father
Copyright Information ©
Zoha Kazemi (2020)
The right of Zoha Kazemi to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528949750 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528972383 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Chapter 1
The boatman, not fully awake, hears the laughter and shouting of children playing in the water at dawn, and the excited skirl of seagulls flying around the harbour to catch the silver fish shining on the surface of the sea. The boatman is used to hearing these sounds in his boat cabin and resists opening his eyes and stepping into another mundane morning. It is the beginning of the short, dry season, and the weary mothers longing to catch another hour of sleep send their boys to swim around the harbour. This year, the refugee children of the southern ships have joined the boys and girls of the Oxan Island. Every morning, they step out of their make-shift sheds of the floating Oxan harbour, swim around the Island wall in the filthy ooze of the water to get to the clearer area of the main harbour where they feel safer playing around the boats. They have disturbed boatman’s sleep who is tired of the long journey he had. He opens his eyes in the full darkness of his boat cabin. His passengers had spent the night on the island. They had arrived last evening before sun down, before the Oxan gates had closed. They did ask him to join them, but the boatman was not sure if he could fall asleep on land. He is used to the mild motion of the sea that gently puts him to sleep like a cradle. He didn’t give any explanations, just an excuse saying that someone should watch the boat overnight.
The sudden screaming of the children forces the boatman to get up. He stands by his bed in the dark, listening to the sound of their continuous shouting. Something must have happened. This is not the sound of joyful playing. It is close to the boat and seems to be getting closer, as if the children are rushing towards the boat both from the wooden dock and in the sea. Their voices pass through the water and hull, reaching his ears. It has turned into murmurs. He also hears it from above. They must have surrounded the boat. He quickens his stride and leaps over the three, short steps of the cabin and opens the hatch. The early morning sun hits his eyes as the fresh air passes through his lungs. With one glance, he can see at least ten half-soaked children above the boat hook pin and twice that number floating in the water, behind the boat where his cabin is. The children levitating in the water are pointing at something. But the boatman turns his head towards the Oxan gate and stares at the three guards that walk hastily towards his boat with two boys guiding them.
The boatman takes a few steps and reaches the bow. He bends down from the deck wall and looks at the object that is stuck between bow and the chains. It is the tumid body of a woman faced down on the surface. He horridly gets up on his knees, struggling to keep his balance, takes a breath and bends down again to take a closer look. The waves gently bang the body against hull. Her right hand is stuck in the chains. She has little clothes on and what remains of her short skirt is ripped and ragged. The naked body of the woman, even though lifeless and bloated like a dead fish, is not something that the boys should see. It would be better to scatter them from there. The woman’s torn skirt is made of the light colour cotton fabric that the fisher women or divers would wear, and it has a large, dark bloodstain on it beneath the waistline from where the skirt is torn. Her very short hair adds to the possibility that she is a diver. The boatman feels a tap on his shoulder and stands up on the guard’s command. The other two guards scatter the children.
The guards start at once without saying a word or asking questions. One of them takes off his leather sandals and steps into the water in the gap between the boat and the body. The boatman also jumps in. The water is deep and he has to hold himself up on the surface by treading water. He holds the chain with one hand and with the other hand, he frees the woman’s arm from the chain. He turns her hand and sees the four-line tattoo of the sea people; it is crossed with a thick scratch. There are more cuts and scratch marks on her arms, and the newest is from being released from the boat chain. There is no blood coming out from the new wound. The boatman holds up the woman from her neck and her chest and the guard from her waistline and legs. They push the body up to pass the edge of the pier wall which is higher than the sea level. But the body is heavy, and its wet and livid naked skin is slippery. It slides back from their hands into the water. They have to be careful not to let the waves take it further back. The guard hurriedly pushes her leg to the pier and picks her up again from her waist. The boatman helps with holding her head. The two guards on the dock act faster this time, and they take her arms and pull up the body.
Even though the salty seawater has slowed her decay, the dead woman has a rancid smell that makes the boatman sick in his empty stomach. It is not like the smell of hunted fish or the seawater. It has a bitter-sour smell like stale blood and rotten meat. The boatman helps the guard to climb out of the water. He holds his hand to the edge of the pier and looks more closely at the woman’s face. She seems young, maybe beautiful; it’s hard to say with her eyes closed, her nose swollen and her lips turned grey. He can’t imagine how she might have looked like before drowning. He can hardly hear the guards talking since his ears are filled with the salty moist breeze. But he gets the gist of their talk. The body is to be taken to Oxan and burned. They need more help to carry back this swollen and slippery body.
The boatman swims towards the outer ladder of his boat. He turns his head towards the harbour and sees the newly arrived guards. From their dismissing head movements, he can guess that none of them can identify the body. It isn’t his business anymore; he has cooperated enough and it is in the hands of the Oxan authorities now to investigate this death and decide what to do. He should return to his boat and get ready to step on the island. But something catches his attention. He floats on the water and stares at the woman. He swims towards the harbour again to take a closer look. Something dangles out between the woman’s legs, like a short, colourless, torn rope. He doesn’t recognise the umbilical cord and mistakes it for her guts. A moist breeze from the harbour fills his lungs with the putrid smell of the lifeless woman. He holds the chains with his hands and leans on them and throws up in the water.
Chapter 2
As Tirad feels the rapid movement of something cold and sluggish by his right foot, he stops his sentence and scowls, takes his eyes off his students that are staring at him and looks down. He lifts his right foot and steps back. A small water snake is sliding on the wooden teaching cabin between his feet. The children are silently staring at the snake and the dance-like movement of Tirad’s feet. He tries to avoid touching the snake’s skin with his ankle and loses his balance. Just before he falls down on his back, he slams his left foot against the floor and stands. His left foot has pummelled the snake. The sluggish feeling of the snake’s torn skin and the sound of its crushed cartilage starts a shiver from Tirad’s heel that moves upwards through his leg bones and spine, making him step back again with disgust and put his bloodstained foot on the floor. He looks at his undesired prey that lays motionless one-step away from him and pulls his head up to see the frightened look in the eyes of the five boys and girls that are sitting in front of him. He tries to keep his voice down and to sound calm, and stares at the anxious and guilty faces of the children. He knows it must have been on