The 4 Hundred and 20 Assassins of Emir Abdullah-Harazins

By Joseph DeMarco

Warning: Philosophical Content-Explicit Ideas-May class=GramE>offend those easily offended. style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Arial'>The legend of the class=SpellE>Hassan El Sabbah is not as famous
as his garden. Sabbah was an entrepreneur of sorts
using the assassin as a tool to gain political influence throughout the Middle
East. He would use young men by making them smoke hash then allowing them to
enter his garden of earthly delights. The young men were told they had entered
paradise and would be expelled if they did not carry out Sabbahs
wishes, which were usually to kill someone of relative importance. This tale is
not only a fictional look at Sabbah, but also a
mind-altering look into Americas drug culture and the idea of paradise. class=GramE>Told by a stoner, set over a thousand years ago with an Arabian
Nights feel to it, the story centers around Emir Abdullah-Harazins
(Sabbah) and his infamous garden. It is the
story of only one of his Hashishiyyins (Assassins).

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 12, 2004
• ISBN: 9781414059358

Joseph DeMarco

Joseph DeMarco was born in New York City; he lived most of his life in Buffalo, NY. He now teaches seventh grade on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. He is the author of the novels Plague of the Invigilare, The 4 Hundred and 20 Assassins of Emir Abdullah-Harazins, and At Play in the Killing Fields. He is currently working on several new projects.

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© 2004 by Joseph DeMarco. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 04/21/04

ISBN: 1-4140-5935-3 (e-book)

ISBN: 1-4184-4102-3 (Paperback)

ISBN: 1-4184-4103-1 (Dust Jacket)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2003195183

Contents

Anazasi El Fida

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About The Author 

Based on the disheveled

files of Joseph DeMarco

Based very loosely

on the Historical Figure

Hassan El Sabbah

Dedicated to Rich, the Waianae Coast, and all those in search of paradise

"The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."

- John Milton

Anazasi El Fida

The Legend of the Snake and the Lamb

The campfire blazed and, like the campers, it was far from extinguished. Sure, they were tired. Sure, all had had way too much to drink, but most had slept well until early evening and were still recovering from last night’s festivities. Yep, the five were partiers. Just listen to them tell a story. It usually starts out, "Remember...blank blank blank, we were all so wasted."

Chris, the self-proclaimed leader of the group was hard at work using the minimal lighting to roll a doobie, while Gordy and Teddy talked nonchalantly about TV characters as if they were real people.

Who do you think got more ass, Sam Malone on cheers, or Captain Kirk on Star Trek? Gordy asked, as if this was a legitimate debate.

Teddy weighed his options carefully putting his hands out checking to see which one of the beers he was double fisting was emptier. I think…I’d have to go with Sam Malone on that one, he said. I saw this one episode, where he went on something like thirty-seven dates, and I think he scored on all of them.

Chris jumped in, No way man. Did Sam Malone ever sleep with a blue-haired gorgeous space alien with three tits?

Stephanie and Ann both looked up, annoyed that their conversation about hairstyles had been interrupted.

You’re disgusting, Ann commented toward Chris, sneering in his general direction.

Not that he cared. Soon the joint would be history. None of them cared, that was kind of their motto, I don’t give a fuck. They would say it often and always, making sure they accented the middle of fuck, drawing out the vowel, like Smoke Dog from that movie. They didn’t care; they wanted you to know that with extreme animosity, yet soon they would all be laughing merrily like Santa Claus the night before Christmas.

No way… Teddy was saying, Society’s fucked up on the regular…rappers are like our superheroes…they have money, power, kids worship them, they have cool aliases…it’s like an X-rated X-Men set to music.

The group agreed, except Gordy who always had to be different.

"All powerful men have had pseudonyms. Most normal people have dual identities. Superheroes are just metaphors. It’s a historical fact, Hitler would send certain letters signing only Wolf," Gordy said smugly.

Rappers are more like assassins, in that they exist only in the negative, Gordy stated.

The girls gave him weird looks.

They also both have three names, he concluded.

All assassins have three name names: John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, Mark David Chapman, and all rappers three names: they have their real name, their rap name, and their alter-ego.

Chris looked away in disgust; he never appreciated Gordy’s thinking.

The time was nearing four and all of them wanted to be up fairly early so as not to waste another day sleeping. Chris looked like a wide-eyed scientist carefully examining his new discovery. It was in fact not the first one he had rolled tonight.

Teddy interrupted his inspection. Give it up, he said, grabbing at Chris’s hand, it’s my weed.

Chris threw an elbow into Teddy’s wrist. Not so fast, you just can’t smoke it right away.

What else am I going to do with it, Teddy said laughing, use it to stir my beer? Then he stopped, because he realized that he was laughing alone.

Naw, man you got to give it time to dry, Chris said in his most stoned-out voice trying to be like his older brother.

Yeah, Stephanie seconded taking a seat next to Chris. She was clearly already wasted, but none of the boys there were going to argue about her doing more drugs. Teddy looked back over to Gordy for support but was given a look like, You’re on your own, man. Chris was the oldest around the fire, and due to his older brother’s meticulous teachings had also had far more experience in the field than anyone else there.

Besides, Chris added, it’s not even 4:20 yet.

Teddy looked at his digital sports watch, which glowed fluorescent blue if you touched the two buttons on the side at the same time. The time read 3:55.

Ann spoke up. So, what does that mean anyway?

What do you mean, what does it mean? Chris snorted. It’s only like the international smoking time for potheads, as he high-fived Teddy who, up till now, had been his campfire enemy.

Yeah, but where does it come from? she inquired innocently.

There was that moment of deafening silence, that is, except for the crackling of burning wood.

4:20. Where does it come from? Origin unknown?

Stephanie was the first to speak. I think it has something to do with police codes, she said timidly. Like, you know, 1-8-7 on an undercover cop, means like kill him. I think. Like 4-2-0 means, like smoke up. Although it sounded ridiculous it put the fellow smokers at ease. Yeah everyone agreed it was obviously the police code for people or person in the progress of getting high. Call for backup.

Chris began to run his lighter along the edges of the joint drying it and making it crisper to smoke.

Teddy interrupted again, I think I heard it was actually the # of chemicals that are in a joint.

Really, Stephanie said reacting disgusted.

No, not really, Chris said on the defensive again, wanting both girls to smoke, I think it has something to do with this group that used to hang out with ‘The Dead’ at college, or something like that. After classes every day they would meet at 4:20 by some statue, then go smoke up. So that just became the code around nonsmokers that they were going to get high after school. No one seemed to buy that one, and Chris began to get mad because, if there was one thing he knew about more than these other fucking vanilla babies, it was dope.

Stephanie added in a ditsy way, I think it was either Cheech or Chong’s locker combination.

The group shared a laugh.

Gordy, who had been silent up till now, laughed even harder almost shooting beer out of his nose. Those are all moderately cool theories, Gordy said smiling widely showing a cocky superiority to everyone else.

Chris felt it his place to burst Gordy’s bubble, Oh what, Gord-O, like you got a better story of the origin of 4:20?

Gordy sat back calm, not letting words work against him. As soon as you light that joint here, I do, he said in a pretend southern accent, trying to antagonize Chris. After all Chris had been bogarting the girls all night and Gordy liked Stephanie in that way that was more than friends.

Chris sparked the L or the J, depending on which side of him you were sitting, and took two deep hits. Then he carefully passed it to the left, which was the etiquette he was taught by his older brother. Gordy took the glowing ember from Chris’s hand, and marveled at it for a moment, before inhaling it into his lungs.

4:20 is the time lost…finding yourself, Gordy babbled as if he were some seventies hipster high school guidance counselor. Because in that exact moment…you realize how lucky you are, he said, realizing he sounded a little too preachy.

It all started back over a thousand years, halfway across the globe, Gordy said, his voice cracking slightly.

It was around the same time that all those Arabian Nights stories were conjured up, like Aladdin, and Ali Baba and the forty thieves, he continued as if talking to himself.

There was this guy who was supposed to deliver this message, Gordy stopped as if he had forgotten the tale. His eyes flashed greenish-yellow in the firelight. Only, he didn’t know what the message was.

Gordy had always been a little weird; he had a special talent for making up stories; everyone knew that about him. He sat in his room a lot by himself. He was socially misfit in most situations, but he could tabulate a tapestry of tall tales that was second only to Scheherazade.

Rarely had ideas poured out of Gordy with such a feverish frenzy. He was trippin’ out! Ideas circled round his head. He could not complete words, his mind was moving too fast. It was as if his ideas were not words, but a universal truth, that would be created whether he existed or not, so he wanted to tell this story before somebody else did.

Gordy looked up, all eyes were on him, but that could have been because he hadn’t passed the joint yet. He took another long puff.

Arabia…the desert is endless over there, he remembered saying like the village idiot ranting some incoherent phrase. You can’t imagine trying to cross it, he nodded as if he could imagine it, passing the joint to the left.

A day at the beach in the hot California sun, it is not. In the desert, the thirst is what gets to you first. It comes on mellow this unquenchable thirst, but soon it consumes your thoughts.

The joint was being passed around the campfire, as they were all realizing how dry their mouths were. Just try and get it out of your mind, he said convincingly. Your mouth is dry, your throat starts to burn.

They started to imagine his words as pictures, not phrases.

Close your eyes…in the desert…and you might not open ’em.

Gordy’s voice took on a professional manner; "The message was unrevealed as the messenger stopped his camel, looking out into the wastelands that lay before him. The sun had scorched everything to the point that it was brown and lifeless. After countless dunes of brown sand, nothing had changed, except his thirst. The messenger was moving great lengths, but going nowhere. He wanted off of this archaic treadmill.

He tried to focus on the positive, remembering when he was just a boy, accompanying his uncle to the seashore. He had built a fortress in the sand. Staring down, he noticed the uncanny similarities between this sand and the grains he saw on that long ago beach. He wondered if this desert had once been a great ocean. That thought saddened him and he forced himself to think about the beach. He remembered watching the waves break, staring out at the vastness of the ocean, wondering how far it went. Now he was at the beach again, with the same question, ‘How far does this fucking thing go?’

‘It might never end,’ he thought, remembering stories of entire tribes migrating across this particular stretch of sand, and simply evaporating like many other living things that had set root or foot upon its dryness.

It had been three days since they left the palace. Three long exhausting days and nights. To say the messenger was tired, well that would have been an understatement. Sleep deprivation had set in wickedly and he was already having violent hallucinations. Forget about the beach, he kept seeing a tropical oasis on the horizon, with palm trees, coconuts, wading ponds, and a bunch of big-breasted naked women sunbathing in the pond furthest from him. The one feline licked her lips, fingering him over. The messenger was pretty sure it was a mirage. He didn’t expect to see any exotic nude women vacationing at the next watering hole.

If there was a next watering hole.

He imagined, just briefly what it might be like to walk in the garden of earthly delights of Prince Abdullah-Harazins, but then stopped because he was paranoid the Prince could read his thoughts.

The Prince would not like that, he said softly to himself.

What was very real, was the speechless partner that rode alongside him. This partner he didn’t know. And didn’t care to know. The man was dressed in rags like a vagrant. A longhaired freak, he had but half a tongue, which he had shown to the messenger. The blue veiny scarred stump of a tongue was all the messenger needed to see. He didn’t trust people with no tongues. They were squealers.

He suspected the mute, his partner, was plotting against him; with whom, he didn’t know, but that bastard had been acting terribly suspicious the last twelve hours.

The mute shifted his slanted eyes back and forth. These were not the eyes of an innocent man. They were hiding something. The messenger thought of his own eyes, struggling to stay open. Eyes that had bags under them, which had now turned from yellow to purple. Eyes that looked as though they belonged to a man dying of some terminal disease that was in its final stages. Everything was amiss, his clothes reeked like camel urine, yet he stayed focused knowing his mission was almost at an end. Soon he could go home; soon the Prince would leave him alone.

Traveling with this mute man he did not know for over three days, with limited water and a few bags of nuts and berries, was not his idea of a good time. Still, the messenger began to wonder how far his loyalty would go. It had gone this far.

The camels clumped forward, the stars had come out and it was a perfect night in the wilderness. The air had a calm gentle stillness to it.

The messenger liked the desert nights; too bad he was near collapsing, as he wiped the sweat off his forehead. He rubbed his crew cut, feeling his prickly hair, wondering its purpose in the scheme of things.

Why had the Prince shaved his head?

Sipping some more warm water out of the canteen, he began to panic, realizing he had to eventually figure out the task that lay before him.

He had been a loyal servant to his master for ten years. Ten long frightful years. He was even one of the most trusted guards on the force but, to be honest, this was only because he was afraid of the Prince. His master terrified him, holding some power over him that he could not even begin to explain. He knew if he botched this up, it would mean certain death. But that really wasn’t why he was so scared; it was mostly the fact that he had no idea what he was doing.

Well, that wasn’t exactly true. He knew a few things:

#1) He knew there was a message.

#2) He knew he was supposed to deliver it.

#3) But he had no recollection of ever being given a message to deliver.

#4) He was merely released. (After being held in prison for about three weeks.)

All this had happened after another mysterious encounter with his highness, the dark prince. When he woke up in the cell, the next day, a dark cloud over his head, he was sure he was screwed. His head was shaved, and he was naked. The top of his head felt numb especially on the left side and it felt as if someone had stuck a needle repeatedly into his head.

All he could remember from the night before was:

#1) The Prince telling him he had a mission for him.

#2) That it was of grave importance, that he deliver a message to Anazasi, a peasant in the small village of El Fida, and that was all. It was shortly after that that he blacked out. He wasn’t sure why; perhaps it was this delicious tropical fruited drink he was