While each of this series can be read individually as there's no specific order of events. I do implore everyone reading to read The Prologue ahead of reading any specific part.
Deep in Gurayaat by the river, there's a huge house that looks abandoned from the outside but it is well inhabited. In fact, there are at least 30 people living in that house. People call them "Al-Omal", or the workers. Their routine consists of the following:
They wake up every morning at 6 AM sharp. They go into the river for a swim, regardless of the weather, for one whole hour. Next, they go to work individually, they do any manual labour available. Construction work, house painting, welding, furniture moving, and just whatever job is available and within the vicinity of the house.
They would stop working to make it home by 6 PM no matter what. There's no electricity in the house, just candles and each sits silently until they fall asleep. That's in regular days. Every now and then weird chanting can be heard around the house, random holes being dug out, and just "weird things" happening according to whoever I asked from that area.
When it is 2004 and you live in Iraq, there's no system, the only punishable crime by a government of any sort was murdering a U.S soldier. Gurayaat, every now and then would have a random kidnapping that coincided with the disappearance of one of the people who visited that house. And that house had a decent number of visitors.
As the order was restored and in around 2006, that house came to an end, and I mean a definitive end. Police were investigating, but, with all the workers still in the house, the house just burst into flames. It didn't explode, just gradually caught on fire. People described the workers standing as the house engulfed in flames. The house completely crumbled to the ground.
Later on, at least 100 dead bodies were retrieved. Found inside the house, buried under the house, buried around the house, and thrown into the river. But, that's only half the mystery.
The other half came to be when none of the bodies, besides the workers, were recognized. Many families expected closure as they found the dead bodies of their young ones, but that didn't happen. All the bodies were of old people, no one of them lived in the area.
Some of the kidnapped who were found denied ever being the person the families claim. I would attribute it to a case of mistaken identity and a very rare coincidence that each family who had one of those kids also had an old member of their buried in the mass grave near the house. But, the latest of the found was in 2022 and with DNA tests it was easily proven that they were the same people, but only physically.
I haven't caught up with everyone from there as all I have is the result of asking questions in two visits. The latest of which was two years ago as I began this journey to set myself free. All I know is those people weren't calling themselves the workers, they called themselves Oyoon Al-Tareeq, or the "Eyes of the Path" with each member being referred to as an "Eye". A cult that started all the way in the early sixties.
I don't know much about them, to be honest. All I know is their book of teachings was preserved and wasn't burned in the fire. The police took it, didn't care for what was in it and poorly kept it. And it was just my ungodly divine misfortune that it fell in the hands of my cousin, Salwan.
I don't know much about the teachings in that book but I do know one trick, spell, call it whatever. It was one about soul transferring.
On the first day of a random July, I was kidnapped and held captive in the basement of my own school, right underneath the class where I would take my exams by the end of that school year.
Months of darkness, the only contact to light was the few beams through the cracked door. The only contact with the outside world was the six hours of school where I would listen to the morning lineup, national anthem, class, and my teachers doing their job. It's amazing how much you can absorb when all you can do is listen.
After school broke out and everyone went, I sat for hours chained to the wall staring at the little light until it fully faded, with a piece of dirty cloth in my mouth to keep me from making any sound and hearing the sound of my own breath through my nose, breathing in the disgusting smell of a dead body disintegrating in the heat. Until it goes fully dark.
My only meal of the day came hours after as I was told to turn around, get blindfolded. I am never 100% certain of what they were doing, but my science teacher taught me in the class above me that in case of confusion always break the work into phases to deconstruct it properly. So, here is what I assume is how soul transferring is done:
Phase 1
You bring in both parties, I assume it required both to be alive at the time. The one whose soul you wish to transfer into the other "The Origin" would share his entire life story with all the feelings and all the events, your entire memory card downloaded into another body.
This is accompanied by a simple three-string Oud tune playing.
Phase 2
The Soul Recipient would then recount his memories to a different three-string Oud Tune. With each memory shared, The Recipient is rewarded with a hit of sorts, which can be a tasing, a punch, a lash, or whatever that is painful. A punishment for every fibre of your being existing.
Being Ameer is now punishable. Everything about it is punishable. My grief over my mother, my childhood, my loneliness, pain, grief, happiness, contentment, and everything about my existence is now punishable.
Phase 3
Once it's instilled in you that your whole data is corrupted, it unconsciously releases the need to replace it. I no longer wanted to be Ameer, my unconsciousness wanted me to be who the voices wanted me to be. My unconsciousness wanted me to be Salah. Anything to stop the pain.
Phase 4
The Soul Recipient recounts his memories to the tune of the Origin's three-string Oud tune. Except this time it is not his memory, they are of the Origin. Any sidetracking is punishable and if the Recipient accidentally shares his own memories, he is punished severely.
Phase 5
The Soul Recipient is now the vessel of the Origin's soul, memories, and life. And that's it. To a certain extent, I could live with anything that was done to me as Ameer, it is what happened for the few days I was considered Salah that broke me. I never fully became Salah, but after what happened with Anmar of violence and violation, my brain could never comprehend him being a brother anymore. As far as the soul transfer goes, it failed. But, assuming it was a legit thing to be with...
What went wrong?
It should be noted that whoever was found of the kidnapped would instinctively deny any relation to their soul transfer. If more time is spent to remind them, those memories come with so much horror and pain that they are denied again.
Assuming the soul transfer was ever legit, Anmar and Salwan fucked up the method as my soul transfer doesn't match that of the few I heard.
First, Salah's story and memories came out incomplete, it's difficult for Anmar to not stumble into his version, pain, and uncertainty when it came to Salah, something I felt. Second, whether it was Salwan or Anmar, they fucking sucked at playing a simple three-string Oud tune. It was never rhythmic, if something, it came off as annoying at times.
But, most importantly, they fucked up the phases. You see you're supposed to start with phase 2, not 1, you're supposed to leave the Recipient completely empty before inserting your memories. All that left Ameer 2, a recipient of a soul rejected by society. One I can't accept, one I can't reject.
As I was gathering myself past escaping, slowly separating myself from Salah, but also separating myself from me in the process as I needed to completely drop the part me of that existed in those nine months.
Anmar and Salwan learned from their mistake, I wish they hadn't made the mistake, to begin with. It would have been a million times better than knowing what happened to my little brother in his three days in that basement effectively turning him into Rami 404.