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Hadith and Johari
Hadith was getting to where the assigned foot soldiers would gather and make clear of their tactics under the advice of Beloan and Joshwan, of whom the latter seemed to have raised to the occasion. Hadith looked at the late pirate with new eyes as he walked downhill.
On his way he bumbed into Johari. "Oh it's you again", Johari said, condescending.
“Johari! Where are you going? Are you going to join us foot soldiers? Come with me then?” Hadith was tense but tried to be manly and graceful. His mother’s teachings were deep in him.
Johari shrugged a little. "Not anywhere in particular... I'm not much one for battles, or being in the thick of them."
Hadith was upset with the answer. He was totally baffled. How could someone say something like this? But after a small pause he managed to answer her: "What do you say? You're not ready to help others... just sticking to yourself, burying your head into the ground? That's just the thing that benefits the slavers! We must stick together and that means you too! You must join us!" Hadith’s expression was filled with disbelief and begging the question.
Johari looked somewhat indifferent and mildly annoyed: "What if I told you that I don't really care, and that what happens to most of the people here doesn't matter to me?"
Hadith felt stunned for a while and forcefully brought himself to answer her with the immediate question that twirled in his mind: “What do you say?” He was nervous again, as he had been with this woman every time he had met her. But there was something more in it now. He was totally baffled with Johari. She was a wise woman but talked the contrary of every belief he himself found secure. Hadith gathered his thoughts and asked sharply his next question as he thought he had gotten a grip of what was it that they were discussing in the end.
“How would you survive alone in this land, against those slavers and the nature that is dead? Isn’t freedom also about the others?” he made a pause. Hadith was getting even more serious: “Isn’t freedom something about all the people? That you freely decide to be there for others and trust the others to be there with you?” he made a pause again, trying to avoid Johari’s eyes. “ I don’t know... You really make me confused.”
Johari smiled bitterly. "Freedom, yes, that's what it's all about. Freedom. What a concept. Freedom to do what? To what purpose? Perhaps if freedom in itself was what I wanted, I would be more inclined to care... more inclined to fight. Can I help it, Hadith, that none of this matters to me beyond how it affects me, and that as long as I make it out of here alive, with or without the rest of you, I will be satisfied? I never intended to join up with any group when I escaped, but somehow I got dragged along. I don't know why I've stayed. But... this isn't what I want." She stopped abruptly. Suddenly Johari looked and sounded more distraught than Hadith - or anyone else - had seen her in years. This expression was quickly masked again and the familiar hardness returned to her face, seeming to dare Hadith to make something of it.
Surely all this was lost from Hadith’s eyes. "What do you want then?" he asked abruptly and as he got no immediate answer, he turned away in confusion. His young heart had been wounded again by this woman, but he was not sure whether it was for good or bad.
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