I am holding the rope tightly in my hands and am suspended and spinning around in the air while I shout deeply from inside. Suddenly a rod passes by my head quickly, I lose my balance, collide with the iron beam and finally I stop moving after I hit the wall of the valley.
My breast goes up and down continuously and I gulp my saliva once in a while. My body trembles and my hands are shaky. The rope slides off my hand momentarily. I swing in the air looking for an iron beam, and then I come down on one of them by a short jump. I take a rest on the beam until I can clench my fists, then I grab hold of the rope.
Slowly and sweating, while I try to be inattentive to my pains, I climb up the rope. The weather is calmer than before and the sand fall is weak. By each centimeter of ascension, I feel that a nail is stabbed in my body.
When I reach the edge, the sands rush to my face and I have to close my mouth. I cough so that I empty the sands out of my mouth and I grab the edge. But the concreted sands collapse under my hand. Again I have to grab the rope. I pull myself up with the help of the rope. The edges and the ground are loose and wobbly and once in a while, some part of them collapse. I pull myself up and open my way through the sands, which are knee-high, immediately and go toward my knapsack.
The loop of the rope caught the bumper. Again I thanks God and I take my knapsack behind the door of the car. But suddenly something stops me. The position of the rope around the bumper is rather strange. The shape of the bumper doesn’t allow the rope to loop around it. This needs more skill and mastery than a random or natural skill to loop the rope around the bumper. I should leave here soon.
The ground is too loose so that I may fall again at any moment. I remember the shelter but in this storm which nothing meets the eye, it is impossible I find it. For the time being, I should go away from here as soon as possible and then I put my plan into effect again. I have to lie on the ground again because as I go forward, more sands debar me; like the sea in which as you approach the center, it becomes deeper.
It seems a great deal of sands has flowed down to the valley again. I have not enough strength to force my way through the sands and I can’t forge forward but rather I go backward. I have to hold my hands as a shield in front of my eyes and move slouching. I feel rain drops beating on my face along with the sands.
I find myself sad. Then something smashes into my face severely insomuch that I grab my face, and my head reels under the blow for a while. I fall on the sands and flounce against the sands stream. I open my eyes and suddenly see a yellow snake creeping on the sands. I jump back by fear.
The movement of the snake is rather strange to me. After a while looking at it, I angrily take the rope, which is creeping like a snake. I don’t know why I thought that some animal may live in this desert.
I take the rope which seems has come from nowhere to save me, and pull it toward myself so that it pulls me forward too. As I go forward, I hear the cries which seem come out from the mouth of a ghost or a shadow. The cries are completely vague and hardly can be understood. Finally I approach the voice insomuch I can realize the words:
No long way left, hold out! Don’t release the rope. Not too much way left. Just some steps. Come on!
All of these words echoes through my head as if a tape is playing at a slow motion, and I see Vorarin like a ghost. If Vorarin didn’t catch me, I would fall on the ground. We push along while all of my weight is on Vorarin’s body. His words are like a whisper which echoes through my ears.
I stop with the motion of his hand which presses on my breast. He pulls out a blanket of his knapsack and pulls it over both of us. I don’t know why, but I feel that my feet are linked to the ground like the roots of a tree. I feel their weight manifold, but I push along again with the help of Vorarin. I am totally obedient to Vorarin for a while and he guides me. We walk for an unknown period of time continuously, until Vorarin tucks up the edge of the blanket. I see that we are approaching a dark thing. The air is slightly dark or I see it like this. Vorarin is completely bent under my weight and due to his little body, he is physically weak. But he moves me along by his full force. The blanket is completely wet and raindrops leak and fall on us.
Vorarin again tucks up the blanket and I see that the dark spot is the same shelter I have found. We enter and he takes me to a corner under the ceiling. Then, he crumples up the blanket and throws it aside.
You’d better take off your wet clothes while I set these bricks, otherwise your glassy clothes become ruined.
Then he begins his work. He puts and arranges the scattered bricks as a wall, at a distance of a man room from me. Then he goes toward his knapsack and pulls out a dry blanket, and he does the same with my knapsack, without asking me. Then he sits by me and removes all of his clothes except for his trousers and his shirt. His body is slender. He rises like a statue and says in wonder:
Why you didn’t take off your clothes yet?
Then he grumbles under his breath and comes to help me. He only removes my trousers, it seems he had pulled the most part of the blanket over me that my shirt is not wet. He snuggles up to me and gives me one of the blankets:
Pull it over yourself. It would be so cold tonight. We must sleep hunkered and stay close to each other to get warm.
As soon as he becomes quiet, and the air under the blanket becomes warm, I fall asleep despite of my body pains and the intensity of tiredness.