I had hoped to write this for a while. Not perfect I know, but I hope that it is entertaining.
My lieutenant, Omar, stands in front of me handing in his letter of resignation from my mercenary group. He is trembling when handing me the news, but his eyes remain on mine, and I know that even if I refused to accept the letter he would leave anyways.
I am disappointed. Omar is not just an officer to me. I found him abandoned on the battlefields of Europe while I fought as a mercenary and brought him to my camp to raise him. I trained him in the art of war and he prospered. His tactical ability and warm personality would make him a good field commander, though his weak grasp on the big picture meant that he could not lead above that level. He is my surrogate son.
I eventually raised enough money to outfit a troop of my own and become a mercenary captain, and Omar followed. We went to Anadol to accept a job as a permanent frontier force. The Arabs had never truly “conquered” the province as they had others. The energy required to uproot the social order already present would have been too great. Rather, the Arabs made a sort of deal with the Roman bureaucrats already running the region- as long as they supported the Arabs the Arabs would support them. The bureaucrats were all too happy with the arrangement. With the Eastern Roman empire in ruins, nomadic tribes present in the region would attack the cities, and the farmers would refuse to pay their tribute in grain to feed the cities of Al Anadol. And that was what we came to do- keep the system running. It didn’t pay particularly well, but it was a stable living, as opposed to a chancier search for warring European kingdoms to hire my company on.
“Why?” is all I can say.
“Because, I know you will fight for the Arabs and I cannot fight for something that is wrong.”
“Why have you decided it is wrong now? We are doing little different than what we have been doing for years. And now you decide that it is wrong.”
“I did not know it was wrong before. I loved you too much to believe you would support something wrong, but my eyes have been cleared. I cannot support crushing the nomads and the farmers for a corrupt and decadent system. I don’t want to just become a cog in a vast machine of empire. Did Allah not say that we have a duty to aid the oppressed?”
“And you think this petty battle will change anything? That placing your faith in a rebellion without any clear goals, unstructured unorganized will somehow lead to a better world?”
“All I know father, is that I don’t want my happiness to come from hurting others.”
“Let me tell you something son- happiness like wealth is a finite resource. And like wealth it must be taken from others. Hurting others is unavoidable.”
Maybe that is why this world was so unhappy. It is too full of the human greed for happiness.
“You can hold that cynical attitude if you wish. I am willing to gamble everything for a chance at finding my ideal world. At the very least, when my life is doe, I can say I truly lived I a world I made for myself, rather than live in a world someone else made for me.”
“I simply support the system that is most stable. It will dole out the most rewards in the end.”
“Me me me. That is all I hear,” he says before walking. I open my mouth to say, “I just want to leave you with more than my parents left me. I want you to have the wealth to live with dignity and pride.”
But I simply sealed that protest deep into my heart and instead said: “Know this then my son. Next time we meet, it shall be as enemies, and I will be giving no quarter.”
Omar turned back and said, “I wouldn’t ask for any.”
With that, Omar stalked off into the night, to some unknown camp fire to listen to the Turks speak of equality and freedom and heaven. But in the end, their words are just that- words.
A year later, I stood on the battlefield of Cappadonia. My sword is dripping with blood from the countless enemies I had slain. I almost admired the Turks for their steadfastness- many a lesser army would have broken down and been routed by now. And then by coincidence, a coincidence so unlikely it is possible it might have been a miracle, I come across Omar. He is different now. His hair is matted with blood, his body drenched in the stuff as if he took a shower in it. His form is guant and fragile against the back ground of the heaving mass of men clashing. The somehow he looks up and right at me, as though even through the crimson veil over his eyes he can still sense my presence and walks towards me with his sword drawn and ready.
I draw my own scimitar and prepare to meet him in battle. Our swords clash and the shock reverberates through my body almost causing my exhausted arm to drop the sword. We each make a few more strokes before settling into a pattern of block parry block parry. We know each other too well, and not at all. And still the serpentine blades twist and turn around each other, just like I had been dancing around the truth. And when Omar collapsed, bled dry from previous encounters, he and I had not even reached each other once. It is then that wonder what else I should have said. Should I have mentioned how proud I was that he felt strongly for the injustices of the world? Should I have mentioned the reality of the situation early so there would be no idealist to disillusion down the line? I felt very keenly that it was wrong for me to be alive and Omar dead. No father should live to bury his child. The skies over the battlefield of Cappadonia are cloudy and they weep quite loudly for the tragedy that has happened here.
I carry Omar’s dead body out of the battlefields on my shoulders which felt too light for such a task and bury him in a small plot of land near the frontier plot of land I choose to call home. Every day I visit his grave to apologize and I have his sword hanging from my walls, always polished and sharpened the way he liked to keep it. I never realized how large a part of my life he was, how it felt as natural as breathing for him to make some strange and kind of awkward joke about frontier life that was never as funny as he thought it was but I laughed anyways because he was trying.
Then I heard that the Arabs had caught Harun the perpetrator of the plot, and despite the fact I had pretty much retired, I put on my warrior garb, called my company back together and went to Qunstantiniyya. I wanted to see the leader my son had fought under to create a better world, just what exactly my son put enough faith into to die for. That day it was hot, hot like Judgment day is supposed to be as if the Sun has moved just a bit closer to Earth to shine its lights on the sinners and the innocents to sort out which is which, to discover whether those terms actually mean anything at all.
Al Harun enrages me. The man weeps and begs shamelessly in the trial and I feel like grabbing my son Omar by the collar, shake him as furiously as the angel Jibrael did to Muhammed, and say, “So this is the man you expected to bring you to a better world!”
I cannot decide who is more pitiful- my son dying for his ideals and ultimately not mattering, or Harun for not having one worthy of the name.
“So this is the truth of the human experience,” I think, and I feel like laughing at the grotesqueness of it all. Thousands dead and for what? For a jester that wanted to switch his silly hat for a crown?
“It may be too late to rescue the dead”, I think, but there is still one last thing I can do for my son. I walk up to the Anadol before the execution and say, “May I request something of you?”
“Tell me who you are”, the governor says, “And I may consider listening.”
“I am a father who has lost his son.”
“This gives you a right to request. What is your petition?”
“If you decide on executing Harun, then can you use this sword to do it”, I say handing him Omar’s scimitar. I don’t know why I brought. I think it is because deep inside I feel Omar needed to see this and this is the closest I can get him to actually witnessing the transpiring events.
I continued, “It belonged to a person for whom faith was not just a word. And had he lived longer, perhaps he would learn that justice is not just a word either.”
The governor takes the sword and thanks me: “I would be honored”.
With one swing of the sword, my sons hopes and dreams of the future, foolishly expended on one person who was not worthy of them died. Or perhaps they had never truly been alive.
. It'll start from the expulsion of the family from Persia and the destruction of Persia at the hands of the Seljuks, the coming of Persian refugees into Iraq and trace the rise of the prestige of this dynasty through the period ending with the liberation of Persia in 1312. 
