I remember little of the following few days.

I was in a pitiful state, huddled away from the harsh realities of the world, sulking in my sorrow, indulging myself in pity.

I did not speak, nor did I rise, preferring to soil my loincloth with piss and shit. Sleep would not come, and I thought of little else other than the sacrifice of a man who was as a father to me, the snapping of bones as stones crushed skull, the sight of brains and blood splattered all over the sands.

My bonds of rope were replaced with iron chains and I was heaved onto a lurching cart, smelling of manure and my own vile excrement.

"I'll see the death of you yet," Yazid said when I was slipped into my iron shackles. "In Damascus, the land of opportunity. You'll die alone, as you've lived."

I passed out and regained consciousness a number of times over the next few days. Yazid's mercenaries force-fed me, wrenching my jaw open to shove food and water down my gullet, just enough to sustain me. Yazid claimed he wanted me alive by the time we reached Syria.

And reach Syria, we did, though I saw nothing of the busy hustle of the city itself. Under different circumstances, I would have been giddy with excitement with the prospect of bearing witness to foreign, storied lands.

But my mind was clouded with starvation and unutterable grief. I wished for nothing more than to die, for the gods to end the farce that was my existence.

I had thought my years of suffering were the gods' way of forging me to be a warrior, to be their champion. To see all who would rid Arabia of their worship fall to the edge of my blade.

Yet, I was truly forsaken, and the Muslim god proved too powerful for me to stop. For anyone to stop.

Sulking in my woes at the back of the filthy cart, I cursed every god known to existence, Arab or otherwise.

We reached Yazid's mansion one sunny afternoon. The air was humid, and my energy had all but joined the gods in forsaking me. The mercenaries were forced to pick me up as though I were a burlap sack and heave me off the wagon.

The mansion was a formidable structure, one built at the summit of a cliff, eclipsing any feat of construction I had ever laid eyes upon.

It was a two-story building, made of pure brick and yellow plastered walls; it overlooked the sprawling city beneath, offering a magnificent view of Damascus. The opulent palaces and grand churches, the more modest abodes tightly packed against one another, only giving way to large spaces that acted as squares or marketplaces, where the din and hum of city life was at its apex.

Mas'oud's family had known great prosperity under the care of his son, it seemed. I remember yearning to see the storied lands of Syria or traveling anywhere beyond the desolate plains of Arabia.

I would have relished the opportunity to set foot in Damascus and gaze in wonder at the sparkling sheen of the sun's reflection on golden domes, or the glamorous plastered walls of the villas of the wealthy. To hear the chirping of birds mingled with the hum of a bustling city life.

I never imagined that my first experience with life outside of Arabia would be so tumultuous as this, in circumstances so unfortunate.

But what was I to do when fate was capricious and gods were fickle?

I remained manacled and caged in a formidable box reinforced with steel bars, like an animal.

It was long past dark when Yazid ventured forth from his mansion to visit me. I was in the cage, vulnerable to the harsh breeze washing over, in nothing but a soiled loincloth and chains binding my hands. There was one Roman mercenary keeping watch over me in my pitiful state.

"What do you know of the Romans?" Yazid asked me that night. He was chewing loudly on an apple.

I said nothing in reply. I was huddled in a corner. Defeated.

"In the olden days, before the Romans were graced by the teachings of the Prophet 'Isa, peace be upon him, they hosted barbaric exhibitions," he continued. "They would round up the most heinous of criminals, the abominations of the streets, give them shield and blade. Then, they would pit them against one another in a large venue called an arena or a stadium.

This very city yet bears the ruins of such a structure, testimony to the ignorance of idolatry, polytheism and false gods."

He paced back and forth in front of my cell, taking another bite of his apple. "Yet, tradition lingers, and people are stubborn to change their misled ways; such is the work of Shaytan, Allah save us.

You may be aware that the savage tribe of Bedouins you love so much – the Banu Asad, yet cling to the practices of the age of ignorance, long since prohibited by the teachings of our beloved Prophet.

Some Asadi clans yet cling to the old gods in secret. Worse still, they cling to the ill-fated practice of wa'd.

Yes, they still bury their infant daughters alive. Such is their woeful ignorance, few and far between as these people are.

"Such has also been the fate of the Romans. Damascus is yet blighted by these parasites that cling to the old ways, of times of ignorance and idolatry.

They lurk in the shadows, like roaches, like the clients of the devil that they are, never showing their faces in daylight. Theirs is a venue rumored to be underground, built beneath the city, in the muck and mire where it belongs; a place where scum are granted weaponry and made to fight to the death, losing their lives in the most despicable, heinous, painful ways possible, to the cheers of bloodthirsty crowds and gamblers urging them on, calling for more savagery, more bloodshed.

Yet, I know for a fact that such rumor exists.

Come morning, such will be your fate."

He completed the task of eating his apple and tossed the core away. He wiped his hands together.

"Enjoy your final night on this earth, for tomorrow you will beg me for a swift death."

I lamented Yazid's words once he took his leave, once more alone with my thoughts and a lounging Roman mercenary.

All my years of anguish and loss compounded in that cell, returning to me in a rush, the pain unbearable in both body and soul.

How cruel life had been, how venomous the gods were. That they breathed life into me only to amuse themselves with my woes, my misery. I wasted a lifetime in the attempt of appeasing the gods, I thought, when all along the bastards were as deserving of my wrath as any mortal.

Time and again, I put my faith in them, only to see another part of my soul torn from me in the most callous of manners. All that I've ever cared for in my bleak existence, torn from my grasp over and over. Yet my prayers to them never ceased. But they were only rewarded with heart ache and carnage.

In that cold and horrible cage, I heard the voice of 'Abd al-Ka'aba chiding me in my head, accusing me of cowardice and weakness as I lay rotting in a cell – without fortitude, absent struggle or spirit. He would spit on me and decide I was no son of his. I squirmed at the thought. 'Abd al- Ka'aba had given his own life in exchange for mine, and his last words were in hopes of me honoring his legacy and that of his forefathers.

I thought of dear Ruqayya, hard and blunt spoken to the outside, yet tender and warm on the inside. I heard her chastise me for my haplessness, my utter lack of defiance in the face of death. That my idleness, my surrender to fate was a dishonor to her memory. That I was the weak city boy she always believed me to be. Not a man, a boy.

"You are a boy!" her icy voice clawed at me inside my head. Over and over.

"Who are you?" it said. "A boy. A boy with no identity. No family. No tribe. Hanthalah ibn Ka'b, fatherless, motherless, tribeless. Godless. You are nothing! You have nothing!"

I heard Qusayy scold me, sniff in disdain, telling me that a man who cowered from slaughter was a man cursed by the gods, that a soul left unavenged was one that remained restless for all eternity.

I shamed his memory by lying bruised and battered, shivering and defeated in a cold cell, playing into the hands of my enemies, waiting for an inevitable demise that would not come kindly.

I saw my sweet mother's face, drifting in my imagination. Her kind and unassuming features abruptly twisted in sheer agony, and she screamed a shrill sound, calling for a savior that would not come.

"Motherless."

I shamed her by taking the easy way out, abandoning her to the hands of unworthy men.

"Fatherless."

Finally, it was my own face that sneered at my state of weakness, in disgust. I saw myself as the warrior I aspired to become, ruthless and savage, offering no quarter to those who came between him and his loved ones; a man that stood head and shoulders above all others, a man who offered shelter and protection for those he deemed friends and only death to those he deemed foes.

"Tribeless."

A man that never left the death of kin unavenged, a man that would slaughter an entire tribe unflinching in the name of vengeance.

"Godless."

And, it was then that something inside of me snapped.

And the beast roused within.

Where moments before, lay a pathetic shell of a man, unmoving and brooding in sorrow, now sat a demon set loose to reap the souls of the wicked. His eyes dripped venom, and every inch of his being called for blood, blood without end. He would bask in the shrieks of men as they perished slowly and painfully under his gaze.

A being that despised the notion of mercy and forgiveness, an animal that would not hesitate to refuse his victims either given the opportunity.

That night, I was a butcher hellbent on massacring any number of folk, guilty or otherwise. I would have annihilated an entire tribe had they stood in my path. I would have burned a city down and basked in the cries of women and the torment of infants.

I would not waver in my pursuit of bring nations beneath heel.

"I wish to piss," I said.