>>5920163It was more than two months of peaceful life in this new "Diver-City" for Mahmud. The Emir had managed to convince the locals that Islam was a religion of Peace and was even awarded a seat in their strange "council" that ruled instead of an Emir. Of course there have been some troubles, when Yusuf and Ali tried to catch a nubian on the street to sell him on a slave market they were told that slavery was illegal here ! Illegal ! Mahmud had trouble to imagine such barbarism, but after all it could be used to his advantage. They needed workers and since he had his farm back home he decided to find work here, he far preferred to work in the fields than to fight in battles, he was always a farmer, not a warrior. There was bad things too in this frankish city, first was the cold, some men had died of it but for the rest it could be tolerable.
Jaffar had tried to lynch some Jinns on the street and had been imprisoned and since Madmud disliked him he could not completely hate this strange place. But even if he didn't hate it he feared to live inside it's walls where jinns walked on the streets with honest people. So he preferred to lend his hands to a farmer, the soil was fertile and the farmer, mister Herrouberry if very small and with strange hairy feet, was joyful and he hoped to gain enough money to pay his travel back to his own lands. He had three lovely wives and eight living children that awaited him home. So he worked hard, thinking about them and praying Allah to see them again.
He still saw some of his ancient "scout" companions that had discovered the city with him. The young Salim worked as a builder now, helping carry stones and other building materials in the city while Saddam, the leader of their group was nowhere to be seen since he came down to a mine to work there, it was said that he was still alive but in hiding and had found some "weapons of great destruction".
He heard of other men too, Sinbad had found work on a boat and hoped to sail back to Egypt but unfortunately, after coming back one month later he explained that Diver-City was simply on a very big lake, or internal see and only Franks lived on it's coasts, it made Mahmud, who wanted to pay for a place on a ship to Alexandria, very sad. He would have to travel to find a port on the Mediterranean, or on the ocean after this magic displaced him in Frankish lands. This thought haunted him every day and he was justly thinking about it when he saw something very strange on the road leading to the farm where he worked. A caravan, a caravan where one of the riders rode a camel. People on it looked vaguely arabic, even if some of their clothes were... Wrong. Like they had bought them to some berber tribe in the desert or even persian merchants, but it was mismatched. But still, strangely dressed or not they looked like compatriots.
