Mastering the Sword Manual, sweeping across the globe

Amar doesn't remember the exact date.

In the afternoon, she was still at school, watching the teacher write letters on the blackboard, when suddenly there was a flash of light outside the window, followed by a loud bang she had never heard before, as if the whole world had been ripped open from the middle and then slammed shut.

The teacher stuffed them under the desks; some started reciting scriptures, while others cried.

Amar wondered if his younger brother was still at home. His brother always took a nap in the afternoon. Was he asleep now?

The younger brother wasn't asleep. When the father dug the mother out of the rubble, she was holding her younger brother in her arms.

My father said, "It's good that you're alive."

He handed his younger brother to a neighbor, then turned back to dig something.

A few pieces of clothing, a bag of flour, and a blanket left by my grandfather.

The lemon tree was cut in half, and the remaining half was charred black, like bones that had been burned.

The father stood there for a long time, then bent down to pick up a lemon that had been shaken off the ground and put it in his pocket.

They moved to their current home, a gray-yellow building that had been cut off at an angle, revealing broken steel bars.

My father said this was temporary, and we would go back after the fighting was over.

Amar doesn't know when the fight will end.

All she knew was that most of the steps in the stairwell had been blown off by something. Every time she went upstairs, she would first lift her younger brother up and place him on the top step, then climb up herself using both her hands and feet, before turning around to take her younger sister and carefully supporting the back of her head.

They live on the sixth floor.

My father said the sixth floor is safe; when drones are looking for people, the lower the floor, the easier it is to be seen.

Queuing is the most important thing every morning.

Before dawn, Amar was woken up by his father and carried two empty plastic buckets downstairs.

The waterwheel sometimes comes, sometimes it doesn't.

Once they arrived, everyone formed a long queue, stretching from the waterwheel at the street corner all the way into the depths of the alley.

Amar stood in the line and saw many people she recognized: her neighbor, Uncle Farouk, who used to sell vegetables at the market, but now his stall was gone, and he had lost his legs, using a cane made of a water pipe; and her classmate Samia, with whom she used to sit at the same desk, but now the school was gone, and Samia had lost her left hand, standing unsteadily with a bucket in one hand.

The line was very long and moved very slowly.

Amar placed the two buckets on the ground and moved them forward little by little.

After the sun rose, it made the back of her neck feel hot. She dared not move away or sit down, because if she left the line even a little bit, the people behind her would push up, and all her waiting all morning would be for nothing.

On one occasion, Amar waited for three whole hours before finally getting to the front of the line, only to find the waterwheel empty.

The truck driver leaned out of the cab, shouted "That's all" to the crowd, and then started the engine and drove away.

Amar stood there carrying two empty buckets, being pushed, jostled, and having her feet stepped on by the dispersing crowd behind her, but she didn't feel any pain.

She was just thinking about what to cook the beans with today.

When he's lucky, Amar can still get half a bucket.

The water was murky, so we poured it into a large pot and boiled it for a long time before daring to drink it.

When you drink it, close your eyes, don't think about the taste, and just pretend it's clean.

My younger brother always drinks very quickly, gulping down a few mouthfuls, then wiping his mouth and saying he's still thirsty.

Amar then pushed his own bowl towards him.

She wasn't thirsty, she thought.

Hassan has a cat.

To be precise, there once was a cat.

I found it in the ruins last winter. It had grayish-white fur, was very thin, and its ears were covered in dirt.

Hassan spent the entire afternoon crouching in the rubble, luring it out with a small piece of broken bread, and carefully carried it home in his arms.

Of course, my father wouldn't allow me to keep one. People can't even get enough to eat, let alone have extra food to feed a cat.

Hassan cried all night, and the next morning his father sighed and broke off a thumb-sized piece of bread from his own portion.

Hassan called it "white flour" because its color was the same as the best flour in the relief food.

Hassan would save a tiny bit from the meager food he was allotted each day—a small piece of flatbread, a few overcooked beans, or sometimes just a small sip of sour yogurt—and leave it in the corner for the white flour to eat.

White Flour was very well-behaved and never barked. He just quietly curled up on Hassan's lap and occasionally licked his fingers with his tongue.

Sometimes when Amar wakes up in the middle of the night, he sees his younger brother lying on his side on a thin blanket, with White Flour curled up in his arms. The two of them, one human and one cat, are like two commas trying to keep each other warm.

The white flour stayed with them for more than four months.

One morning, the white flour didn't arrive.

Hassan squatted by the door for a long time, tapping the floor tiles lightly with his fingers—his secret signal to White Flour.

The white flour still hasn't arrived.

There was none the next day either.

Amar helped him search through the ruins for a long time, from the pile of rubble downstairs all the way to the mosque on the street corner that had been half blown up.

Finally, beneath a pile of broken bricks and deformed steel bars, Amar found white flour.

It was curled up, as if asleep, but its body was no longer moving.

Beside it lay a bronze-colored shell casing, the type of which Amal couldn't identify, gleaming blindingly in the sunlight.

Hassan squatted there and watched for a long time.

Amar stood behind him, unsure of what to say.

Finally, the younger brother reached out, but instead of touching the white flour's back, he gently brushed off the dust clinging to the tip of its tail.

Hassan did not eat dinner that night.

Amar pushed his share of beans towards the other person and shook his head.

He was curled up on the blanket, facing the wall, and Amar knew he wasn't asleep.

Food shortages began before the war.

Amar recalls that about a year ago, the price of flour rose to four times the family's income.

My mother stood in the market for a long time, and finally came back carrying half a bag of flour. The expression on her face was not like she had bought something, but like she had lost something.

Then, the rice ran out, and then we had to eat the beans sparingly.

During the months when we were starving the most, my mother reduced our meals from two a day to one. Later, the flatbread in each meal became thinner and thinner, so thin that you could see your hand shadow when you held it up to the light.

The father always said he wasn't hungry, broke his portion in half and gave it to Amar and Hassan, then sat in the corner and slowly drank a bowl of porridge with hardly any rice grains.

He lost weight very quickly; his collarbones peeked out from his shirt collar, looking like two long, horizontal bones.

Later, relief supplies arrived one after another. Trucks with blue markings drove by, carrying flour, cooking oil, canned beans, and sometimes even sugar.

Hassan loves candy. Whenever he gets a small piece, he will lick it off bit by bit with his tongue and can eat it for a whole afternoon.

The expression on his face when he licked the candy was as if the whole world had been paused, leaving only sweetness.

But that was in the past.

The blue truck hasn't been seen in recent days.

The father asked a neighbor who was fairly decent to inquire, and the neighbor came back and said that the border crossing had been closed for several days, all the passes for the rescue convoy had expired, and no one knew when they would be restored.

Amar didn't quite understand what a pass was, but she saw her father stand at the crossroads for two afternoons, only to be met by an empty donkey cart. The old man driving the cart waved to her father without saying a word.

That evening, my father emptied the last half-bag of flour from the house, divided it into four portions, and said, "Eat it sparingly, we don't know where our next meal will come from."

Hassan tore his bread into small pieces and arranged them neatly in rows on his plate, like he was queuing up.

He probably thought that as long as the food was arranged neatly enough, there would be more food.

Amar didn't know how to tell him, so she simply broke her own pancake in half and placed it next to her brother's plate when he wasn't looking.

There's no electricity anymore. There used to be generators, a few old diesel engines hidden in a tin shed on the street corner, their roar echoing at night, because someone had paid for diesel.

Later, the diesel fuel ran out, and the generators stopped one after another.

As night falls, the entire neighborhood sinks into boundless darkness, with only the occasional cell phone screen flashing briefly behind a window before going out again.

Amar knew that someone was desperately trying to find a signal to send a message to the outside world.

Most of the time, messages can't be sent, or even if they are sent, they disappear without a trace, like being thrown into a deep well without any response.

Hygiene is the most unbearable thing.

The water has been cut off for who knows how many days. When the tap is turned all the way up, only a few drops of rusty yellow mud drip out.

The father crushed the last of the water purification tablets and distributed them to several neighbors.

That was an old stockpile of international aid supplies. The pills had become damp and stuck together in the plastic bag; I don't know if they're still effective.

The toilets have long been unflushed; people have to relieve themselves in plastic bags, tie them tightly, and throw them far away onto the pile of rubble on the street corner.

But the pile of ruins had been built up too high, and every time I passed by, there was a smell, like fermented stuff mixed with burnt plastic.

My father said not to go near that pile of rubble, because there were rats, flies, and possibly things that hadn't been detonated yet.

But Hassan still secretly went there, hoping to find something for White Flour to eat.

When Amar pulled him back, his trouser legs were covered in a ring of dark green mud.

Hassan started having a fever two days ago.

At first, he was just a little listless, so Amar didn't pay much attention. Her younger brother was naturally very active, and when he was quiet for a while, she felt like she could finally catch her breath.

But by evening, Hassan was curled up on the blanket, his forehead burning hot to the touch.

His father pressed the back of his hand against his cheek, then lifted his eyelids to look at him, and his expression changed instantly.

Amar saw that his father's hands were trembling.

The father searched through all the drawers in the house but only found half a board of amoxicillin.

That was given to my father by a nurse a few months ago when a private clinic was closing down.

My father was reluctant to use it at the time, so he wrapped it in several layers of plastic bags and hid it in the deepest part of the cabinet, saying that he would save it for the worst time.

Now, the worst has come, but that half-packet of medicine has expired.

The father held the medicine for a long time, carefully taking the pills out of the foil one by one, crushing them in a spoon, mixing them with the last bit of cold water to make a paste, and feeding them to Hassan little by little.

Hassan opened his mouth in a daze, swallowing less than he spat out.

As night deepened, Amar was awakened by a sound; it was his sister crying.

Najiya rarely cries. She is a quiet child. When she is hungry, she will only hum softly and make short, indistinct sounds similar to "mama".

But tonight she cried terribly, her voice high-pitched and hoarse, as if something was twisting inside her stomach.

Her parents carried her back and forth for a long time, but the little girl still cried.

Then, I don't know when, the crying stopped.

Amar lay awake in the darkness, listening to the wind outside for a while, before finally drifting back into a light sleep.

Hassan did not wake up the next morning.

Amar sat next to him and fanned him with a plastic fan he had found.

Occasionally, a fly would fly over and land on Hassan's cheek, which she would gently swat away with her hand.

The fly flew back, and she shooed it away again.

The younger brother had a wet towel draped over his forehead; the water was the last half bowl borrowed from the neighbor, and the towel dried quickly.

In the evening, Hassan suddenly opened his eyes.

His eyes were frighteningly bright as he stared straight at the grayish-yellow sky outside the window. His voice was soft and low, as if it came from a great distance: "Sister, where did the white flour go?"

Amar didn't know how to answer the question. She reached out and gently brushed the dust off her brother's arm, then picked up the fan and continued fanning herself.

As darkness fell, the outlines of the ruins gradually blurred in the twilight.

Amar wiped his eyes and lowered his head again.

Hassan curled up as if asleep, but his body was no longer moving.

165 Meat-eaters