Metamorphosis [Draft]

Enter a destitute immigrant couple from India, seeking asylum in the United States for themselves and their baby boy. Seeking opportunity. Seeking life. Unable to afford a place to live for all three of them, they go to pray at the local mosque for guidance from Allah. Another couple is there, obviously Chinese.  Both couples leave at the same time. Conversation happens. The immigrant couple mentions their plight, and their son Mika'il, and the Chinese couple tells them to be faithful.

Allah loves those who do good.

They eventually part ways.  As the immigrant couple is crossing the street a drunken cab driver hits them and the boy flies through the air, landing on the sidewalk. The other couple panics, the husband runs to pick him up in the confusion, and they both leave quickly thereafter: they don't want to be around when the police arrive, and they don't speak English.

They raise him as their own son.

--High School

Going to the bathroom was an adventure for Mika'il. The inconsistencies in the bone-white caulking, the hypnotic designs on the hand-rails mirrored in the veins of a straining grip when you let a really big one go. Messages on the door graffitied by anonymous malcontents. Sometimes even short conversations, quips volleyed back and forth in-between the masturbatory gang-tags and marginalia. He took in everything and absorbed even the repeating patterns of bathroom tile.

It was much more entertaining than going to class, where he never used his intellect and certainly not his imagination. Consequently, field trips down the hall were in order several times a day to keep himself modestly occupied and mentally on point.  It gave him daydream fuel.  What superhero could he potentially become, given the chance and circumstances?  What was the best way he could have told off the grocery store clerk who told him he was too young to buy the magazine of his choosing?  If only he had the opportunity and an audience to impress.

While the other students were learning linear algebra (a kind of mathematical sorcery adapted from the al-jebr of his people,) Mika'il was navigating hypothetical social situations, tentatively organizing his collection of pornography for the quickest and most decisive access for his tastes, and divining the most cost effective way to go about outfitting his party in the latest Final Fantasy game.  If he could work this into his assignments, so much the better.

It was a mild surprise when the teacher called on him, and he quickly realized that most of the class must have incorrectly answered a question, now being deferred to him. He answered it correctly, and turned his attention to the cracking paint on the windowsill. This led his thoughts to what it must be like to be a janitor after school hours, paper and trash breeding like dust bunnies on the floor. If Mika'il were a janitor, he would most certainly be the best janitor there was, maybe even have a super power or two, or a rival janitor to make things interesting. Certainly not the mundane reality of it.  Nothing would ever be that way for Mika'il.

Abrupt ringing scares his muse away, and the teacher belts out a command:

"Alright kids, fire drill, you know what to do! Single file, no talking, walk quickly and orderly."

Mika'il obeyed, putting his favorite pencil and eraser in his pocket and going to the very back of the line to resume his mental voyage through the life of a janitor who, through his own hard workings, kick-ass personality and sheer charisma ends up working at a prestigious European Hotel, getting paid cash under the table and masquerading a secret nightlife as a crime buster.

It's cold outside, and Mika'il pulls his hood over his head, retiring to the aluminum bleachers to be alone in his thoughts. Entrenched in fantasy, he doesn't immediately notice people backing up and then running from the school building.  He is only blown into reality when someone dashes him with their elbow. Annoyed, he looks up and realizes several of the school's windows have flames gushing from them.

He doesn't have time to turn his thoughts back. All he remembers next is a bright flash and bricks hurtling through empty space toward him and his classmates. Perhaps if he had paid attention in algebra, he would have had time for a last-second calculation of the trajectory before one careened against his skull, and how he could perhaps dodge them like Neo in The Matrix. However, real life is boring and holds no such possibilities.


---Not Yet a Man


For Mika'il, going to the bathroom isn't quite as large an adventure as it used to be. He now lives just off of The Bowery in Flushing, New York, with a couple of immigrant Chinese friends of his late mother's. After the unfortunate school explosion back in his linear algebra days, his parents couldn't agree on how to finance his hospital bill; His mother thought the best way to handle it would be to take out loans, and his father thought the best way to handle it would be to kill his wife and collect on life insurance.

It has been 6 years since Mika'il saw his father being coarsely grappled and stuffed into the back of a sheriff's car. Instead of continuing his largely normal and routine life of boring family dinners and bland school classes, he has had to drop out due to lack of scholarly motivation, and has begun to adjust to his new foster parents: the Tai family. They've even given him a new name: Hao Tai.

Now, he sweeps floors and busses tables at The Lucky Rabbit, owned by the Tai's. Nearly everyone in the borough simply calls him Hao, as he was a late addition onto the family. However, his stepfather Hui still calls him by his Muslim name. Mika'il thinks this is because he wishes to distance himself from this foreigner who penetrated his intimate family circle, and to show some distance, asserting whatever patriarchal superiority he can muster; The reality is that Hui is simply intrigued by Mika'il and pokes fun at him in whatever ways he can muster, being somewhat of an insensitive man.  Seeing Mika'il as a curiosity, Hui takes the chances he can get to and observes Mika'il's reactions to various humiliating or trying situations.

Hui never assimilated much of American culture like his wife Bai did. He prefers to float in a dead-man's land between being American and Chinese, yet neither one. Mika'il assumed that the existential gravity of this must approximate being a half-orc; Tai seceded from his father's family, took his last name and tacked it on at the front, and so was no longer Xao Hui, but Hui Tai. American bureaucracy made this possible.

American bureaucracy also makes it possible for his family to receive welfare and food stamps, and for him to trade them for cigarettes at a nearby convenience store.  For every two cigarettes he smokes, there are approximately two medications he is prescribed, arranged along one wall of his bedroom like soldiers in formation.

Cleaning tables, sweeping stray noodles, herding dust bunnies, and washing dishesfor his foster mother at the restaurant may not seem like a job you would see in Forbes magazine, but for Mika'il it provides time for reflection, imagination, fantasizing. Sometimes even a little flirting with one of the girls who works at the neighboring establishment, the Hot Pot.

"Hao! Time to clean the windows. Use cleaner this time."

 Bai screeches from the back of the kitchen, her voice rising serpentine over the hissing and rattling of pots and pans being emptied of their contents and scoured with steel wool. Mika'il grabs the Windex and begins to pump some onto an already damp rag, bits of food still here and there, as he distills the scent of food wafting from the kitchen. He hasn't been able to eat yet today, and he hopes that Bai will give him a bowl of whatever is left over and still fresh if he does a good job on the windows.  There is usually something clinging to a pot that is a tad sub-par for paying customers that she doesn't mind throwing out to him.

Mechanically moving his arm up and down, pressing the limp rag against the streaked windows, his mind starts to phase shift and he looks around the street. Many people are going by, a little faster than usual since it is rush hour and most people commute to places by foot, at least to the bus lines. With the added chill of the recent jet stream, most men are wearing trench coats or something equally covering. Older men carrying briefcases, grayed hair in a comb-over to cover their prematurely receded hairline. Steam is rising from the back of a nearby fishmonger's hut, a telltale sign of the owner preparing a meal for a customer to bring home to his family for dinner. Two girls skip by giggling and playing with something akin to colored sticks between their hands, as a crow flies through the crowd and lands on a sign that says "No throwing garbage everywhere," and cocks its feathered head in the direction of nearby trashcans.

You're probably as hungry as I am, aren't you little fella?

Mika'il smiles as he plunges the rag into chemically enhanced dishwater and grabs a dry one to go over what he just cleaned. It's winter in Chinatown, and wet windows means condensation and frost inside. Not good for business, and thusly not good for his welfare.  A customer comes in just then, and Mika'il tries in vain to catch his eye before he takes a seat and opens a newspaper, placing his black top hat in his lap while lightly loosening his scarf.

"MA! We have a customer!"

Mika'il throws his voice in the general direction of the pots and pans clanging against the aluminum sinks, and goes back to his chore. He was taught to refer to an American or a tourist entering the restaurant as a 'customer', as opposed to calling other Chinese or locals 'visitors'. The Chinese have a strong sense of family, and this is a family restaurant.

"Be right with you!"

Bai waddles hurriedly out of the kitchen doorway, despite being a frail woman, while drying her hands with a white and blue striped towel.  She grabs a menu and practically glides toward the customer in her tiny black shoes, armed with charcoal pencil and smile caked with cheap lipstick. She stops less than a foot short of the man, her apron moving out to lick his leg and retreat, and she makes an awkward bow in his direction.

"Welcome to Lucky Rabbit, what would..."

She stops in mid-greeting. Mika'il gathers that she recognizes this man, and instead of Bai finishing with "...you like?" her smile falls and her sentence ends.


---Building Character


Bai drops the menu and charcoal pencil on the table in front of the customer. Mika'il notices her shoulders beginning to sag.

"Hao, you are done for the day, go home."

"But Ma, I haven't eaten a thing, I'm st..."

"Go HOME!"

"Yes Ma."

He exhales pitifully, and drops the two cloths in the pail of chemical water. Fastening his coat and wrapping himself in his scarf, he trudges through the doorway sullen and disheartened, and doesn't look back despite the temptation of getting to see the strange customer's face. Once outside he looks toward the trashcans like they are a viable source of nutrition. A blast of chilled air convinces him to look away and better cover himself with his jacket and scarf before he began the seven-block walk home.

Walking home after work was another opportunity for Mika'il to delve into his mind and reflect, be it on what he would like to eat, how the sky looks with flakes of snow gently drifting and lighting on people's heads, or the fading sounds of the street he is on as new ones growing closer, receding from thought. He begins to consider the possible identity of the man who walked into the restaurant, but decides he doesn't know enough to draw many conclusions. A lover from days gone by? A loan shark coming to collect his money? The last was more likely, taking into account their low income and recollecting all of the bottles of pills and liquids entrenched on Hui's shelf at home, a small plastic army prepared to march to the front lines within his body.

Besides, lately Mika'il keeps his thoughts more down to earth than usual. Daydreaming, fantasizing, and hoping were the cause of his undoing at college.  His parents never passed up a chance to give him shit about it.  Mika'il didn't really go for the whole "memorize this, regurgitate that, meet these requirements, work this job, live this life" thing. He didn't know what to do with his life, and didn't really care where he ended up most of the time.  All he needed was ordinary circumstances, a stable lifestyle, and his favorite pencil and eraser which he still had. Even if he wasn't going to write, he kept them in his pocket and took them wherever he went.

He walks home on nights like tonight, watching customers and visitors alike going about their business in Chinatown as he fondles the pencil or eraser in his pocket, a creative fetish. Merchants, husbands, businessmen, children, cats and dogs. All of them played a role here in Flushing. If one was missing, the picture was incomplete. Despite the fast pace of life here, even during later hours of the evening, it calmed Mika'il. The sounds of tourists animatedly talking about what they just saw in a store.  The smells of food from nearby restaurants, selectively permitted to escape through the window to entice passersby.  Stray cats rubbing up against his leg, not necessarily out of affection but of hope that he might be able to feed it.

Everyone and everything needs saving.  This thought hits home, and Mika'il decides that when he gets home he?ll try to sneak a cigarette from his old man.  Hui watches them like a hawk watches field mice, but Mika'il figures that if he takes one while Hui's on his Marinol he won't notice it missing in his induced stupor. He might even be able to pilfer some food in the fridge if he's lucky.

Having to consciously step up and over the large cracks in the sidewalk while sidestepping other oblivious travelers takes his mind off of his scheming, and he doesn't notice that he's arrived home until he's passed it by more than a block's length. He backtracks and gently pushes open the screen door and even takes off his shoes before stepping up onto the wooden floor, and is kindly greeted by the screen slamming loudly behind him. His father recognizes the distinct sound and shuffles into the kitchen wearing his Cookie Monster slippers, already partly tranquilized by his drugs. Mika'il begins to sit down at the kitchen table, his legs readily giving way from supporting his weight all day."

"Hey Mika'il, look... hey, when I talk to you, stand up!"

Hui slurs his his speech, and exclaims the last part with surprise like he noticed a sly trick his son was pulling. Mika'il stands up and drops his pencil and eraser on the table, looking his father in the eye, waiting. The only thing he can think about is how long his father's gray eyebrows will become before he either trims them, trips on them, or kicks the bucket.

"Now, while you're up get me some milk."

Mika'il doesn't even bother to protest the shitty trick, and even inwardly chuckles at his father's wit, still somewhat sharp despite being dulled artificially. Sensing that the house won't be its usual social pressure cooker tonight, he decides he won't take a cigarette from Hui after all.

He hands the glass to his father, who reaches for it with the coordination of a blind paraplegic and causes it to slosh around, a small amount just barely diving over the edge of the glass onto the floor. Mika'il sees it in slow motion, a beautiful aerial ballet of milk gracefully falling toward the slatted wood, only to splash and seep in. His father simply raises an eyebrow and gives him a disapproving look for not mimicking the acrobatics himself, dish towel in hand. Mika'il instinctively reaches for the red cloth by the sink, wets it from their rusted faucet and begins to mop it up as his father stammers back into the living room.

I come home from work just to continue working.

He walks past his father on his way to his bedroom for the night, and wonders at how Hui seems to graft himself symbiotically onto the green La-Z-Boy in front of the old Magnavox. The living room always reminds him of the meat freezer at the restaurant.

"Noodles in the fridge, boy."

Mika'il had completely forgotten about food. He backtracks, offering a "thanks" to his father, receiving a grunt in return, the kind a sleeping hog would make while settling in his mire.

He opens the refrigerator door and immediately spots the noodles in a green patterned glass bowl. Most of the refrigerator space was allocated to various condiments, and a few medications that had to be kept cold for his father, but very little for actual food. Most of the time Mika'il simply ate at the restaurant, and Bai usually brought some food home for Hui at lunchtime and after closing.

"Shit, why did he ask for spicy noodles today?"

Mika'il bemoaned his fate and decided to put some noodles in a bowl, run it through the tap to wash off the spices offensive to his palate, and sneak to his bedroom before eating it.

"I heard that boy. Not everyone has it easy in this life you know. Eat it, it builds character."

The message was not lost on Mika'il, and he quietly cleansed the noodles and retired to his room, pulling shut the wooden shoji door.  Laying on his back and using his arm as a pillow, he feeds himself one noodle at a time and begins to think again of the visitor who came to the restaurant that day.  He decides he'll ask Bai about him tomorrow at work, then realizes that tomorrow he doesn't have to work. Tomorrow is Friday, and that is the day his parents said he could go around town asking locals for a job so he could work for money rather than rent, and make something of himself.  Make his parents proud for once.  Earn his food instead of getting it from his gracious parents, who gave him the best of what they had, the ingrate.

He imagines all the places he'll go to, all the places he'd like to work, the plethora of possibilities available at each, and slumber steals over him sweetly. A single bell begins to ring at the Church of the Transfiguration a block away off of Chatham Square, and reveals the time to be 11:15pm.  All is right with the world.


---The Journey


Chinatown in the morning always seems a tad artificial to Mika'il. Each day he wakes up and it seems as if the workers and commuters never stopped going about their business, just continuing through the night in an alluring flurry of commerce while lights burn vigilantly overhead, attesting to their inhuman efforts.

Mika'il bounds out of bed wearing his warmer socks, browned on the bottom from walking on their less than pristine floors for the past years, and gently pulls aside his bedroom door. He stills his enthusiasm, wanting to walk past his father serenely, betraying no emotion or hint of wistfulness. He didn't want them to get any satisfaction for allowing him this privilege.

Predictably, Hui was meshed to the La-Z-Boy, the Magnavox still on and blaring infomercials about a knife that could cut through a shoe, as if someone would use it for such a purpose and absolutely must buy it. Mika'il continued past the sleeping relic, slipped into his grungy converses, and swung open the screen door preparing to meet the day head on. He had a lot to accomplish.

It had rained overnight, and the air smelled of leaves and cement, traces of food infiltrating his nostrils occasionally. The day felt new and invigorating, the pleasant warm humidity rising from the asphalt like an oily blanket.  Not bothering to avoid puddles, he bee-lined toward the sidewalk and began trotting at a brisk pace toward the center of Chinatown, blocking out the ringing of the church bell in the background. His mind was much too busy processing other things to be bothered with such a distraction.

When he reached the outskirts of Orchard Street he decided to go in the family restaurant and get something to eat. His mother had left him a note on top of his work shoes, saying:

Come by before you go out and get something to eat. It's cold, and you'll need it to keep you going.
-Mom

He opened the door and the familiar jingle of the bell tied to its hinge filled his mind with possibility rather than the submissive dread as is customary on days he works.  He called out for Bai but she didn't answer. About the time he was wondering what she could be doing, he noticed a takeout box on the counter with chopsticks on top, a slip of paper at its foot with a single flourishing word: Mika'il. He put the slip of paper in his pocket and carried the food outside to eat.

Shoveling the rice down his mouth, Mika'il tells himself that he will head down Division Street and look at establishments along Confucius Plaza. Perhaps some of the people who know his family would be working today, and would consider hiring him. If no one he knew was working he was very unlikely to get a job. Family Run businesses don't often hire someone outside of their own here, and certainly not outside of a circle of personal and well-known friends. Luckily, Mika'il and his family fell into this circle with a few people, and he had several places in mind to stop by.

What he would not do is go to work for some "American Corporation that has no honor," as his parents termed them, such as the local McDonald's or Old Navy. This way he would be working close to home, most likely within Chinatown, with friends close to his parents. This afforded them a doubly secure way to keep tabs on their son and be given reports of his conduct at work. Mika'il suddenly realized this, and most of the joy in finding a new job was murdered, since he had associated it with somewhat moving away from his parents as well as an assertion of his independence and manhood.

Regardless, it was better than working right alongside his mother, so he decided to focus on that benefit.

No reason to get myself down already, this early in the morning.

He muttered to himself quietly, fidgeting with his chopsticks, having finished eating the rice and not thinking to also throw them away along with the food container.  The sunlight was intense, breaking only occasionally for birds or streetlights blocking it from Mika'il's peripheral vision. He decided to put buildings between it and himself as he rounded the corner onto Division Street.

On his right as he turns the corner he sees the hut that sells sunglasses that come in virtually any color imaginable, and some you wouldn't even think to combine until you saw it for yourself. Conveniently, one size fits all, and they only come in one style.

Further down is the glass and ceramic shop, filled with many precious things, certainly nothing that Mika'il could afford. Mirrors line the walls, giving off the illusion that there are many more treasures inside than there actually are, but the shop itself is nothing to be scoffed at. Tables and shelves lined with bronze candlesticks, glazed statuettes of the naked female form, glass perfume bottles patterned with ovals and stripes, and many other things that shouldn't be in such an establishment like the small can of miniature American flags near the cash-register, or the silver elephant, its head raised skyward in a triumphant blast, trunk elongated to form a lamp.  This marks it as a family business, but a sell-out to tourism.

He sees that Trent isn't working today and gives up on that possibility. Trent is the son of a banker the Tai's are friendly with over at Abacus Federal Savings. He gets free food at the family restaurant in return for being lenient on the various payment plans the Tai's have racked up over the years.

Mika'il continues to walk down Division Street toward the Plaza and turns in at Yi Mei, another local restaurant, deciding to pass up the Asian Americans For Equality office and Chuen Lee Fabrics. He emerges a few minutes later empty handed, and somewhat disheartened that the one family friend his parents and he both like is not there today either. He decides to check another time.

Suddenly, he gets the urge to go down Saint James Place all the way to the seaport. It's a bit far, and his parents probably wouldn't approve of him getting a job there, but he resolves to do it anyway.

After all, if I tell them no one we knew was working, and I got a job there, how much can they complain?

 Deeming his reasoning sound, he begins his long walk.

It's been months since I've been to the Brooklyn Bridge anyway.

He looks forward to walking under it on the way there. Few things relax Mika'il like being at the port, hearing the gentle cries of the gulls and water lapping against the bank calling out to him.  Leaving the familiar hustle and bustle of Chinatown behind him, he journeys to the south, and reckons it will be time for another meal by the time he gets there.


----Now a Man


She was the best thing that ever happened to him.

It had been 10 years since his foster parents Bai and Hui died. 10 years since he failed to find a job, and 10 years since the day the doctor showed up at the family restaurant to tell Bai that Hui's cancer was metastesizing, that he was terminally ill, and had only two to three months to live. He lived three weeks instelad, and Bai lost her will to work, eat or live shortly thereafter.

Mika'il had decided to leave the Bowery and rediscover his roots as a Muslim American by making the physical journey from Little China to Little India, and the spiritual journey from the lackadaisical foster child of a Chinese-American family to a devout Muslim with his own apartment.

Mika'il now worked in Indiatown and lived just outside of Devonshire, in Chicago, Illinois within walking distance of the restaurant where he made various types of Paan in the back. That's where he met her. Rose Williams. His future wife. She converted to Islam and became the driving force of everything Mika'il did, from breathing to brushing his teeth. His new found zeal for Islam had him visiting the local Mosque every day, the very same one his parents were killed at not 60 feet away. He even managed to make a few friends in the local Islam community, and had a particular friend named Abdullah that helped him along his spiritual journey. Every night he went to sleep next to his Rose, his true love.

Rose was a local painter, and quite an extraordinary one. Even though a childhood injury left her without two of her fingers, she was so distinguished as to have just recently been considered for a $80,000 commission from the government to paint portraits of the last five Heads of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This was a phenomenal chance for them to move up in life.

Unbeknownst to Mika'il, the mortal politicians weren't the only ones who had their eye on his Rose. The local Toreador Primogen had just been given the Right of Progeny, and she thought that Rose would make a fine addition to the Toreador clan. Not everyone had liked this idea though. The Primogen had her enemies, and they got to Rose faster than she did.

That night when Mika?il got home from the restaurant, dinner was already prepared for him, so he and Rose sat down to eat together. It was a very special evening, it being their 3rd Anniversary, and with the added fortuitousness of Rose's recent commission they sprang for a bottle of Dom Perignon to add a little something extra to their night. Rose poured him a glass, handed it to him, and did the same for herself.

They toasted. As Mika'il was putting his glass down on the table, he noticed that Rose was no longer missing her two fingers.  He dropped the glass as he stared, stunned. He looked up at Rose with amazement that immediately changed to terror as her face contorted with a seizure, her prison mouth grinning viciously with concertina wire eyes staring back at him, dilated and cruel. Before he could scream he was immediately overcome with intense misery and depression and saw her eyes weeping what appeared to be blood as he curled up in the fetal position on the floor.  He wailed uncontrollably, with tears and spittle and snot.

He could only catch snippets of what his Rose, or whatever it was, started to say.

"...get your wife, but she won't turn, the Boyers will get you..."

Then a crash, some wailing and screaming, and finally blackness.

After the thing had violated Mika'il's household and flayed his wife, it ripped her to hearty chunks and threw them all at her most recent painting in the side-room where he assumed the Toreador Primogen would look for her first.  Next he took her flesh and made it his own, and he waited, the foul Tzimisce amalgamation. He waited for Mika'il to come home so that he could further his insult against the Primogen by embracing the husband into the clan.

But Before he could accomplish this, Mika'il's friend Abdullah ibn Rafayyud broke into the house, having been abreast of the situation and the possibility that his wife's life was in danger from hearing the wails outside as he approached the household.

After staking and destroying the vampire, Abdullah embraced Mika'il out of what he felt was necessity and kindness.  The sort of kindness that is only considered a favor in the very end of things, after much grief and suffering.

This was a very special night.


--Now a Monster


Mika'il sat at the back of the Greyhound bus on his way to Greensboro, North Carolina, continuing on his journey from life to un-life. Ever since the day he lost his Rose, he had never been the same, quite literally. His mind is fractured, much of the imagination and mental faculty that he used to have lost or altered, yet some things that he never had before he can now accomplish with ease. If he still had a refined sense of humor like he did in his youth, he might be able to make jokes about how he now has various super-powers of sorts, and maybe that janitor dream-job wasn't that impossible to achieve.

Maybe he should have set his sights higher.  For the last 4 years Abdullah has been teaching him the ways of clan Assamite. He knows next to nothing, truly, but some of the things he remembers best are those that Abdullah said to him in friendship.

"I am going to teach you new ways of communicating, Mika'il, for when you are having bad days, and have trouble speaking."

He often had such days, obsessively rocking back and forth cradling the crystal from a pendant Rose used to wear.  His sorrow was deeper than what a human could endure, and he obsessively counted and recounted the days back and forth until their next anniversary, sometimes doing it in hours and minutes as well. When he did talk, he was shy and cautious, and seemed to be a shell of his former self.

"I was your mentor of faith in life, and can continue to be so now in other ways. So can my friend here be, Abdurrashid. He is visiting from another state, closer to the East Coast."

Together they taught him the ways of their clan, and helped him get the first steps toward the ways of others.

"I am here for when you need me."

He has gotten better since that time, even while supernatural politics forced Abdullah and Abdurrashid to move away from Illinois to North Carolina, where he was now headed, albeit separately from his two friends.  They were to be in a different city than he. Mika'il would have taken a Taxi, but they frighten him inexplicably.

Holding the crystal close to his breast, swaying with the motions of the Greyhound, he begins to pray.

If some good befalls them, they say, "This is from Allah; but if evil, they say, "This is from thee" (O Prophet). Say: "All things are from Allah." But what hath come to these people, that they fail to understand a single fact? Whatever good happens to thee is from God; and whatever evil befalls thee is from thyself…

Unable to  quiet himself sufficiently to give thanks for what he has been given, he asks for guidance to find another of the faith.  Someone from his clan, someone that will guide him and help him keep the path and the faith in this new, dangerous world.  He believes that there are beings like that out there.

The ingrate.