It was the morning of the day after the triplets had returned from seeing what neither of them could quite get off of their minds. After a filling breakfast and discussion with their parents, they found themselves once again in their rooms, pondering on what to do now that they realised the world wasn't exactly the place they thought it was. That their father might not be who he and everyone else says he is.
Karim paced around the room, his arms held behind his back as he thought hard. Amin watched Karim as his feet padded across the floor, his arms crossed and seemingly less worried. Hamid, as was becoming a far too frequent occurrence, sat on the edge of his bed and looked at the floor, somewhat nervous and unsure what to say or think.
Karim continued to pace around the room, walking in circles and on the rare occasion sharply shaking his head as if he was finally ready to speak his mind. Amin patiently waited, and was soon rewarded with Karim, at last, saying something to undo the awkward silence.
"Come on! We have to go and find out more about dad!" Karim said with a raised voice. Amin ushered Karim to lower his voice by putting his finger to his lips, simultaneously frowning and nodding in annoyance.
"You can't expect me to see those people burning that haystack and just sit around and do nothing about it."
Amin finally unfolded his arms and rubbed his left eye, which was still agitated ever since the day of the tournament. "What more do you think there is to know? I think we get it. He's a king and pisses some people off. Big deal; what do you expect? You can't always make everyone happy."
Karim slowly dragged his hands through his hair, looking up to the ceiling as he restrained himself from losing his temper again. Hamid squirmed while still facing the ground, but wasn't quite ready to interject.
Having calmed himself, Karim threw out his arms toward Amin, as if he were pleading, doing his best to convince Amin to reevaluate the situation. "You don't go making and burning a big haystack of someone just because they piss you off. There has to be more to it. And remember, they said it's a weekly thing, don't forget that. Doesn't that make you want to know why they are all so angry?"
"Not really. I don't think there's much to it." Amin started walking to the side of the room, heading towards the door that led to the bathroom. "Just forget about it, okay?" Before he reached the door, he stopped, realising he hadn't said everything he wanted to and turned around to look at Karim. "Besides, what are you going to do if you find out whatever information you are looking for? You can't do anything about it."
Karim appeared troubled and scrunched his face. Conflicted, he said, "It doesn't matter if I can't do anything about it now. Just knowing means I might be able to do something about it in the future. It's better to know something than nothing, right?"
Amin and Karim stared at each other, a bitterness roughening the air. Neither said a word for the next few seconds, giving Hamid the opportunity to say something.
"Do you guys think…they all know?"
Both of them averted their gaze to Hamid, confused at what he had just said. "Who?"
Hamid lifted up his head, his eyes almost watering. "Ali, Hadar, Rahim, Iman…all of them. Surely they must know all about this." Hamid got off the bed and his tone became more encouraging. "Then that should mean father has done nothing wrong. They wouldn't serve him as they do if he was so terrible, you see?"
The pair looked equally flustered by Hamid's impressively intellectual observation.
"I…I don't know. Who knows, maybe they all had to go through this sort of thing," Amin stammered out.
"If so, why the hell did they not tell us? Wait," Karim desperately turned to Amin, thinking his epiphany would finally convince Amin to act. "That means they've got to be hiding something."
Amin remained defensive and assertively defiant. "It doesn't matter. Either way, we are not disobeying father's wishes again. It's too dangerous. We can't exactly walk around by ourselves anyway; someone might recognise us this time, and news of their sighting might find its way back to father. And then who knows what will happen."
Karim ran past Amin, blocking his entrance from the toilet. He wasn't angry, annoyed or forceful. He was simply so invested in finding out more, he couldn't bear letting the opportunity slip away.
"Easy. We can just wear disguises. No one will know it's us if we have a hood and different clothes on. See, there's your solution. Stop making excuses, and let's go already." As Karim said this, he leaned toward Amin and placed both of his hands on Amin's shoulders, pressing down out of sheer willpower rather than force.
"I told you, it's too danger—"
"I think we should go," Hamid intervened as he clenched his fists.
"But I thought you said there's nothing more to discover. What's the point? We would be taking a huge risk…likely for nothing."
Hamid rebutted Amin's claims. "I think we should go, not because I think there are more hideous truths about father for us to find, but because I know if we ask around we'll confirm that what those people did in that village was wrong."
Karim's face lit up. "I think we should listen to Hamid. I think we are old enough to start doing things for ourselves anyway. So stop whining like a baby and let's all go together."
Amin huffed, unable to think of anything else to convince them otherwise. He made a weird noise in annoyance and tapped his teeth with his fingernails. "Fine. But if we get caught, you two are taking the blame."
Ecstatic, Karim clapped his hands, briefly forgetting that they were supposed to keep their voices down. "Great! I'll go find some disguises!"
"This isn't something to be excited about, you idiot," Hamid scorned.
"Just don't do anything stupid…please," Amin added.
Amin and Hamid waited in their room while Karim scurried off to find their disguises, soon returning with three robes — something Karim seemed to believe was the perfect disguise.
Each robe was the wrong size. Amin and Karim's were far too long, the hoods hanging over their eyes while their arms were swallowed by the sleeves. Conversely, Hamid's was awfully tight, the robe squeezing his body tightly as he just about managed to lift the hood over his head to cover it.
"I can barely breathe," said Hamid.
"We look so stupid," Amin groaned. "Also, where did you even find these?"
Karim hesitantly spoke, scratching the back of his head as he stuttered. "Ummm…Ali's room. His door was open and I saw them…so I just took them."
Amin smacked his face with the palm of his hand as Karim smiled back at him nervously, shrugging his shoulders and hoping he wouldn't be bombarded by more insults.
"Don't you think he's going to notice his robes are missing? We are going to have to put them back as well, you idiot!"
"We can worry about that later…don't worry."
"Okay, let's hurry up and make sure we don't get caught."
The triplets snuck around the castle, doing their best not to act suspicious and avoiding being seen by as many people as possible. They held the robes instead of wearing them, conscious that someone within the Palace would be concerned if they were hiding their identities while walking through corridors of the Palace. Further and further they went from the Palace, trotting down the huge stairs and edging closer to the exit of the Inner Capital.
Upon nearing the exit, they found a place to hide around the side of a building, finally putting on their robes to cover themselves. But as they did, Amin desired to know more about Karim's plan. "So, how are we going to get out of here without being spotted? I bet you didn't even think any of this through, did you?"
Karim squinted at Amin. "Shush. Trust me, I have a plan. Just follow my lead, and everything will go perfectly."
Karim then stepped out from around the corner. Confident in his stride, he exposed himself to the people and the guards walking around the general area. As optimistic as he was, or at least acted, his plan was almost foiled within seconds. As Karim stepped out from the darkness, his robe slowly began to recede, falling off his head and revealing his identity. As a result, Karim lunged back around the corner, holding his hands over his face and crawling up into a ball, hoping that no one had seen him.
"Well, that was close. I don't think anyone saw me though," Karim whispered anxiously.
Amidst this uninspiring display of idiocy, Hamid looked down at his feet, realising that his right foot was stamping down on the back of Karim's robe. Noticing this, Karim rose to his feet and quietly berated Hamid. "Hey! What do you think you're doing dumbass? You almost blew our cover!"
"Sorry, it was an accident. I promise I didn't mean it. It's just that this robe is so tight it's kind of messing with my eyesight and, well, my ability to feel anything."
Amin chuckled, seemingly enjoying the stupidity that was unfolding in front of his eyes. "How about we just take the secret tunnel out of here instead?"
"Secret tunnel?! What secret tunnel?" the other two boys exclaimed in unison.
Holding up his index finger and leaning in closely to the other two, Amin informed them, speaking rather seriously. "I heard Iman talking about it once. I'm not sure why she would need to leave here secretly, but I heard her telling Hussein about it. At the time, I didn't see why I would care, but I guess it's pretty important now, right?"
Realising that wasting any more time could be costly, Hamid and Karim refrained from questioning Amin's sudden reveal of that information, opting to speed up their escape from the city.
"Where is it then?"
"Apparently it's somewhere in the thick bushes behind old man Fazere's home — the one he lived in before he started living in the Palace, that is. I think he still uses it to grow things or something. But anyway, its exact location should be easy to find for the three of us. I suspect there'll be some false ground to jump through. Got it?"
"Yes, let's get going," Hamid remarked.
As Amin and Hamid began to find their way to Fazere's old home, Karim stroked his chin, a baffled look forming on his face. "Hold on, Amin. If you knew about that the whole time, were you just waiting to see what I'd—"
"Yep!" Amin interjected, predicting Karim's question.
Now that Amin had taken the lead, they moved around much quicker, sieving through even the busier places at a quick pace without close calls of being caught.
Soon, they reached the bushy area they were looking for. Fortunately for them, no guards were currently patrolling nearby.
"I don't see a tunnel," Hamid observed.
"Me neither. Are you sure about this, Amin?"
Amin turned around, unable to understand how they were asking such questions. "'Secret tunnel'. It's secret for a reason. If it was that easy to find, it wouldn't be very secret, would it?"
Karim decided to ignore Amin's rant and took the initiative to begin properly looking for the tunnel's entrance. "Let's hurry up and find this thing. We can't stay out for too long, otherwise father will begin to suspect we are up to something."
The three boys slowly moved around the area, tapping the ground with every step they took. A few minutes passed and they had found nothing. While Amin and Karim remained determined to find the entrance, Hamid took a moment to relax, staring up at the beaming sun, thinking about everything that had happened recently, and what was going to come of it all. But as he did, the ground below him began to shake. Too immersed in his thinking, Hamid wasn't able to react in time, his body dropping to the floor below, taking little damage as he slammed onto the floor.
The drop was long, and it was one an ordinary human most certainly could have died from, or at the very least, broken a few bones. But Hamid was only slightly hurt, grunting as he found his way back to his feet.
As he looked up, he could hear Amin and Karim laughing as they popped their heads over the small hole Hamid had opened up on the floor, before Karim made another one of his short but sweet remarks.
"It looks like Hamid found the tunnel, then."