The plains of Mesopotamia stretched endlessly beneath a pale, unrelenting
sun. The air carried the scent of dust, dried reeds, and something older,
something almost alive—the memory of a civilization that had shaped the very
idea of writing, law, and devotion. Rana stood among broken pillars and
crumbling ziggurats, feeling the weight of thousands of years pressing against
him.
Clay tablets lay scattered like fallen leaves, each etched with symbols—
prayers, offerings, records of kings, and daily transactions. Some were
cracked, others almost perfectly preserved. He knelt and traced a finger over
one tablet, feeling the grooves carved by hands long dead. The words
themselves seemed to hum faintly under his touch, a vibration of human hope,
fear, and longing.
Rana's notebook lay open beside him. He copied symbols and scribbled
impressions:Rain. Peace. Harvest. Life. Yet results uncertain.
He realized the first lesson the Sumerians offered: devotion alone does not
guarantee outcomes. The divine influence was subtle, hidden in human effort,
persistence, and reflection. Prayers were not commands to the gods—they
were mirrors of the human spirit.
The Silence of the Ruins
As he explored deeper, Rana felt a strange quiet. The ruins were not merely
abandoned—they were listening. Shadows stretched unnaturally across walls,
as if aware of his presence. He saw a fragment of a tablet with a spiral carved
into it, faint and almost imperceptible. His heart quickened. The symbol was
familiar—it had appeared in his dreams, in the manuscript at home, and now
here, etched thousands of years ago.
That night, in a makeshift camp near the ruins, Rana slept beneath the stars.
The wind whispered through broken columns, carrying with it fragments of
chanting he could almost hear—voices of priests and scribes long dead. In his
dream, a small child appeared again, holding a clay tablet. The spiral glowed
faintly, and the child spoke, a voice like rustling paper:
"Look not for answers. Look for the path you carve."
He awoke with the imprint of the spiral burned faintly into his palm. Was it a
dream? Or had the Sumerian ruins left a message across time?
Visions of the Past
Rana began to walk among the ruins as if guided by an unseen hand. At
twilight, he imagined the city in its prime: streets bustling with merchants,
priests chanting in the temples, children running barefoot, scribes hammering
clay tablets into soft perfection. He could hear the echo of their lives—
frustrations, joys, hopes—and realized that the divine was never absent. It
manifested in human action, in the striving, in the persistent attempts to
understand and influence the world.
One strange evening, as the sun bled into the horizon, Rana thought he saw
movement among the ruins. Shadows of figures walking in patterns, their forms
shimmering. Were they hallucinations, echoes of the past, or something else? A
low chant seemed to emanate from the ground, rising and falling like wind
through reeds. He knelt, placing his palm on a stone, and felt a pulse, faint but
real.
It was as though the ruins themselves were alive, speaking in silence.
The Tablets Speak
He spent days cataloging the tablets he could access, each one a fragment of
humanity's earliest attempts to reach the divine. Many asked for rain or peace,
others for vengeance, wealth, or longevity. The outcomes were often
The Vanishing Divine
disappointing: floods came when no one prayed, wars erupted despite
offerings. Yet Rana noticed patterns—prayers accompanied by human effort
yielded results; those left to hope alone did not.
He realized the essential truth: the divine effect is inseparable from human
action and awareness. God was not a distant controller but an energy reflected
in human striving, persistence, and moral choice.
Mystery and the Spiral
On the last night, as he prepared to leave, Rana noticed something
extraordinary. In the light of a dying fire, a cluster of clay fragments formed a
pattern—a spiral embedded in the arrangement. It was the same symbol he had
seen in dreams, manuscripts, and now again in the Sumerian ruins. The spiral
seemed to whisper: "Follow the pursuit, and you shall see."
Rana traced it with his finger, feeling warmth, as if the tablet itself recognized
him. For the first time, he understood that history, civilization, and devotion
were not static lessons—they were invitations. Invitations to seek, reflect, act,
and understand. The path was not written—it had to be walked.
As he lay beneath the stars that night, he thought of the child, the spiral, and
the wind whispering through the ruins. Perhaps God had never been absent.
Perhaps God had always been here—in human effort, in reflection, in the quiet
persistence of those who sought.
And yet… a whisper lingered in the wind, faint but insistent:
"The journey has only begun."