It is a novel for terrorism haters in the world, to read it, to abnegate and abolish Islamists or any other terror mongers to have a peace in our beautiful planet and to save earth from possible atomic Armageddon.
short summary:
The title of my novel Clouded Crescent does not mean that crescent as symbolized by some as Muslim world is hazy nowadays and contrarily cross is glittering, as it not written against any religion deliberately.
What I have tried to depict is the social cum religious circumstances that has become the breeding ground of Muslim radicals in some countries like Pakistan, who are fanning terrorisms world over through inter-connected stories of my saga of Basher. In brief the story is as follows:-

The novel depicts the tale of a minion’s son, who wanted to lead a life of upright person, but destiny fails him in his endeavors for it and at each step of his tryst of fate, he falls into the trap of evil forces. . The feudal lords son implicates him in false case at a fray on the issue of trivial issue of inclusion of religious subjects at an engineering institute, which leads him to a rigorous sentence at a reformatory in Pakistan. The hero, who has a character of more of heroics than wisdom, escapes from prison, finds himself at a made up shrine, which is in control of a woman, who takes advantage of a sanctity of a made up saint to cater the needs of local bandits. A high flood in the river saves him, as he tries to fights wickedness in his way, but fails as his old friend draws him towards an orthodox version of Islam and brain washes him to become a similar adherent that ushers him towards radicalism. The strict code of seclusion of woman at Mullah’s house, not only through veil, but total shunning of them from outsiders, depicted in the tale of man of victim of circumstances, who has to run on the dictate of others forced by the unexpected situation encountered by him.
The friend sends him to a seminary, which was a recruiting center of Taliban fighter in the guise of a religious school. A drug baron, who is supporting the insurgents as well, dispatches him to Taliban training center, where he rebels, they order for his execution due to his weak conviction, however the same drug mafia chief saves him, along with a Yemeni boy, with whom the hero has a gay relation in the course of terror training. The drug baron then sends him with an illicit cargo to another large narcotics smuggler at Lahore. The hero with his Yemeni pal, son of a wealthy Arab, goes to Yemen with contraband heroin and successfully delivers it to his contact at Saudi Arabian border and Yemeni ditches him in his home country. Romance also thrown in between the saga of Pakistani rebel of disruptive forces that are playing with common person’s inspiration of the country.
In the second section of the book, the hero assigned the job of gunrunner and drug smuggler to India and it describes the sway of such trade between two warring nations as no well-guarded boundary can check such nefarious activities. The Mao insurgents of India shown as rebels with different cause, however allied to religious terror groups of Pakistan. To check the conversation of tribal into Christianity, Hindu religious schools have emerged in some regions and the hero finds one to his hazard. At the time of 9/11, the hero escapes from India through Nepal after a little drama well depicted.
He encounters the tragedy of finding his sister as hooker at a marriage dance, disheartened, his destiny takes him to fight US forces in Afghanistan along with Al-Qaeda in the 3rd part of the novel. Vivid description of a battle of Tora Bora with the escape of Osama Bin Laden from the caves, described as observed by the hero of the novel. His capture and release from the Bay prison with his tete-a- tete with a kind US lady sergeant also focused on.

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The hero sent to prison after his release from bay prison, where a mafia man tries to kill him by bomb. He escapes and two sleuths from CIA and Pakistani intelligence contacts him to act as their informer amid Al-Qaeda. In the last chapter hero finds out a plan to steal an atomic bomb from a well guarded base in Pakistan, through his acumen he nips in bud the disastrous scheme of terrorist with help of American agencies –a la James Bond style, but dissimilar to it.

“You belong to which city. Narrate your report for us at your pleasure and also please us with it, not harass by harangues.”
Zakir meanwhile interrupted Basher on the on going conversation, instead told the boy, who went to USA and held a conservative Muslim view of that country,
“Why to blame America for all our woes .We the Muslims and our rulers are ignorant and west is ruling over us due to that fact. Look what happened to oil money, there is no skill force to run our industries in the Arab lands and moreover the armies of Muslim world are dependent on western arms and their morale is low, hence Israel is ruling over the Middle East, isn’t this true ”.
“It is utterly a false statement. America is our number one enemy, it is creating rift among us to get full advantage of our inner conflicts, and unless we all take arms against that devil there is no deliverance of our all miseries, you note one day United States and its allies will attack Arab countries to capture oil bearing areas in it.”
Retorted the Lahore trainee to Zakir, a devoted Taliban doctrine adherent as he was.
Basher then tried to sidetrack the heated discussion by asking the other trainee to tell their tale of induction in the Taliban camps.
“Well, I am from Hyderabad, Sindh province, and my father was a doctor and he married a girl from the other tribe of southern Pakistan despite the strong resistance from bride’s father and her family. After their consummation they heard the threat of their murder by their kin, as senior elders of that tribe declared them as “Karo-Kari”, which means that they had committed the crime of adultery by marrying against the wishes of their tribe and parents, and their that ultimatum forced my father and mother to escape to Dubai from our home. Later on I was born, my mother desperately wanted to see his father and mother at their village in Sindh, where they had lived earlier. Then my father allowed her to go alone to that place and when she reached her parent’s village her brothers to avenge her marriage to another tribesman against their wishes and consents, they murdered my mother. Devastated by that occurrence, father then married another woman, went abroad, and left me in an orphanage, as I was a bad omen to him due to my mother’s death in that brutal manner. Due to the tragedy to my superstitious father , my up bringing was in a seminary orphanage.”
The loud call from prayer leader suddenly interrupted the narration of that Taliban fighter and all the trainees went to say their noon prayers.
When night fell, Basher went to sleep with his roommates and he was feeling elated and ecstatic on that festival day. Zaki-Al Yemeni was always very chummy with him and Basher suspected that he was not straight a boy. Moreover, when he came very close to his body while he was sleeping in the night, and started cuddling him and after that sensuous touch by him, Basher was aroused and afterwards he buggered him and went to sleep pushing Zaki to his place to avoid roommates suspicion.
“The sky is red, earth is trembling like a seesaw, and his native village is sinking fast. His father, mother, brothers, and sisters are sinking down into the earth. There was no help from anywhere as Solomon has gone from Sodom.”
After Basher saw that hallucination, he suddenly woke up in the dead of night, wondered about that dreadful dream, and then he conjectured that the reverie was not a bad omen for him like past ones and fell to sleep again.
They woke up very early before the break of dawn and was surprised to see though it was still dusky all around, that Zakir who was in the their room for that night had vanished away from that place and other two central Asian boys were still sleeping on at their spaces of cave floor. After their night revelry, Basher and Zaki Al-Yemeni, went straight to hot spring to have a compulsory bath as per their tenets, it was compelling after any sexual intercourse by a Muslim man or women, and it was mandatory for them to prepare for their morning prayers.
To their surprise, a Taliban man of camp commandant rushed towards them with an order for them to appear before the chief of camp, when they were wearing clean clothes after their ritual bath. The camp commandant was very angry, blasted them with charges of conspiracy, connivance with infidels and recklessness towards their duty, and blamed them for their immorality as well in his pious premises. He ordered them that their punishment for their evil doings was their immediate execution by the firing squad under his control. Moreover, he asked them to dig their own graves for their disposal in the earth, as he would not allow any funeral for the sinners who were already doomed to hell.
He further ordered that firing squad had to kill them at their self-dug grave; their death penalty had to put into action in front of everyone before noon of that day so that all terror trainees had to learn a lesson from that punitive lynching of infidels. The chief was in such furious mood that both of them remained silent and dared not plead the ruthless Chief, to grant them any mercy. A Taliban took them to a site where they would be put to death, gave them spades, asked them to dig their own graves in hard stony ground for their instant burial from the shooting of Taliban guards.





Razor’s Edge.



A large crowd of Taliban trainees as well as their other ranks had assembled at the shooting site to watch the execution of Sheriff Alias Basher and his pal Zaki Al-Yemeni by the firing squad of Taliban. The ground for their disposal was hard to work with spades; hence, the guards provided them crowbars to dig their own graves. After some digging, the two condemned persons were shivering and perspiring profusely despite the cold weather of high mountains as the excavating implement broke down due hard stones in the earth for their interment, for hoeing their graves to required depth to keep their dead body’s stench away.
Mercifully, a Taliban blasting expert came with explosives to blast out the stone boulders from their gravesite to the ease their job. He capped the explosives on the boulders that were obstructing their grave digging, after fore warning bystanders to keep a safe distance from the blasted splinters falling zone, blew it with a bang. When the dynamite blasted a cloud of dust and stone flew in that area, some pebbles also hitting Basher and Zaki, however they were not badly hurt, but sat down to recover from the shock of explosive blast very near to their still breathing bodies.
The slackening steps of their sitting down on the ground, made the Taliban guards furious and after giving them some thrashing