Saying Sorry
From my Fullmetal Alchemist WIP about the restoration of Ishval
Prologue to my WIP, which starts after the end of the manga:1
Four corporals, a practical joke, and misunderstandings.
The tavern/cafe served the growing military encampment, the Ishvalan herders who sold goats and sheep to Food Services, and the Amestrian eastern farmers who sold their produce to Food Services.
Like everything that wasn’t actually in the city center, it was a tent, but this one was not military issue. It was made of wool, not canvas, and the seating area, which could accommodate as many people as the Mess tent, was a rectangular area under a canopy that jutted out from the main tent. The short sides of the rectangle had stone walls made of rubble salvaged from the ruins, that came up to about waist high on a man, and the long side of the rectangle away from the tent was completely open.
The set up of the establishment was an odd compromise, catering to both Amestrians and Ishvalans. It had no seating on the ground – all the tables and chairs were Amestrian height – but the tables all had the inset shallow dish for sand. The Amestrian traders from the countryside ignored the dish, making their own sign of gratitude before eating, but the Amestrian soldiers had all taken up the Ishvalan custom of touching sand and forehead when they muttered their “Thank you for this food.”
Corporals Caesar Carcano and Raj Ishapore both walked into the tavern at around five for an early supper. The place wouldn’t get crowded until after sundown, when the heat of the day started turning to the cool, and then the chill, of the night. They both worked in the main field office tent, Carcano planning and ordering supplies, Ishapore taking care of comm and clerical duties. One of the sons of the proprietor came out from behind the bar to their table to get their orders.
“Do you have anything that doesn’t have goat or mutton in it?” asked Raj. It was nice to get away from the Mess tent from time to time, but it would be nice to get away from the sameness of the food as well.
Caesar sat with his head on his arms on the table, eyes closed. It had been a wearying day, as usual, but he liked being with a familiar person in a familiar place. “I’ll have bread and cheese and olives,” he ordered, neither moving nor looking up.
“We have figs, too, sir,” the waiter told Carcano, then told Ishapore, “Sorry, sir. If you want something with meat, all we have is goat. We’ll be getting some chicken in later this week, though.”
“Then I’ll have the same as Caesar,” Raj responded. “With the figs and beer.”
“Figs and tea with mine,” Caesar spoke up, head still resting on the table. Out under the canopy, with a light breeze blowing, the spices from the cooking were diluted enough to be pleasant rather than overwhelming. It also blocked enough of the sun that it wasn’t too bright. And the other people there were speaking quietly enough to be reassuring rather than intrusive. Enough of everything but not too much of anything. He felt the tension of the day slipping away.
When the waiter brought the food, Caesar sat up and said, “Sorry for before.” Even though the waiter knew him, he still apologized automatically because it was rude not to sit up when someone talked to you. “Thanks. This looks great.”
“The olives are from the southern river region of Aerugo,” the waiter said, who was accustomed to the odd way this soldier often ordered. Then followed the detailed discussion about olives that the waiter had been only too happy to spark with him. If it was something Carcano had to supply, he made a point of knowing everything about it. Raj sat there, content to smoke and people watch while the conversation between Caesar and the waiter droned on beside him. Then he noticed an impatience creep into the waiter’s tone and saw that more customers had entered under the canopy.
“Switch gears,” said Raj, when he saw Caesar hadn’t noticed the waiter needed to go and the waiter wasn’t going to say anything. Caesar dipped his head slightly to the waiter. “Thanks again,” he said, and took a sip of his tea, tapping the table soundlessly with his other hand.
They had finished eating when Corporals Antoine Lebel and Kaufman Mauser came in, straight from supper in the Mess tent, and headed over to their table.
“Oh, good,” said Antoine. “You guys are still here.” Kaufman sat down at the table, while Antoine went over to the bar and brought back a pitcher of beer and two glasses. A moment later, the waiter from before followed up with a basket of sliced bread and a carafe of herbed olive oil.
Across from the soldiers, in one of the two corners made where the stone wall met the tent, sat an Ishvalan minor cleric at a small table, dipping bread in herbed olive oil and drinking tea. His full beard and mustache in the usual Ishvalan white made him look older than his thirty-some years. The dish of sand inset on his table was square, like the table itself, and from time to time someone would come up to it, touch sand and forehead, and sit down with him for awhile.
“What a dive!” complained a man, in a group of several well-dressed city Amestrians that entered the tavern. They were part of the newest type of clientele the tavern had been starting to get, since the Ishvalan Calling had been convened a couple of weeks ago. They seated themselves around a rectangular table for eight people. The proprietor himself came out to serve them.
It wasn’t the first time the establishment had seen this particular group.
Raj gave Antoine and Kaufman a look that they both recognized. Then he flapped his hand at Caesar, trying to convince him this was going to be fun, but Caesar didn’t believe him and shook his head. It made no difference, of course.
“Want to head out?” Antoine asked him, seeing the exchange, but Caesar shook his head again. He was on full alert. Raj usually got away with his stunts and sometimes Caesar even thought they were funny himself, after the fact. But that didn’t keep him from expecting the worst while he was in the middle of one.
Raj didn’t look Ishvalan. His hair was pulled up and tied at the top of his head at the back, like Major Miles’, but it was oiled and black, not white. His neat mustache was also oiled and curled up slightly at the ends, which was not a way he’d ever seen Ishvalan men wear a mustache, but its black color, and that of the short, square beard that connected with it, did not, in itself, show he was not Ishvalan. A small minority of them had mustaches and beards that grew in black, at least until they turned white in young adulthood at the latest. And his skin color was only a shade or two darker than the typical Ishvalan dark skin, nowhere near as black as Lebel’s.
So. A white bandana to cover his hair. Caesar’s round shaded glasses, which he wasn’t wearing this late in the day, to cover his eyes. Uniform shirt and jacket off, showing only the black t-shirt underneath. Lower uniform cape off and white desert coat on to cover the blue pants. And the coup de grace – a striped sash that he’d bought a while back. The desert boots stayed on. Lebel and Mauser stood and blocked him from view while Ishapore transformed himself into a very bad semblance of an Ishvalan.
Raj stubbed out his cigarette and set it on the tabletop. He knocked the ashes out onto a napkin, then used another napkin to wipe out most of the ash that still clung to the ashtray. Finally, he scooped some of the sand from the inset dish on their table into the ashtray.
Then he walked up to the obnoxious diners.
“You idiots think I’m Ishvalan, don’t you?” he said in perfect Ishvalan. The Ishvalan herders at the bar snickered. The minor cleric’s mouth twitched. They’d seen this act before.
“Sir,” said one of the men. “You honor us. Would you like a seat?”
“I thank you,” answered Raj, in a parody of what the Ishvalan accent sounded like to Amestrians who were unacquainted with the real thing. “I saw that the sand was contaminated by some bloody soldiers earlier,” he continued, and added the sand from the ashtray to the inset dish. “If you wish to cleanse yourself, you should use this.”
The people at the table, after making noises of polite disgust at being ‘contaminated’, followed Raj’s lead at introducing themselves and touching sand and forehead. After spending a few moments at the table, Raj excused himself – “I have some important rites to perform,” – and headed out from under the canopy.
Standing by the side of the tent, out of view of the canopy seating area, he put the striped sash and white head scarf in the pocket of his desert coat. He removed Caesar’s glasses, and draped the desert coat over his arm and the hand holding the glasses. And met Lebel, who blocked him from view by the obnoxious table as he went back to the table where Mauser and Carcano still sat. He set Caesar’s glasses on the table in front of him and put his uniform shirt, jacket and lower cape back on. He swept his stubbed out cigarette and the ashes from the napkin back into the ashtray. And then he poured a beer into his glass from the pitcher and sat back to admire his work.
The insults from the table, which had earlier led to stony silence from the soldiers in the room, were now met by an undercurrent of snickers, chuckling, and the occasional beer glass raised in toast, “Hear! Hear!”
Caesar went off high alert and headed for the bar to order another pitcher of beer, including a glass for himself this time. He stood there, jiggling his leg and staring, unfocused, into the flames of the lanterns that were being lit, as the sky darkened into dusk. “More bread and oil, too, please,” he asked the barkeep, without focusing his eyes.
When he was back at the table, the owner’s son delivered another basket of bread and another carafe of herbed olive oil. “And something on the house for Mr. Raj,” he said, taking something wrapped in a cloth napkin out of the bread basket. Raj unwrapped it to see a small honey-nut pastry. Caesar swayed back and forth in his chair, between the table and the chair back, starting to feel relaxed again. He had to admit, Raj’s joke had brought the tension in the tavern caused by the rude guests way down.
When the group left, the establishment was full, so another group, this time of Ishvalans, including a cleric, headed straight for the table. The minor cleric in the corner caught the eye of the cleric in the new group, but Caesar didn’t see that. He just knew an actual Ishvalan cleric shouldn’t touch that sand. He knocked the chair aside that blocked the end of the table and pulled hard on the inset dish. It came loose and crashed to the ground, breaking into several pieces, and spreading sand on the dirt-packed floor.
Raj immediately ran over to stand next to Caesar’s side. “The sand was contaminated,” he said in Ishvalan, and held up his hands.
Caesar, seeing Raj there, hands raised, held up his own hands. Raj thinks that looked like an attack, he thought. Make friendly eye contact. Apologize. Make friendly talk. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s going to be a beautiful evening, isn’t it?”
By that time, the proprietor and his sons were out, the sons cleaning up the mess. The proprietor, Raj, and the minor cleric all spoke to the newcomers in Ishvalan and everyone seemed to settle down. Caesar was still standing off to the side, at his modified version of parade rest with eyes down. Raj went over to him and keeping his own eyes lowered, muttered, “Back to the table, Caesar.”
Caesar was angry. When they were back at the table, he stared into Raj’s eyes without blinking. “We have to pay for that,” he said. “Go find out how much it was.” His voice was calm, as always, but he knew that if avoiding eye contact made people think he was guilty of something, this kind of staring made them feel threatened. The rest of his body was also, uncharacteristically, completely still.
“Caesar –,” Antoine started to say, but Raj cut him off.
“He’s right. I’m going.”
When he got back to the table, he had grim news. “The minor cleric already paid for us. Instead of paying for the damage, he wants us to make a sacrifice of the money according to our own religion to show we’re sorry.”
“A sacrifice?” said Antoine, grimacing. “How much?”
“10,000 centz.”
“That makes an even 2,500 centz each,” said Kaufman. “We can’t just drop this off at some roadside shrine to Ishvala?”
“He said according to our own religion. Are you converting, Kaufman?” asked Carcano, staring.
“I’m paying Caesar’s part,” said Raj. “He tried to stop me.”
Carcano was still motionless and stared at Raj again. When he pulled the 2,500 centz from his wallet, Raj took it.
“Caesar, I only have coins,” said Antoine. “You can give me paper bills for them, right?”
Carcano, still motionless and silent, traded the bills for Antoine’s coins.
“Raj,” said Caesar, “go get a clean ashtray.”
When he got back, Caesar put the paper bills in the ashtray, chanted some words, and set them on fire with Raj’s cigarette lighter.
Someone had run to get Lieutenant Havoc when the dish had broken and he was sitting with the minor cleric, watching. When Carcano lit the bills in the ashtray, the minor cleric started to stand up, but Havoc put a hand on his shoulder and he sat down again. The other Ishvalans, confused, also looked over toward Havoc, who sat there calmly, watching everything and clearly undisturbed.
There was some soft snickering from the Amestrian farmers, and some soft muttering among the other soldiers, as some of them explained what the fire in the ashtray was about to the minority of the soldiers who weren’t from the eastern countryside.
“What are they doing? I already paid…”
“You told them to make a sacrifice of the money, didn’t you?” said Havoc.
“Well, yes,” said the minor cleric. “I thought they’d just contribute the money to a shrine somewhere.”
“But you didn’t say that. You must have told them to follow their own religion. Otherwise, I’m sure that’s what they would have done. Drop the money in the box at one of the Ishvalan shrines around here.”
“Uh, yes. That’s exactly what I said. I wanted them to make a sacrifice of the money according to their own religion to show they’re sorry.”
“To show they’re sorry?” At that, Jean had to cover his mouth to cover his own snicker. “You couldn’t have said for penance or something like that? You had to say ‘to show they’re sorry’?”
Caesar sent Raj to the bar again for a glass of water. Then he sprinkled a few drops over the ashes, just enough to cool them down and moisten them. Raj was first to pick up some of the ashes and rub them on the middle of his forehead in a vertical line from about an inch below his hairline to about an inch above it into his hair. Then Antoine and Kaufman also followed suit, ending with Carcano.
“They’re marking themselves with ashes?” said the minor cleric. “I didn’t mean… So if I’d asked for penance, they wouldn’t have had to…?”
“Oh, they’d still have had to do that,” said Jean. “It’s just that where I come from, burning money or a toy as a sacrifice to one of our gods is something you have kids do to say they’re sorry.”
“Oh,” said the minor cleric. “Then it’s not something that adults do? I wasn’t trying to humiliate them. How long do they have to wear the ashes?”
“Oh, adults do that, all right. It was just your wording that was kind of… harsh.” At that, he bit his lower lip to stop another snicker. “But then, they were acting childish, so it kinda fits.”
“How long…?”
“Oh, just 24 hours. They can wash them off this time tomorrow, if they haven’t already worn off.”
Meanwhile, a soldier approached him at the table. Havoc addressed him. “Corporal?”
Ishapore came to attention and saluted. Havoc returned the salute. “So, since you’re the errand boy, I assume that was all your idea?”
“Yes, sir. I respectfully request…”
“That’s enough. I’m not as strict as Carcano. I think following the cleric’s directions was good enough.”
Raj sighed in relief. “Thank you, sir.”
“Ishapore?”
“Yes, sir?”
“None of my men are hotheads, you four least of all. I’m not looking to discipline any of you, but I do want to know how that happened.” At Ishapore’s look, Jean hurriedly added, “No, not now. Schedule some time with me in the next week. All four of you together. Now go get Carcano out of here. He’s so still, it’s scary.”
In 1908, roughly 3 out every 4 Ishvalans in Amestris were killed in the Extermination campaign ordered by Fuhrer King Bradley, or about 400,000 people.
In 1915, Fuhrer King Bradley was killed, and replaced by Lt Gen Grumman as Fuhrer. Shortly thereafter, he passed the Ishvalan Restoration Act, to restore Ishval and return there whoever wished to of those who had survived the Extermination campaign.
The man put in charge, Brigadier General Roy Mustang, was personally responsible for 1 out of 3 of all Ishvalans killed. Two other members of his team had also killed in that campaign, but not being capable of the same kind of mass destruction, were responsible for only hundreds of deaths each, not over a hundred thousand. The sniper, Captain Riza Hawkeye, he kept with him as his adjutant. The foot soldier, Second Lieutenant Jean Havoc, he put in charge of a company of volunteers to help with the restoration of Ishval, who would become known as the blood soldiers.