Rafiq al-Isfahani, "Fatwa243" is a Imbued Hunter.
Overview[]
There are few memories in Rafiq al-Isfahani's history that he'd call pleasant. The Cairo of his childhood was every bit as polluted and overcrowded as the bustling city of today. He lived between the open gray skies, filled with the smog of vehicle exhaust, and the soot-covered ground. Rafiq and his family were occasional squatters then, earning enough money to live in an apartment for a few months at a time before his father's drug addiction forced them to move. They stayed atop building rooftops, in mausoleums and even in the homes of vacationing families for days at a time before picking up. They scavenged food from piles of garbage often left exposed to the hit sun for weeks, and stole from vendors at the local bazaars. By the age of seven, Rafiq and his gang of friends would swarm tourists for money and pick their pockets. He'd also let men "touch him" for five Egyptian pounds ($2 U.S.). By 10, he was robbing graves for valuables and selling fresh cadavers to criminals who sold them to medical students at Cairo University. Rafiq might have lived and died in this miserable life, except...
Rafiq's mother, the sole anchor of his life, was dying of lung cancer thanks to Cairo's pollution, while his father spent his days and meager earnings on hashish. Knowing her son would probably perish on the streets, Rafiq's mother approached the Makram Madrassa, a small and charitable Islamic school, and pleaded with the family patriarch Sharif Makarm to care for her son. He eventually agreed and Rafiq entered the school as domestic help, where he worked by day and learned by night. It wasn't a glamorous life, and Rafiq often endured beatings for his disrespectful tongue, but he eventually accepted the Makrams as family. In turn, Sharif Makram, an ex-officer who once served with the local British army, kept Rafiq under stringent discipline while teaching him the Koran, Humanities and English.
When Rafiq was old enough, Sharif even pulled strings with friends at the British embassy to get him work. Rafiq's grasp of English became near fluent, as did his hatred for the English and Americans. All his life, he'd seen how Western tourists looked down on Arabs, how Cairo's government kowtowed to foreigners, and how outsiders plundered Egypt's rich heritage. Working at the embassy only enforced those views. Still, Rafiq stayed with the consulate because the pay was good, and he continued learning things he sometimes preferred not to.
One afternoon, an explosion rocked the embassy. The car bomb never made it past the reinforced gates, but it still shattered windows for several blocks around. Dead and dying lay strewn about the road when Rafiq arrived. Smoke drifted through the streets like a thick blanket. Surviving British soldiers fired on a man advancing toward them. Rafiq saw and heard what he still believes were the spirits of the angry dead pointing and wailing at the juggernaut. That's when Rafiq saw the hollowed-out eyes and decaying flesh of this beast. Rafiq leapt into the fray while the rot killed the last of the soldiers.
Rafiq counts his blessing from that day. The explosion knocked out the consulate's cameras and the smoke kept most witnesses from seeing the battle. Those who did witness it appeared to suffer from an odd amnesia, leaving Rafiq's actions a secret. He also explained his injuries away as a result of the explosion, though his emergence into the hunter community forced him to quit the British consulate for fear that his nature would eventually be uncovered.
Since that time, Rafiq, as Fatwa243, had become instrumental in local efforts against the akhira. His adopted father had already taught him to fight, and even now it takes little coaxing from Rafiq to convince the old veteran to regale him with war stories. Rafiq learns many lessons in this fashion, and what he can't learn covertly he asks his friends in the Muslim Brotherhood. Meanwhile, Rafiq often enjoys the patronage of rich kiswah who hire him to train them or help deal with daunting monsters. In this manner, Rafiq becomes increasingly familiar with the Middle East's black-market trade.
References[]
- HTR: Hunter: Holy War, p. 2, 21, 28, 31, 54, 60, 65, 68, 79-80, 117-118