The goat blood kept me alive, and surrounded by livestock saved me from hypothermia, but I still didn't know where the truck was taking me. It's almost dawn, I could make out a dark path to my left, like a river.
"You're lost! You need to stop and find your bearing." the voice told me.
I shifted to the back of the truck, taking the dead goat with me, it maybe my only source of food for the next few days. I pushed the heavy goat over the tailgate, then climbed over, hanging myself as low as possible, until my feet dragging dirt. I let go and rolled to break my fall, leaving the truck and its goats running into the night.
I ran to the river, so thirsty I dipped my face into the cold water and swallowed, making up the fluid I lost. By now the sun was nearly up and I could see the surrounding, but there was nothing but flat land.
I washed my face to find clarity, splashing water over my head, then I spotted something.
With my hands cupping the water my arms came together, a line twisting diagonally from under my left wrist to my right elbow. Somewhere in the middle marked English writing "MSL"
There was a black blob under my left wrist, just below the two slashed scars, next to it written "1BWY", and then under my right wrist scars written "2LSH"
"It's a map!" I gasped.
The sun was rising from the end of the river, making it an east-west flow. I tried to study the tattoos, I must been taking down notes, something cannot be forget, then I remembered the voice.
You need to get the package! You need to deliver it to Azzam!
"It's an itinerary!" I thought out loud.
If this is a map, "MSL" would no doubt be Mosul, and I must first go to Bandwaya, then Lalish.
Names of locations began coming back to me, images of a map, numbers of a coordinate, wreckage of a plane, crying of a child...
Suddenly I was hit by a splitting headache, like the one I experienced in the hospital, so painful it knocked me to the ground. I cried in agony, so painful I wanted to tear my face off so as to free the throbbing pain in my head.
I rolled on the dry earth, panting hard, closed my only functional eye and trying to ease the pain away. I kept still, taking long breaths, until I could open my eye again.
I began to prepare for the distance I needed to travel. I couldn't carry the goat with me, it would be dead weight. I picked up a sharp rock, cut it open and ate the liver, the most nutritionally dense part of an animal.
I then skinned it, wrapped part of the goat skin to protect my barefoot, and then threw the big piece over my head, shielding me from the blazing hot sun.
"Bandwaya, here I come!"