My family and I have fled to this place from our tribe which live in the plateaux mountains of Kha'zeel. We have falsely been accused of breaking one of our tribe's most sacred traditions: a willing adoption and fraternization with the ways and people of the city. It is a miserable affair for it is the two face Simaal who has started these rumors of us wanting to live in buildings made of wood and stone and that we are asking for missionaries to come from not just Ankrahmun but from the cooler towns in the north to teach us the ways of agriculture. He says our motive is a weakness of spirit where we would prefer the comforts of civilization over the freedom the desert affords and that he implies we by welcoming the missionaries seek to aggrandize ourselves. Well I have the last laugh, and a scoff it is, for the real motive is that he himself asked for my daughter's hand, whereafter I asked my daughter who went to tell him herself only when there is a day with cloud south of the Kha'zeel, a smarting slap. And so the lizard that he is pushed upon our name the sin he most craves himself, the want of comforted material and a limp life. 

...Our hideout is so clever. From both deserts, Darashia and Kha'labal, people journey over the mountains to the other, sometimes large caravans and sometimes small bands of merchants and even others only a lonely traveler... We waylay every traveler that passes through if only it seems it will go off with no injury to ourselves. And then up we go, stealing through the crags of the high cliffs to get to our hiding place. And since Afel says I may tell no living man I will write our secret here as this soul clearly qualifies... Low in the mountain, if one comes across a vault of stone next rubble where sand mixes with rocks one only need to pick up a small stone and throw it at the southern face of this vault and suddenly a sound will ring out to us above and quickly we will cast down a ladder for our comrades. And then as soon as he is up so we will haul back the ladder and no one will ever know of our retreat.

This old fool. Before the start of this last new moon we were hiding behind the Khudari Dunes, and who would come by en route to the Darashian Pass but this merchant with swollen belly and a face without whisker. It is enough that we will stop anyone that looks beyond a beggar but what a fool to be in the Kha'labal, without guard, in vestments of silks and fine linens, a turban which hath its clasp set with a ruby, filigreed shoes, and red streaked robes. He may as well been in trade of insurance as much as any other. We slew his camels and took him south here to our hideout, he so far has been compliant and not raised much as a fuss. We have added his wares and goods to our cache and now our telling, via a courier which we will provide, that he write a letter for his ransom. We are fair, we ask only for half his fortune. He actually has tried to barter with us lower, so we took his finger. There has been no barter since then; he said in his younger days he would have given us nothing, but in his old age he prizes the time to see his grandchildren, which our yet to reach his waist, more than any coin of silver or gold. So indeed he seems wiser than most we have captured, and he says he ultimately holds little against us having said we simply have chosen a more periolous and less lucrative trade, and therefore pity is his first thought, ending with he respects at least our discipline compared to the average bandit that has accosted him. 

They still haven't arrived, time is running out, the food rations, the water, everything is gone!! My companions no longer want to stay, we lost one in the night watch, we only found his shoes. We found a rat trapped between the walls and we decided to eat it. We won't leave without you my love.