October 30 - The Sultan

A pale sliver of a moon hung over the desert of central Turkey as the Bedouin tour operators stirred the campfire and the tourists showed each other pictures on their digital cameras.
Jake and Barbara borrowed a headlamp from one of the other couples and went to the bathroom--a scrub brush about 150 feet away from the camp.
The night was still, the silence absolute. The sky was an infinite black dome, with the desert air cool, bordering on cold.
Barbara squatted behind the brush and Jake stood guard. When she was finished, he gave her the headlamp and they switched roles.
Before going back to the camp, they stopped for a moment to take in the endless black silence.
Just as they were heading back to the camp, the ground near the brush moved. They stopped and listened.
Then it moved again.
They turned around to look at where the sound was coming from, and the light from the headlamp caught something emerging from the sand and silt. It was a swirl of dust, a small but growing tornado of sand and dirt. Jake and Barbara's knees locked in place and they couldn't move. The twister grew in size until it was 10 feet tall, and then it made its way over to Barbara and Jake. For a few moments, it whirred silently in front of them, as if it were sizing them up.
And then it spoke. It sounded like Arabic being spoken in a raspy female voice.
If Barbara had been thinking rationally, she would have thought the idea of replying to a talking tornado was patently absurd, but in her shock she simply responded to it (her?) as if it was a perfectly normal thing to do.
"Sorry, we didn't catch that. Could you say it again?"
The tornado spoke again, more urgently, but Barbara and Jake looked at each other and shrugged. They couldn't understand a word of what she had said.
"Sorry, but do you speak English?"
The tornado shifted slightly, as if in thought.
"Who does want to knowing?" The words were booming but hesitant.
Barbara and Jake looked at each other. Jake nodded at her to go ahead.
"I'm Barbara. This is my boyfriend, Jake."
The whirling column of sand and dirt grew slightly in stature and spoke again in a louder, more assured voice.
"I am name is Sultan Jeren Abdulrahman of the Turkey."
They waited for her to continue, but she just continued to whir in front of them silently.
Barbara and Jake shared a bewildered glance and a small shrug.
"Sorry, but what are you? Are you some kind of--"she searched for the right word, not wanting to offend her, "--ghost?"
"You are do not knowing my name?"
Oh, shit. "No, it's not that. It's--"
"I am not a ghost."
"Of course not. We didn't mean to imply--"
"I am a witch."
"A wi--"
"I am name is Sultan Jeren Abdulrahman of Turkey. Do you really not knowing me?"
She was clearly becoming agitated.
"I'm sorry. I--we--"
"I am the Great Turkey Sand Witch!"
At this, the tension broke. Barbara and Jake couldn't help themselves. They burst into laughter. The Great Turkey Sand Witch waited, not impatiently, for them to stop laughing.
"Why does your kind always laughing at the moment I speak this?"
And then Barbara explained to her that what she called herself sounded exactly like turkey sandwich. And when she still didn't get it, Barbara explained what a sandwich was.
"I see," she said. "Like a doner kebab?"
"Kind of, yeah."
She thanked Barbara and Jake for their help, and then she unceremoniously ate them both.
And in her last conscious thought on the planet, Barbara, whose favorite meal in the world was leftover sandwiches the day after Thanksgiving, thought about how ironic it was to have met her demise by being eaten by a Turkey Sand Witch