KeYnNamM ~ English Version

Prologue

The emperor's field captain sized up the man in front of him, whom two sergeants had dragged into the tent. His face was sunken and his hair stuck to his head, encrusted with blood. His body was emaciated and his loose shirt was so tattered that it threatened to slip off his shoulders. He had his hands tied behind his back and his blood-encrusted feet were shackled. He looked like a dead man who had been forgotten to be buried. But his blue-gray eyes belied this impression. The man glared at the field captain for a moment and then scanned the tent looking for a way to escape.
The field captain shook his head in wonder, then asked sharply, "So you're the one people call King of No-One's-Land? So, you are the one people call Amestan, Protector of the people of Wadi Draa? They also call you KeYnNamM, King-Without-Name, the people living the River Draa, the Wadi Draa that arises from its fountainhead in the snow-covered mountains of the north, makes its way in a great arc into the deserts in the south, seeps away there in the sand, then springs up again from the desert sands to give life to an oasis, seeps away again and springs up once more, seeps away and emerges an infinite number of times, to finally disappear underground for good?"
But the man did not answer. His gray-blue eyes stared over the captain's head into the distance. "Say, man, are you the King of Draa, the King of No-One’s-Land. Say what is your real name? What does KeYnNamM mean in the words of civilized people? Does it really mean King-Without-Name??

The governor calls you a rebel, an enemy of the Empire, one who denies the Emperor the right of tribute!" The field captain paused for a moment and then rose. He towered over the captured by almost a head and had the muscles of a prize wrestler. His face, however, and especially his eyes, betrayed shrewdness. He looked the shackled in the eye. "You value tradition, I am told. Then why do you deny the Emperor the tribute payments due to him under the treaty with your forefathers?"
When the man did not answer, but only stared back, "Tell me your real name? At least tell it to me. Tell me the name your mother gave you at birth!" But the man remained silent. The Emperor's field captain turned to his scrivener, "Write scrivener, write where the first name is noted KeYn! In the line where patronymic is noted, write NamM!" The field captain thought for a moment, "Omit all names and just write NoName, then however he decided. “Write KeYn NamM."
When the scrivener looked up in irritation, the field captain dictated, "Write capital K, small e, capital Y, capital N, small a small m and a capital M!" Then he pointed with the outstretched index finger of his right arm, "From now on you are just KeYnNamM, the man without an empire, the man without a father or a mother, the king of nothing!"
Having decided on the name KeYn NamM the field captain rose, bowed his head in direction of the capital of the Empire and passed the sentence, "In the name of the Emperor and by order of the Governor, I sentence the troublemaker and seditionist, the man named KeYn NamM, to imprisonment in the Emperor's Concentration Camp, in the Detention Camp at the Crystal Mine." The captain waited for a response from the man. When it did not come, he continued, "You will remain there until the guards carry your dead body feet-first out of the camp and throw you to the dogs!" After a pause, he added, "That is the verdict! There is no appeal against this verdict."
Thus began the new stage in the life of the King of the No-One's-Land, which eventually led to the liberation of the No-One's-Land and its inhabitants from the obligation to pay tribute to the Empire. Since no one knew the name by which he was called by his mother, he will be called "KeYnNamM" in this report. But when he finds a true friend, he will tell him the name.

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