Mundane Colours

God, he loved thunderstorms, he thought as he looked out across the street at the other vendors and shopkeepers who were hastily packing up for the day. The smell of saffron and cinnamon still lingered in the air and he sighed, savoring the scent of spices mixed with that of the rain pouring down from the heavens.

He felt his face break out into a manic grin as he saw lightning fork across the sky and heard the roar of thunder. He could tell that the sound was making others around him uneasy; it seemed to be scaring the hell out of the little girl not too far off who was clutching her mother’s hand as if it were a lifeline- but it was like music to his ears. The sound anchored him to the world somehow.

“All done.’ He was brought of his reverie by the sound of his uncle’s voice. He had been pouring the spices on display into small jars and had then stowed them away to be brought out the next day.

The old man was panting, he noticed and was reminded of the simple undeniable fact that his uncle would die soon. He could barely walk for more than ten minutes without breaking into a coughing fit and could no longer work as fast as he used to. He almost felt sorry for him. After all, he had been working with him for more than ten years now. “You should hurry home, son. This storm’s almost as bad as yesterday.”

“Yes,” he answered shortly as they began walking down the street. The Spice Bazar of Cairo seemed to pass by in a blur as he walked, people and scents blending together as he drifted farther away from the present.

“Don’t you dare…” His mother’s voice was cut off by the sound of a knife digging into flesh and then the air was filled the sound of her sobbing and of glass shattering as his father picked up the vase of flowers that he had gotten for her that day and hurled it at the wall. He knew that was not his father, this man was merely wearing his father’s face.

‘What are you looking at, boy?” He was right in front of him now and Abdul could practically smell the alcohol on him. His pulse sped up as the man leaned forward so their foreheads were touching and Abdul shrank back as he saw the man’s bloodshot eyes. As soon as his head hit the wall behind him, he felt himself being lifted into the air by the collar of his shirt. “Your mother deserved that.”

He could feel tears burning the back of his eyelids as he sensed his mother lying unconscious on the ground and bit his lip so hard that he could taste the blood on his tongue as he ran it over the tender skin. The last thing he remembered before he blacked out was the excruciating pain that shot through his head as it was slammed against the wall and his father’s voice as he sneered at him. “Look me in the eyes when I’m talking to you.’

He was almost home, he realised. The old man had probably turned onto his street while he had been absorbed in his memories, As he walked, his gaze drifted towards a lone girl walking a few paces ahead of him, an umbrella clutched tightly in her hand in an attempt to block out the rain, but he could tell that holding it was a struggle in itself as the wind tried to rip it from her grasp.

The girl looked like she was in her early twenties and he found himself wondering why she was walking alone in the storm. She tucked a strand of damp hair behind one ear and he wondered if she would go home or stop somewhere first.

Her hand came away we and he could almost see the raindrops that clung to her skin. He finally saw her face when she stopped under a flickering streetlight and started rummaging through her purse- Emerald green eyes and a heart-shaped face-, he imagined looking into those eyes every day and realised he would not mind. However, the blonde hair would have to go.

It was a dangerous time for anyone to be out alone in the streets, he knew that. There were rumours going around about a man sneaking up behind unsuspecting victims and slashing their throats, leaving them to bleed to death. Some claimed that they had seen this person looking into people’s houses through the windows while others claimed that he snuck into the bedrooms of little girls at night. He almost laughed at the absurdity of the claims and told himself that someone would surely have to be a psychopath in order to be capable of those things.