The day was like any other day in the market that afternoon. People bustling from stand to stand buying and haggling for a merchandise much below healthy standards but gold quality to those who could afford to buy them. People bumped against one another as they walked down the street, men shuffled along chatting and arguing with other men, beards quivering with their excited talk, hair matted close to their heads with nylon or knit caps. Women’s eyes peered out from between two slits of cloth that lovingly wrapped their heads and hair, long heavy gowns covered their legs as sweat formed at the pits of their arms. Children ran through the legs of adults, laughing, playing, slapping at each other and knocking down woven straw baskets as parents scolded them to behave and threatened a beating or two from their father.

            The sun beat down on the people in the market, it was a smoldering hot day, as usual, and amidst the crowd that washed rarely, one would drown in the sea of body odor and muggy dust. There were no clouds in the sky that day to provide a curtain of shade over the sun, not a gust of breeze to offer any cool relief for even a moment. Water was scarce in the summer days so many were not allowed to drink.

            No one saw him coming. Even if they had, they couldn’t tell the difference between enemy and friend. His beard was scraggly, his cap tattered with fraying holes, a stink slightly stronger than usual company’s. His pants were dirty, and his sandals were straining for another day’s use. Though an unpleasant sight, he was not enough to stand apart from the crowd, to be the spectacle. No one even noticed the bulky evergreen jacket he wore, or noted the usualness of wearing such a garment in the blistering heat of Egyptian summer.

            He stood in the middle of the market, in the middle of the street. Cars traveling the roads honked for a cleared passage, by-standers looked on, not concerned, but annoyed by the man. He didn’t move from the road, and didn’t make eye contact with any townspeople or driver’s honking at them. He didn’t dare look into their orbs, their piercing eyes that could haunt him forever in his lifeless eternity.

            Closing his eyes and raising his face to the sun, he murmured a prayer: “Ashira a la donai. Eloi eloi, lama sabacthani!”

            Tearing open the front of his jacket, marketers barely had time to notice or to run as he pulled the cord, ripping loose an explosion that rattled the surrounding homes and towns. People screamed, scrambling to get away, tripping over one another, falling upon the corpses that laid in their way, limbs torn from some, limbs from some found further away. The children that were playing and slapping at one another lay under a pile of carnage, their tiny hands sticking out from underneath the bodies.

            Blood filled the gutters and ran in tiny streams down the sewer lines. Bits of flesh scattered about the road and sidewalks. Appendages hung from carts and stands, a leg here, a hand there. Lying partly on the sidewalk, partly in the gutter, a woman with eyes wide open and a breathless sleeping baby in her arms.

            Somewhere in the silence of death and war, a child cried.