Saved

Old man like a ghost in white beating a path up Onan toward Khalid was lighter on his feet than his heavy, black-clad wife making up the rear. On the floor at the mosque they would say their separate prayers, foreheads bent low on the carpet. Death be not unkind. Save them from suffering. For them there were hopes of reunions with all their departed in the afterlife. Parents were always especially missed, children untimely taken and dear siblings. Further on the money-grubber Wadi boss was going up for the same, luckily passed on the other side of the pillars and the dark falling. Somehow, even Hussein made time for his prayers, prescribed formula they could only be in his case. Still, rich, self-made Hussein would bow low like the lowest of the low. Earlier in the afternoon on the platform beside his hotplate, arms crossed on his chest focusing on the man telling him something below, an owl-eyed German grannie at her baking oven he had appeared. Saved in this life if not the next these believers. (The vile politico thieves, frauds and scoundrels up on the Peninsular would be called upon to answer one way or another in the midst of that force.)