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He was about to turn his attention to the ground when he stepped on a loose rock, losing his balance and falling heavily to the roadside. He cringed, expecting the hard impact of concrete or bitumen, but was surprised to fall into a mound of dust. He coughed, accidentally breathing some of it in, and stumbled back to his feet, swaying where he stood. He brushed off his clothes, and watched as thin grey dust clouded around him. He saw the street; cars were torched and empty, blackened husks sitting in or under more heaps of the strange white/grey dust. Every building was burned out and crumbling, and the windows had all been shattered. Black scorch marks were blasted into everything solid, and the outlines of people were stencilled onto walls… white spaces surrounded by black. As far as Ali could see, the sky- all the way to the horizon- was the same dusty, smoky hue. The entirety of the street was heaped with wreckage and the same strange dust.
