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The husks of cars and other debris sat like blackened rocks buried in a grey beach. Ali, dazed with fatigue and hunger, wondered where he was for a good minute before his tired mind realized this was the street he lived in. Had lived in. He felt a vague curiosity as to what he had tripped on upon exiting his safe area. He clasped at his feet, his hands closing around the smooth rock. He pulled it from the dust, and immediately shrieked (although it only came out as a croak, due to the dryness of his throat), dropping it. It was a human skull, slightly blackened and cracked. In horror, Ali looked to where he had crawled from, and saw other bones heaped up at the door. Those were the bones, the people that he had heard screaming outside as the firestorm swallowed Cairo. He realized that the dust wasn’t dust at all, but ash. Ash. He had fallen into a pile of a substance that was essentially human flesh, and he hastily tried beating it from his clothes. He felt sick, and gagged, retching, but there was nothing to throw up in his starved, aching body. He fell to his hands and knees, knocking another skull from the pile of remains, sending it rolling along an exposed stretch of road. It made a noise exactly like a large, hollow shell of some kind skittering on a hard surface. He caught sight of his house, which was nothing but a skeleton, as everything but the framework had been burned away. He realized he’d end up the same as the people currently covering his clothes if he didn’t move to find food soon, and staggered to his feet, pressing his hand against the sooty, rough surface of a car husk to steady himself. Just as his nausea faded, and breathing slowed, he saw the dust-sky in the distance seeming to clear.
