Imraan walked through the deserted streets. There was Rayhan Road up ahead. There was the corner on which he had seen Sakina, the same herbs-shop up ahead. It was now shuttered closed in the midst of the rising war.

He walked and walked. But his feet had taken on a will of their own, and up ahead now he was on the other side, and there was Azhar Alley. The alley was placed right between the streets where the bazaar was spread out across from the tenements along the main street. The alley must have once long ago meant to be a shortcut through the tenements to the bazaar and the square.

The dirtpath along the street was scattered with rubbish, onion and potato peels, fruits that must have rolled out from carts and rotted on the ground, squashed by incoming carts or feet. No young boys guarded the entrance to the alley now, not that he could see. There had always been someone or another posted there when he had ruled it.

Ruled. Imraan scoffed at himself. What did he think he was, at that age? What was ruling? If he had really ruled, wouldn’t he have real power? If he had true power, he would have been able to get them out of the alleys, the streets. He would have been able to make it a home. What was true power then without that? But no, he had left them all there, in that alley. He had not returned to them. He had been safe inside at Yaseen’s while they lived out on the streets. What were the chances that Yaseen had found Imraan and taken him in, but not any of them? Why had God given him this chance, and not them?

While he walked towards the alley, the same suffocating dread rose in his lungs.

Here was the corner on which he would tell the other boys to lie in wait for the wealthy man who would sometimes come down this road in his lavish robes, walking in trepidation at night towards the redhouse, worried about being seen. Imraan would strategically place his boys where they wouldn’t be seen by the man, and they would betake him before he got to the redhouse. The man, already frightened of being caught by someone he knew, exposed to the public, would give them everything he had, empty his pockets just to get rid of them, and then dash off in sheer fright.

He and the boys would laugh uproariously afterwards. “Did you see the look on his face?” “He looked like a scared little rat!” “He was about to pee his pants!” Then they would stand around and divide up their treasure; sometimes Imraan took it all from them and would ration it out, send one boy with a small sum to go get some food. Other times they would filch off the carts during the mornings in the bazaars. Sometimes they would do the filching just for fun, even when they had stolen enough money from the man on one of his secret night strolls.

It was haunted now. He could see the ghosts of the boys in these streets. Every time he passed by here, he couldn’t see the people milling about him as he walked through them, in their dusty turbans and white shalwars. He could only see the ghosts.

Now all the streets were abandoned.

He came in sight of the alley. Yet it wasn’t there.

There should have been a gap of space in the middle of these two buildings, a slum in the midst of it; but there were none. The space had been filled up now, the rubbish and the orphans emptied out — replaced by a large block of a brick tenement.

It was as if someone had slammed the brickhouse into his face. He stood there, staring up at it like a lost man who had wound up at the wrong address. There was an open window up above, through which an old woman was laying out clothes to dry. They fluttered from the clothesline.

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“You looking for something, brother?” called someone behind him. He turned around.

A man sat at his stall, watching him. He was the only merchant left on the road. His head was dusty from the city streets, and he scrunched up his eyes against the light. Different colored fabrics were layered on his table, and inside his stall he had a machine against which the threads were strung. The man had his finger through one of the threads, holding a long needle in the other hand. When Imraan didn’t answer him, he went back to his threading, winding the thread through his fingers. On the machine, the threads fell together swiftly, lacing themselves into each other.

The man sat at his stall as if there was no war brewing.

“No,” Imraan said, approaching him. “I was looking for something; but it’s not here anymore.”

The fabric merchant’s eyes brightened in understanding. “Oh yes, that building wasn’t there before. There was an alley. Poor wretched orphans used to play around there.”

“They lived there,” Imraan corrected him, a little more sharply than he had intended, and the man’s alarmed gaze thought as much.

“Yes. If you say so, brother,” the man said, a little hesitantly now, looking more fearful than he had earlier. He returned to winding his threads, averting his eyes from Imraan.

“Did you have a problem with them?” Imraan asked.

The man looked up at him, and Imraan saw that there was a hole in his chest, gaping out of his body, and blood was flowing from his eyes, his mouth.

“Don’t you recognize me, old friend?” the man whispered, his voice hoarse, unreal, and he approached closer to Imraan, holding the long needle in his hand.

Imraan backed away. “What? Who are you?” he rasped out.

“I want…you to see who you are.”

“Who I am?”

“You left me in that alley to die,” the man whispered. “You left me to die, Imraan, but here I am.” The man drove the long needle into Imraan’s stomach, and Imraan gasped for breath, stumbling.

He held one hand over his stomach, and one up towards the man.

And, suddenly, the man was gone, and he saw only the fabric-merchant sitting at his stall, threading through a piece of cloth, the needle bloodless. The man stared at him with wide eyes, frozen. He dropped his needle and thread, and ran off down the street.

Imraan looked down at his stomach, his hands. There was no blood. No wound.

****

The cold water ran down his face as he stared at his reflection in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot, and there were shadows underneath.

He washed his hands and face, the cool water cleansing him.

But when he looked again in the reflection, the mirror gazed back at him. He was looking into another world - the frame which held the glass a portal to an universe of which he was not a part of. The face that stared back at him had his face, but it must have been another man — there was no scar running down the length of his face, no shadows; instead, the man in the mirror was smiling.

Imraan touched his finger to the mirror, but the man did not. The man turned back to what lay behind him, to his world. He was coming home from a day of working in the fields. Or perhaps from a day at his shop, weaving his carpets, threading patterns of intertwining florals and vines into a vast web. He was returning home for supper, washing off the tiredness of the day before settling down to eat with his family. Perhaps afterward, the man would go to take some herbs for his mother. Would his father touch his forehead as he knelt by his bed and fed him his medicine? Would his mother embrace him before he left? Would he return home to play with his children? To teach his son how to walk? His daughter how to read her letters? To laugh with them?

— Then the reflection was suddenly him again, and it grimaced. In the reflection there was blood on his hands, the red so sickeningly vibrant it could blind him. Imraan tore his eyes away, backing away from it.

He fell backwards towards his own bed. He lay there for some time, staring at the ceiling. He wondered if the man in the mirror had moved away.

The plaster on the ceiling created bubbles forming like patterns of an ocean, a sea above his head. It could devour him at any moment. He could be consumed by it, the rushing of the water at his ears, engulfing him in its inviting embrace.