by David Massey

Created on: June 26, 2008

I wish I could know what he's thinking. As he sits against a red and white paint-soaked tree, eating some indescribable substance that he has dubbed food'. I stare into his eyes and he sees right through me. There is no communication within this lock. I am nothing more than a ghost, floating through the city, of no consequence except of that which cannot be redeemed.

By the time we found our way to Chor Bazaar ("Thieves Market") I think it finally hit us that we didn't really belong there. It was, at least, the first time I had a true desire to return home. Darius kept telling me, "That is the way they live. They don't now and have never known any other way." as though knowing that their lives were hell and have always been hell will, somehow, make me feel better about emotionally distancing myself from them, seeing them objectively.

I admit, there is some sort of natural survival device that activated within me that deflected the girth of the horror I was seeing. As I walked through the market, over years of rotting hay and dirt, I glanced to my left and there I saw, standing not more than a foot and a half away from me, a man. I caught myself in a stare, eye to eye, but his stare was of no use; he had no eyes. The lids were open but all that stared back were pits of red and black. He raised his hands and called to Allah at the top of his voice. All of this happened in a split second and I turned from him as quickly as I could. It was like being hit by a stone, right in the head, and not feeling a thing; I went completely numb to the incident. The encounter was pushed back almost instantaneously.

Now is where we learn what a strange and, occasionally, evil counter-part our subconscious can be: The day went on drinking, eating, talking and laughing but, as I lay in bed that night, curling up in the covers to fight the cold air of the A/C unit that had been keeping my subjectively huge room cool all day, I closed my eyes and there, waiting for me, was the man without eyes. Now the horror truly set in. This man, standing in the darkness, filled with humid heat and horrible stench, calling at the top of his lungs for help from a god that, judging from the surroundings, is completely absent.

My defense mechanism's fail-safe becomes null and void when I stop receiving stimulus and attempt to switch my brain into the darkness of sleep. Needless to say, I didn't sleep at all that night. On top of the guilt and the helpless empathy caused by my impotence to do anything

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