It was always the same. 

Slanting light puddled, bloodstains on skins of decaying masonry, as they pushed ever deeper into the pulsing gut of the medina. Alex lit a cigarette, exhaling the blue smoke over his shoulder. He could feel the pressure of a half-million people cooking, working and beating out a living in an area the approximate size of New York’s Central Park, but it was a soothing pressure, like a hot arm on his shoulder. Wood smoke tainted the air, its tangy fragrance bleeding into the heady aromas of an extensive spice souq that appeared out of nowhere. Crushed peppers, vinegary sumac powders, star anise, exotic leaves and milled seeds over which flocks of the veiled hens squabbled.

            The cigarette burned down and Alex disposed of it as the locals did; he flicked it on the ground between his feet. Asad went after it faster than the one-dirham coin and managed to take three deep lungfuls before the filter started smoldering between his dark, crooked fingers. He made a happy face to counteract the glare Alex gave him.

            “If you need a smoke so bad, ask for one.” Alex hardly approved of children smoking, but he’d rather have Asad ask for one like a person than to crawl after his rubbish. The agility and nonchalance with which he did that was viscerally disturbing, and something Alex would have preferred not to see.

            “Can I have one?” Asad asked immediately.

Alex flipped one over his shoulder and Asad caught it with a grin. His childlike lunge for it made Alex feel horrible for the thing that he had given him, but lung cancer wasn’t a top concern here, of that he felt certain.

            Occasionally, Alex questioned Asad about buildings that interested him, or for translations of signs or a phrase that might prove useful later, but mainly they walked in slow silence. He was letting the feel of the place wash over him, letting it invade his pores and his head. Without his help, his feet found a rhythm; his gaze wandered where it would. And that’s when he began to feel it here, that wonderful tingle in every nerve ending within his body, that sense of being so terrifically tiny, lost in the expanse of the world. One in five billion; good odds, ones that had always been all right by him.

            “Want to take me to . . . where?” The question faded into uncertainty. He stopped moving, and Asad favored him with a squint.

            It didn’t matter where the traveler went. As long as he went.

            “Take me to the metal-smiths?” he asked.

            Asad skipped backward past him, all childish exuberance as he said that he would guide Alex to the metal-smiths and then show him a place where they could sit for a while and watch them work. He didn’t state the price of his services this time, and Alex didn’t ask. 

            On the way to the metal-smiths, Asad slipped into the mouth of a dark arch. The ever-present gloom of the medina veiled details, but Alex could see that the corridor terminated in a small courtyard. Alex asked him what he wanted here.