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The tranquil flow of the village is no more. The market is overflowing with people. Their bulk rises up against the carts and stands. Those at the back push in. Children are sent through legs and one pushes another and the tables turn and the children are trampled. Men and women push and pull at each other. The police fire above the crowd. The crowd responds and blood and cries add to the bedlam. The merchants are killed. The doors to their stores are blockaded but they come in through the window and they set fire to the empty shelves and outside they are attacked by children with weapons they do not know how to use and women with jagged stones and broken tentpoles. The wind raises up whips of sand and their stolen goods fall to the ground as they try to cover their eyes and the smallest children scrap and scrape on the ground. They run now. In the streets men and women brawl and men and women wail on the ground their prayers to an unforgiving sun. Back home they pull down their furniture and block the doors and windows. They huddle around the clay hearth. Outside the wind twists through the streets and the ongoing fights come to ends as the last ones fall and those still alive pick the bodies and the broken-open homes for baubles and food and then return home. The days pass in quiet. Then they hear a hissing in the wind and even though their windows are still blocked up they can see the new terror they have sent. It passes over the village in an instant and quiet returns. But then blasts not so far off. They ask each other if he has been caught. The sound of machines on the dune. They are coming.