Everything went black for him when he realised she was missing. Tears welled up in his eyes as he started tracing her smell. But nowhere could he find her. As he looked upon the faces of the abaya-clad women and women with lustrous locks of hair, and women with heavily mascared eyes all staring down on him, he realised how vulnerable he was without her holding his hand.

Eventually, he started to cry and his eyes puffed up and his mouth became salty, but still there was no sign of her.

“Hadn’t she realised I was missing?” he sniffed, and wiped his blotchy eyes as he wondered. “Perhaps she hadn’t missed him at all, and had gone home without him?” He had given up scanning faces for his mother’s face and worried eyes and had settled himself on the floor beside one of the shops in the market, and was totally ignoring the shopkeeper’s questions about how his mother looked like, and whether he would like to drink a glass of water.

It felt like hours before, when he had lost his mother in the crowd of babbling, excited women, all anxious to get the very clothes they wanted to. However, his watch told him that only ten minutes had passed in the ransack.

“Ahmed!” somebody screamed out his name.

“Somebody?” he thought to himself. The voice sounded like his mother’s. But no, he must have imagined.

“Ahmed?” it was clearer this time.

He looked up anxiously, and saw a blurred vision of his mother, through his tears. A happy grin spread on his face.

“Mama!” he screamed his lungs out, and rushed towards his anxious mother.

They met in a tearful, happy embrace. With a zest, she picked up his six-year old frame into her arms and kissed his ruddy, apple-like cheeks.

Published in Dawn, Young World June 24th, 2017