Noir flights of fancy

When I was ten, I visited Egypt. Our hotel room in Cairo overlooked the pyramids. While my parents unpacked and my brother scarfed the camel-milk toffees on the pillows, I looked through the picture windows. There, within reach, the sun shone down upon three monuments that symbolized all that was haunting, timeless, and fearful. The Pyramids, to my ten year old mind that wanted to be a writer, seemed to whisper curses. One that I heard with my back to the world was: 'Someday, when you find your story, words will fail you.'

It has been several decades since. I will never forget the Pyramids. It is not possible. To me, pyramids are the accursed paradox. They damn you to forget and then tease you to remember. No-one but me will understand what I'm writing about now. Because I'm writing in the last gasp of the victim who's about to name her murderer.

Today, I was traveling through the Vashi highway. A man lay sprawled in the middle of the road with steel utensils thrown asunder. He was dead. Some distance from there, a dead dog obstructed the traffic. If you stood in the middle somewhere, you could see the man and the dog lying in the same line.

City, death, roads - the great levelers.

And it's dangerous to visit the Pyramids if you can decipher the unheard. I would explain what I mean, but words fail me.