A Sad Man
From my hotel room window in Cairo I watched a homeless man. I think he was about 35 or 40 years of age. He had no shoes and wore only a galabiyya; he scratched constantly. It was late morning, the sun was already hot and he was trying to sleep on the concrete patio of an abandoned theater building. Then he moved between two parked cars and continued tossing and scratching on the pavement there. He had a beard and needed a bath. He did not seem aware of any of the people who walked by, nor they of him. After a few minutes he moved from the space between the two parked cars to another patch of concrete under a tree next to a small food stand. The food stand was closed. He seemed tormented, utterly without hope. I don't know what happened to him. He wasn't there the next day.
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