The market at Abu Zuaima opens at half past six on Saturday. Omar al-Tijani arrives in his cousin's car, an old grey Toyota with the bumper held on with wire, and unloads the empty plastic bottles onto the cloth he has spread at the corner of Suleiman's stall, the green cloth with the orange stripes his father left him when he stopped. There are twenty-four bottles. He sets them in two rows of twelve. The can of sesame oil, yellow, its Arabic lettering already faded, stands on the left, under Suleiman's empty counter; on Saturdays Suleiman always comes late, because Saturday brings the women of Hamrat al-Sheikh and the women want to buy their oil first. Omar counts the notes he has kept in his pocket since the start of the week: eighteen of them, of various value. He holds them together with a red rubber band. His cousin's car must be back by eleven. This month's instalment is due on Thursday.

He pours the first bottle at ten to seven. The thread of oil is pale yellow, dense. He holds it steady with his wrist, watches it, stops it when it reaches the neck of the bottle. Caps it. Takes the notes from the veiled woman who holds out five. Puts the notes in the inner pocket of his tunic. Pours the second. Same thread, same way. Caps it. The third goes to an old man who pays in coins, and Omar counts the coins twice and gives him back three piastres, because he has counted too many. The fourth, the fifth, the sixth. Six bottles in twenty minutes. Yusuf, his little brother, nine years old, arrives with six more empties from the cousin's storeroom: he walks with his arms stretched out, the bottles above his head, because that way they weigh less. Omar tells him to go home. Yusuf asks why. The sun is climbing, Omar tells him, and you are too small to be at the market with the sun high, and besides your mother needs you to go and fetch the water. Yusuf sets the empties down next to the twenty-four, turns his head towards the wall of the mosque, growls a little. Then he walks towards the neighbourhood well and Omar watches him until he disappears behind the wall. Suleiman's stall is still empty now and the sun falls slantwise across the cloth, and it is almost the hour of the women.

The blast comes at eight seventeen. It is a sound that does not come from the market. It comes from above. Omar is pouring the seventh bottle. His hand stops. Then the ground moves under his feet and the dust arrives a second later, a thick dust that covers his tunic with a grey veil, and the screaming arrives a second after that. Omar holds the can in his hand. The thread of oil has broken. The bottle below holds fourteen centilitres. Eleven centilitres short of full. The voices are screaming a name he cannot hear well: Hassan perhaps, perhaps Hussein, perhaps nothing, perhaps a sound that had been a name and is now only the sound of a mouth open on the dust.

Omar does not stop pouring. His hand is trembling. The thread of oil resumes, thin, and then breaks again because the hand trembles harder, and Omar braces his left wrist against the edge of Suleiman's counter, presses, and the thread resumes, and reaches twenty centilitres. A woman runs towards the market from the Hamrat road. A woman comes out of the market on the opposite side, a child on her shoulders. A woman lies on the ground beside Suleiman's counter and does not move. Omar does not look. The bottle below reaches twenty-two centilitres. Three centilitres. He pours. Two. He pours. One centilitre. He pours. The thread stops. The tunic weighs on his shoulders, soaked with dust as if it were water. Somewhere, behind the wall of the mosque, someone is calling their father by a name that is not the one he used.

The bottle is full. Omar caps it. He stands it upright on the green cloth, next to the other six. The seven bottles are there, in a row, capped, a uniform yellow. Omar looks at his right hand. The oil has run down to his wrist, sliding off the bottle while the thread was finding itself again. He gets up. His knees hold. He hears Yusuf's voice from the well, perhaps, perhaps not, perhaps it was another voice. He walks towards the noise of the market, which is now a noise of calling and short footsteps and poured water, and his right wrist leaves a yellow mark on the green cloth he spread this morning at half past six, the mark of an open hand, and Omar looks at it as he walks, until the mark disappears into the dust that keeps coming down.