The girl in the red, striped dress threaded her way through the throngs of patrons, moving like salmon swimming upstream through the dim alley. She wore a sheer white scarf wrapped several times around her head and tied at the back of her neck, her thick, blonde hair tucked out of sight, and a heavy camera bumped against her chest.  The air was thick, heavy with perfume and incense, making her nose itch and her eyes tear, but it hardly mattered to her, as she tried to take in every little detail of this wonderful, alien world.  

            The crowd was pressed so tightly at the places where the alley narrowed that she found herself walking sideways, one hand on her camera and the other on her scarf.  All around her, the music of life echoed off the ancient, sandstone walls: children laughing, vendors calling out to potential clients, the chatter of old men huddled around hookahs so tall they nearly dwarfed her.  Those men eyed her as she passed, looking disapprovingly at her exposed ankles and forearms. She made a mental note to come more prepared with the proper attire the next time she found herself in this part of the world.  

            The girl's stomach made a very unladylike sound as the smell of spiced meat, coffee, and sugar replaced hookah smoke.  Several booths offering food had herded together, offering nearly anything she could imagine, sans the bland, boiled dishes characterizing her own country. Slabs of meat turned slowly on spits, the sound of crackling skin and the pop of oily fat added to the melody of the bazaar. She felt in her pocket for several queer, unevenly hewn coins, pressing them into the palm of a toothless old woman who smiled and handed her lamb shish kebab, the skewer nearly half the length of her forearm.  Biting into it eagerly, she hummed appreciatively at the hot, sweet, greasy treat, barely noticing as a few stray drops of juice stained her sleeve. Were her fussy little husband here, he would've had a fussy little fit over her untidiness, but he was at the hotel complaining about the mosquito nets in their room, and tonight was her adventure. 

            A man brushed by her as she was discarding the remains of her snack, and when their eyes met, a tiny, magical moment sparked between them like a firework.  He was very handsome with bright almond and green eyes, and shiny, black hair tied at the nape of his neck.  His skin, she thought, was just the same color as the desert at dawn. He said something to her in a low, lilting voice, but it was drowned out by the world around them, and she wouldn't have understood him anyhow. With an encouraging nod and smile, she raised her camera, pressing the button to take a photo, the flashbulb momentarily lighting the alley, leaving stars in her eyes. She knew she'd captured the exact moment he'd smiled back. 

            A blink, and he was gone, the crowd swallowing him whole, the magic replaced with a new wave of heat as she pushed aside heavy, silk curtains near the exit of the alley.  Hookah and strange, intoxicatingly sweet cigarette smoke replaced the smell of food.  A long time ago, someone had laid out Oriental carpets to partially cover the rough cobblestone, but an eon's worth of sand had faded the once-vibrant colors into dusty coppers and stagnant-sea green.  A large man with a pockmarked nose, approximately the same size and shape as a banana, sat behind a rough, wooden display offering age-stained glass jars full of spices and medicinals in all shapes and sizes. He called to her in a voice so low and broken that she'd have had a hard time understanding him in English, but instead she raised her camera and photographed him, immortalizing his rude gesture. She smiled sheepishly in apology and continued on. 

            To her left, two women stood in an open doorway, the dark room behind them playing an altogether different tune than the alley had.  One of the women was at least twenty years her senior with an ample bosom displayed openly by her half-buttoned, threadbare dress.  Her nipple was barely visible, brown as a nut against her coffee-colored skin.  The other woman could barely be called that, fifteen at the very most, but the sharp, hungry glint in her eye made her seem far more worldly than she ought to be.  She wore her toffee hair in braids, beads and twine bright against her otherwise dim surroundings.  A non-sequitur.  Having a feeling that her camera would be completely unappreciated at this house, she moved on. 

            A stall near the mouth of the street offered little ceramic trinkets, animals carved into sandstone and slate, smoothed until they shone like lava glass. She picked up a little elephant and smiled at its intricate face.  Its maker was certainly familiar with the animal, capturing the steady, proud gaze of its ilk, for all that the creature was the size of her palm.  She began to set it down, but the gnarled, bone-dry hand of the woman behind the stall closed her fist around it. "Pretty, like you," she said with a very thick accent. "Keep. Remember here."  Small children played at her feet, and the woman in the red striped dress realized that the vendor couldn't have been more than a few years older than herself, though her skin was etched with sun and sand, and her hair was graying.

            "Shukran." The girl replied and squeezed the little elephant in her hand.  Raising her camera, she smiled the question.

            The woman shook her head, not unkindly, and pointed a twisted finger at the horizon, now clearly visible at the end of the street.  The sun was setting, lighting the faraway dunes on fire and bathing everything in an ancient, ruddy gold, like the waves of an oasis.  "Tadhakkar." The older woman said, indicating the camera. 

            As the girl raised her camera to snap a photo, she felt suddenly very small and insignificant, standing in an alley in a city in the desert that had stood for longer than her country had been a sovereign nation.  She wondered what, if anything, would remain of her world in a thousand years. If someone would walk her streets and take photographs, browse for antiquities, think about what her life might have been like. 

          Knowing that she couldn't possibly capture the nuance of what she was seeing, she took the photo anyway.  Turning to the vendor, she smiled and repeated "tadhakkar."