The Spite Gauntlet

Today, like every other day, he walks down the main alleyway of the souk, as straight as he can manage with the tremors in his legs, head bowed, eyes first rolled up, as if regarding his brain, then down to examine the dust at his feet, then up again, forehead bulging, walking as if expecting nothing from life yet always expecting something.
And something comes. A blow to the head. Just the one blow. From a cushion. Nothing to hurt physically. Just an emphasis of shame.
He staggers slightly. Continues. Looks down still, so he doesn't see the youth return to the cushion shop, to which he was temporarily solely entrusted. But I see him. He will soon suffer as well.
***
Today, like every other day, he walks down the main alleyway of the souk, somehow erecting indifference to his surroundings, as if the dust in the air has formed billowing tent walls of flimsy protection. His lips move steadily, but not in speech, and not in mastication. His legs push his feet into a kind of waltz-time, two right strides for every left one, as if the right one is injured and can't move as far. Three young children jeer at him, walk like him, imitate his unbalanced rhythm, then grow bored and move away, pestering tourists for money or pens. He has taken no notice and now cannot see them but I see them and they will soon suffer as well.
***
Today, like every other day, he walks down the main alleyway of the souk, and his face registers a sort of staggered calmness in the flurry of waving arms, until somebody stands in his way, a solid shadow. He brushes against him and abruptly stops, tries to do a sidestep to the right yet still finds his way blocked, tries to do a sidestep to the left yet still finds his way blocked, so stands there, shuffling from foot to foot in infinite dumb patience, until the solid shadow allows the tedium of the moment to overcome his malice and moves past him, feet scuffing up the dust.
He becomes aware of the vacated air in front of him, and shambles on, and he does not turn and hence does not see his scowling former barrier turn and spit at the ground behind him, and overshoot, and smear the undersides of his grubby trousers with his bad-gummed spittle, but I see him and he will soon suffer as well.

***
Today, like every other day, he walks down the main alleyway of the souk, hunched into a pretence of a tortoise shell, a shield against the waves of gesticulation that chop and change around and over him. A foreign woman, chic, resident, dressed in leather and fake fur, stumbles from the height of her shoes, falls against him, shrieks, yells at him in her language, tears his dirty hat to the ground, stamps on it, and moves on, pouting and shrugging, her face twisted into striped creases on either side of her nose. He stays in his hunch, staring at his hat on the ground, and so does not see her, but I see her and she will soon suffer as well. A bunch of loud tourists stops, and one of them picks up his hat. Crumples it back onto his head. They slap him on the back and wish him well as he moves away. I see them too but they will not suffer. Condescension is a minor crime, and tourists are a harder target.

***
Today, he is not here. It is not the Sabbath: there is another reason. They have all suffered now, all of them that I have witnessed, but they suffer no longer, because they are all dead. In all likelihood, he is also suffering, torn from the familiar, unable to walk down the main alleyway of the souk every day now that he is in prison, falsely incarcerated for the crimes that I committed, stuck in his cell, awaiting trial, his feet probably waltzing across the constrained roughness of the concrete floor. But I am yet to suffer, I who bore witness, and did nothing at the time. But I shall suffer. Soon. And then no one will survive.