Hamar spun down the alley next to the stall, – expertly cradling the eggs as he ran and Bashir furiously running right behind him!
The boy laughed with the chase and ran across the lane of the spice sellers, jumped through the back curtain of the cloth merchants, right into the blind mat-maker’s shop, out into the lane of the leather workers. Close behind him Bashir kept bellowing and knocking the sellers aside, – angry stall owners jumping up to join in.
Hamar’s legs flew, he pumped his arms faster! Always in these hunts he ran faster than the last time, but now he was no longer a pitiful child to be shooed off, but a young town thief mocking everyone’s livelihood.
Men in a rage could easily out race a twelve year old, but they’d have to chase him over sudden walls, dodge junk, slip down cracks between buildings, – their legs mounded with robes while his bare ones spun free.
“Stop thief! Pig guts! You’re dead, you hear, DEAD!” Bashir yelled, hurling a decorated pot at him which shattered on a wall, enraging the potters.
Street dogs barked and came leaping alongside the men, all of it making the growing din of a hunt.
Suddenly there was a blank wall! Hamar never slowed but batted aside the thorn bush in front of it and dived through a hidden hole, a wad of boy and rag.
Home! As always, the bush flipped back innocent!
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