Fatimah watched the organs fly from their body cavity as his automobile disintegrated in a spray of fiberglass and through-bolts. Accidents in Cairo are seldom tidy. As his eyes faded dead, he saw one last glimpse: Osiris, God of the Underworld, catching the organs in canopic jars to be weighed against Fatimah’s soul, thus determining the dictates of eternal justice. Allah would not be pleased that a mere idol had intercepted one of the faithful – well, parts of the faithful – before he had reached paradise.

These were the contents of the jars:

IMSETY: A liver – pickled in cheap wine and thin beer. Soft and cracked through with rivulets of burning alchohol. A deep brown topographical map, complete with ragged peaks and clear flowing wadis. An overtaxed sack shot full of holes.

QUEBEHSENUF: A heart (Professional Egyptologists will note here a contradiction – Fatimah’s intestines were unavailable at the moment of Osiris’ catch, thus, in His eagerness, He grabbed the nearest available organ) – Incarnadine from toughness, not blood flow. More ruby mineral than muscle, yet ruby flawed. A tough, brittle thing. Pock-marked and bruised from self-abuse. Blood coursed through it like cold water through a cavern – the housing stiff and unmoving, cored out by a bitter liquid until the structure collapses in on itself.

HAPY: Lungs – Scarred with black furrows carved by opium smoke. Wheezy pouches frayed from yelling at wife and child. Depositories of toxic odors gathered through unethical business practice. Bellows of grime. Cilia stilled by tar and nicotine.

DUAMUTIF: A stomach – Stretched to excess. Flacid with gluttonous over-stuffing. An acid-churning well of worry and guilt, deception made manifest in indigestion. A treasure chest of lipids, sugar and vinegar. Clearing house of burning bile vomit – much to the joy of the liver, which quivered in fear beneath whenever the stomach was filled. A bucket of filth, unclean contents hiding from Koranic law.

Perhaps Allah wouldn’t mind Osiris’ interference after all.