The Drabble Files
4) Light
Annan's father had been an alcoholic and his mother had been a victim of the very last spate of race-related crimes in East London. When she died, Annan shunned the book and trappings which he perceived as having caused her death.
One of his father's last acts before pulling one of disappearance had been to hand him a copy of the Qur'an, the very copy, with its black embossed cover and ancient, inexplicable characters mixing with the English inside, that his mother had once pored over, in the darkness of the night and the heady glow of the morning.
"You might need a bit of light, I thought, out there," said the man who had all his life insisted on using a beer glass to shatter that very glow. He jerked his head vaguely to the sky, patted his son on his shoulder, and then shrunk into the crowd.
Annan put the book to gather impossible dust in the corner of his most private drawer in his new quarters, from where none of its light could escape. It might illuminate his past, and that he did not desire.