Vision in Red by Sajjad Rasool - HTML preview

Chapter Five: Auntie Huda's Old Stories

Part I: The Salt Line

The Old Camp was different.

If the newer sections of the refugee camp were a chaotic sprawl of concrete and rebar, a testament to a population growing upward because it was forbidden to grow outward, the Old Camp was something else entirely. It was a labyrinth.

Here, the alleyways were so narrow that two people could barely walk abreast. The stone walls, originally built as temporary shelters seven decades ago, had hardened into something permanent and calcified. They leaned in toward each other, blocking out the sky, trapping the heat and the dust and the memories of three generations in a suffocating embrace.

Amal walked behind Yasmin, her hand brushing the rough surface of the walls. The stone felt warm, almost feverish.

"Does she know we're coming?" Amal asked. Her voice sounded too loud in the confined space, bouncing off the damp stones.

"Huda always knows," Yasmin said without looking back. "She hears things before they happen. Or maybe she just smells the trouble on us."

They turned a corner, ducking under a tangled web of electrical wires that hung dangerously low, like black vines in a concrete jungle. The air here smelled of different things than the rest of the camp. Not just diesel and sewage, but older smells. Sage. Cardamom. And something sharp and metallic, like rusted iron.

"Why do you call her Auntie?" Amal asked. "Is she..."

"She's everyone's aunt," Yasmin said. "She was here when the first tents were pitched in '48. She was here when the tents turned to mud brick. She was here when the mud turned to concrete. She's the memory of this place."

Yasmin stopped in front of a heavy iron door painted a bright, shocking blue. It was the color of the sea they were forbidden to visit, a defiant splash of life against the gray monotony of the camp.

But it wasn't the color that caught Amal's attention.

It was the line of white powder across the threshold.

"Salt?" Amal whispered.

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