Vision in Red by Sajjad Rasool - HTML preview

Vision in Red

Crowds of people were gathered. Men in white thobes and keffiyehs, women in dresses embroidered with the vibrant reds and blacks of the Jaffa district. There was food —trays of rice and lamb, pyramids of oranges, baskets of steaming bread.

"A wedding," Amal whispered.

"My cousin Layla's wedding," Huda said, her voice softening. "She was eighteen. The most beautiful girl in the district. Look at her."

Amal saw the bride. She was sitting on a raised platform, her face veiled, but her hands were visible — painted with intricate henna patterns that looked like lace gloves. She was laughing, her head thrown back.

And the sound... for a moment, Amal thought she could hear it. The beating of the tablah drums. The trilling zagrouta of the women. The clapping. The singing.

"It was the loudest day of the year," Huda said. "We sang until our throats were raw. We danced until the dust rose like a cloud. We were so alive, Amal. We were so loud that we thought death could never find us."

In the mirror, the dabke line formed. Young men linking arms, stomping the earth in a rhythmic earthquake of joy. One-two-three-kick. The dust swirled around their boots.

And then, the shadows changed.

It happened so slowly that if Amal hadn't been looking for it, she might have missed it.

The sun didn't dim. The sky remained blue. But the quality of the light shifted. It became... thinner. Harder. Like the light in an operating room.

The shadows of the dabke dancers detached from their feet.

Instead of following the men, copying their movements, the shadows stopped. They lay flat on the ground, motionless pools of black ink.

Then they began to flow.

They slithered across the dusty square, ignoring the geography of the ground, moving like water running uphill. They converged on the musicians.

The drummer was the first to fall.

He was mid-beat, his hand raised to strike the skin of the tablah. But his hand never came down. He froze. His mouth opened in a silent scream.

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