Vision in Red by Sajjad Rasool - HTML preview

Vision in Red

Part IV: The Concrete Labyrinth

The walk back to the car should have taken ten minutes.

Three turns. A straight line past the UNRWA school. A left at the bakery. That was the route.

But as Amal and Yasmin stepped out of Huda’s courtyard and the heavy blue door clicked shut behind them, the world felt... wrong.

It was dusk, but the light wasn't fading naturally. It was being sucked away. The shadows in the alleyway weren't just absences of light; they were physical things, thick and heavy like spilled oil.

"This way," Yasmin said, turning left.

They walked in silence for a few minutes, their footsteps echoing too loudly on the pavement. The camp was usually alive at this hour—scooters buzzing, televisions blaring, the smell of frying falafel filling the air.

But tonight, the camp was dead.

The windows of the houses were dark. The shops were shuttered. The only sound was the Zenana—the drone buzz—and it sounded different. Lower. Deeper. It was vibrating in Amal's teeth.

"Yasmin," Amal whispered. "Where are we?"

"We're on Al-Shuhada Street," Yasmin said. "The bakery should be right here."

She stopped.

There was no bakery.

Where the bakery used to be —with its bright yellow sign and the smell of za'atar—there was just a wall. A smooth, gray concrete wall, three meters high, topped with rusted rebar.

"It was here," Yasmin said, her voice rising in panic. "I bought bread here this morning."

Amal touched the wall. The concrete was cold and damp. And it was old. It looked like it had been there for fifty years, covered in layers of faded graffiti and grime.

"They changed the layout," Amal said, trying to rationalize the irrational. "The army. They put up a barrier."

"In six hours?" Yasmin shook her head. "No. This... this isn't right."

They turned around. "Let's go back to the school," Amal said. "We can cut through the playground."

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