Vision in Red by Sajjad Rasool - HTML preview

Children of Olive

CLUNK.

The turnstile shuddered. The red light flickered.

CLUNK-SCREECH.

The mechanism groaned, fighting against its own locks. Sparks showered down from the gear box above her head.

The soldier in the booth stood up, hammering on the glass.

But the machine obeyed a different law now. The law of the Key.

With a final, tortured screech, the bars gave way. The turnstile spun freely—too fast, spinning like a fan blade.

Amal stumbled through, almost falling onto the concrete on the Jerusalem side.

She didn't wait. She grabbed Yasmin's arm.

"Walk," she hissed. "Don't run. Walk."

They walked past the metal detectors, past the x-ray belts. The soldiers were shouting into their radios, distracted by the smoking turnstile. The crowd behind them was shouting, surging against the broken gate.

Amal and Yasmin slipped through the chaos. They pushed through the final exit doors and stepped out into the chilly, pre-dawn air of the bus terminal.

They were in.

Part II: The White Teeth

The bus to Damascus Gate was a silent vessel.

Twenty Palestinians sat in the seats, staring out the windows. No one spoke. The exhaustion of the checkpoint had drained the words out of them. They were just relieved to be on the other side.

Amal sat by the window, clutching her bag. The key had cooled down. It lay dormant, a lump of heavy sleep in her lap.

"That wasn't normal," Yasmin whispered. "The machine... it didn't just break. It fought you."

"It tasted the key," Amal said, watching the landscape roll by. "It tried to reject it. Like a body rejecting a virus."

The bus merged onto Route 60.

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