Vision in Red by Sajjad Rasool - HTML preview

Vision in Red

Part III: The Phantom Limbs

Walking through Damascus Gate was like stepping into a blender of history.

The tunnel of the gate was cool and shadowed, echoing with the shouts of vendors selling ka'ak bread, cell phone cases, and prayer mats. Tourists in shorts and sunhats mingled with old women in thobes and soldiers with rifles.

It was dazzlingly vibrant.

But to Amal, holding the key, it looked like a double exposure.

Everywhere she looked, she saw the glitch.

She looked at the plaza steps, where young men usually sat drinking coffee. She saw the men, laughing and smoking. But superimposed over them, faint as smoke, she saw other men. Men in keffiyehs from the 1930s. Men in British mandate police uniforms. Men in Ottoman fezzes.

They weren't ghosts. They were... echoes.

"Do you see them?" Yasmin asked, clutching her arm.

"The echoes?"

"No. The gaps."

Yasmin pointed to a shop selling spices. "Look at the wall."

Amal looked. The stone wall of the shop was solid. But there was a darker patch on the stone. A shadow that didn't match the sun.

"It looks like a door," Amal said.

"It was a door," Yasmin whispered. "My grandmother told me about this shop. It used to be twice as big. The British blocked up the archway in '36 to control the riots. But the door is still... remembering."

They walked deeper into the souk. The sensation of "Phantom Limbs" grew stronger.

Suddenly, the crowd ahead parted.

"Patrol," a shopkeeper whispered, pulling his display of scarves inside.

Amal and Yasmin pressed themselves against the wall.

Four soldiers walked down the narrow alley. They wore full combat gear—helmets, vests, knee pads. They carried assault rifles.

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