Vision in Red by Sajjad Rasool - HTML preview

Vision in Red

Amal felt her stomach clench. "I heard something on the news."

"They say the car was shot more than a hundred times. A hundred times! For a family trying to leave dangerous a neighborhood. And meanwhile, the soldiers at the checkpoints wave their guns at old women carrying bread." Um Khalil shook her head again. "This world. This world."

She bustled off before Amal could respond, swallowed by the crowd, leaving behind the weight of her words like smoke in the air.

Noor was looking up at her with those too-knowing eyes. "Is that what you saw on TV, Mama? The car with too many holes?"

"I didn't see anything, habibi. Come on. We need to get home before the water cuts off."

They walked the rest of the way in silence, Noor's small hand warm in hers, the noise of the market fading behind them as they turned onto quieter streets. The buildings here were older, three and four stories of concrete stacked on top of each other like a child's blocks, their balconies draped with laundry and potted plants and the occasional satellite dish. Graffiti covered the lower walls—political slogans in Arabic, the occasional spray-painted portrait of a martyr, and here and there, children's drawings of flowers and flags.

As they passed an alley, Amal caught a glimpse of something —a shape, standing in the shadows, too still to be a person going about their business.

She stopped walking.

The shape was tall, dressed in what might have been a uniform, bulky with equipment or padding or something else. Its posture was rigid, like a soldier at attention, but there was something wrong with the proportions. The arms were too long. The head was angled slightly, as if listening.

And the eyes—

Amal blinked, and the shape was gone. Just an empty alley with a dumpster and some scattered trash, the evening light slanting through at an angle that might have created any number of illusions.

"Mama? Why did we stop?"

"Nothing. I thought I saw something, but it was nothing."

She hurried them the rest of the way home, not looking back, not allowing herself to wonder what might be standing in the shadows, watching them go.

But when they reached their building and climbed the four flights of stairs to their apartment, Amal found herself checking the windows twice before she let Noor out of her sight. And when she turned on the lights, she checked the corners of every room, looking for shapes that didn't belong.

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