Vision in Red by Sajjad Rasool - HTML preview

Children of Olive

"These are from the children at school?"

"And from Noor."

Fadi picked up one of the drawings—Ahmad's, the one with nothing but two enormous red circles dominating the page. He held it up to the lamplight, turning it this way and that.

"What do you think they mean?"

"I don't know." Amal's voice cracked. "I've been trying to figure it out all night. All day. But nothing makes sense. How can this many children draw the same thing without ever talking to each other? How can Noor draw a car that I saw on the news—a car she never saw, that I never told her about?"

Fadi set the drawing down carefully, as if it were something fragile or dangerous. "There have been studies," he said slowly. "About collective trauma. About how populations under prolonged stress can develop shared symptoms, shared imagery, shared —"

"This isn't a symptom, Fadi. This is something else." Amal gathered the drawings into a pile, her hands shaking. "The children say they see them. Real things. Standing at checkpoints. Standing at the places where people died. They say —" She stopped, unable to continue.

"They say what?"

"That they don't blink. That they're watching. That they get stronger when people forget."

The kitchen was silent except for the hum of the refrigerator and the distant sound of a dog barking somewhere in the city. Fadi stood very still, his face unreadable in the dim light.

"You need to sleep," he said finally. "You're exhausted. You're seeing patterns that aren't there."

"I'm seeing patterns that are everywhere." Amal's voice was sharper than she intended. "I'm seeing what the children see, and I can't unsee it now."

Before Fadi could respond, a sound cut through the apartment—high and thin and terrible. A child's scream, coming from Noor's room.

Amal was down the hallway before she was aware of moving, her bare feet slapping against the tiles, her heart hammering in her chest. She threw open Noor's door and found her daughter sitting upright in bed, her eyes wide and glassy, her small body trembling.

"Noor! Habibi, what's wrong?"

The girl didn't seem to see her. She was staring at something beyond the room, beyond the walls, beyond the world that Amal could perceive. Her lips were moving, forming words that took a moment to resolve into sound.

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