Vision in Red by Sajjad Rasool - HTML preview

Vision in Red

"I was in the car," she whispered. "I was in the car, and they wouldn't stop shooting, and the girl was crying for her mama, and he was watching, he was watching the whole time, he didn't do anything, he just watched —"

Amal gathered her daughter into her arms, pressing the small body against her chest, feeling the flutter of Noor's heart like a trapped bird. "It was a dream, habibi. Just a bad dream. You're safe. You're home."

"It wasn't a dream." Noor's voice was flat, emptied of everything except certainty. "I was there. I felt it. The bullets going through the metal, and the glass breaking, and the girl trying to hide under the seat, and he was just watching, Mama. He was right there, and he didn't blink, not once."

Fadi appeared in the doorway, his face pale. "What happened?"

"Nightmare," Amal said, but the word felt wrong in her mouth. Insufficient. A nightmare was something you woke from and forgot. This was something else—something that had reached into her daughter's mind and shown her things that no child should ever see.

She held Noor until the trembling stopped, until the girl's breathing slowed, until the glazed look faded from her eyes and she was just Noor again—small and sleepy and confused.

"Can I sleep in your bed tonight, Mama?"

"Of course, habibi. Of course."

They walked back to the master bedroom together, Noor's small hand warm in Amal's. Fadi trailed behind them, his footsteps heavy with questions he wasn't asking.

It was only later, after Noor had fallen asleep between them and Fadi's breathing had slowed into the rhythm of rest, that Amal noticed the paper clutched in her daughter's other hand.

Another drawing. Done sometime during the night, while Amal was in the kitchen studying the first eighteen.

She carefully extracted it from Noor's grip and held it up to the thin light leaking through the curtains.

The school. Noor's school, rendered in her simple but recognizable style—the two-story building with its pale yellow walls, the tree in the courtyard, the playground with its rusted swings.

And surrounding it, standing at every corner, filling the streets, crowding the rooftops, red-eyed figures with their too-long weapons and their dark, stained hands.

Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds.

All watching the school.

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