Vision in Red by Sajjad Rasool - HTML preview

Children of Olive

anymore. They were everywhere—in bedrooms, around schools, on rooftops and street corners and the edges of dreams.

And the children saw them all.

The lockdown alarm sounded at 11:47 AM.

It was a sound Amal had heard before —a loud, rhythmic tone that echoed through the hallways, signaling all teachers to secure their classrooms and move the children to interior spaces. Lockdowns happened sometimes, when there was fighting nearby or when the soldiers decided to close the roads or when something happened that the authorities didn't explain.

The children knew what to do without being told.

They rose from their desks in orderly lines, their small faces calm, their movements practiced. They had done this before. They had done this many times. At six years old, they already knew how to respond to the sound of danger approaching.

That was the first horror —the way they moved without panic, without questions, without needing to be reassured that everything would be okay. This was simply part of their world.

Amal led them to the interior hallway, away from the windows, away from the doors, away from anything that could shatter or splinter or let the outside in. Other classes were doing the same—a stream of children flowing through the corridors, guided by teachers whose faces were masks of false calm.

"Sit against the wall," Amal instructed. "Quietly. We'll play a game while we wait."

But no one wanted to play games.

The children sat in their row, their backs to the wall, their knees drawn up to their chests. They looked at each other, they looked at the ceiling, they looked at the shadows gathered in the corners of the hallway. They did not look at Amal.

In the next classroom's alcove, she could see Abu Youssef's third-graders doing the same thing. Their teacher stood at the edge of the group, his hands clasped behind his back, his face a mask of calm that didn't reach his eyes. When he caught Amal looking, he shook his head slightly—a gesture that said I don't know what's happening and stay calm and we're all in this together without speaking a word.

The younger teachers were less practiced at hiding their fear. Samira, who taught the kindergarteners, was sitting with her children, her arm around the smallest one, her lips moving in what might have been prayers or might have been promises. The physical education teacher, whose name Amal could never remember, was pacing at the end of the hallway, his eyes fixed on the door, his hands clenching and unclenching.

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