Vision in Red by Sajjad Rasool - HTML preview

Vision in Red

The sounds from outside grew louder.

What had started as distant rumbling was now close enough to feel in the bones—the roar of heavy vehicles passing the school, the staccato rhythm of what was definitely gunfire now, the shouts in a language Amal didn't understand but recognized as commands. Someone was giving orders out there. Someone was directing an operation. The school was in the middle of it.

A window shattered somewhere on the upper floor. The sound was bright and terrible, a cascade of breaking glass that made several children flinch. But none of them screamed. None of them cried. They had been trained for this moment since they were old enough to walk. They knew that noise meant danger, and danger meant stillness, and stillness meant survival.

Amal's heart was pounding so hard she could feel it in her throat. She wanted to run. She wanted to gather Noor—wherever Noor was in this maze of hallways and huddled children—and run as far and as fast as her legs could carry them. But there was nowhere to run to. Outside was chaos. Inside was silence. And somewhere between the two, twenty-three first-graders were sitting in a row, their backs against the wall, waiting for the world to decide whether they would live or die.

Outside, the sounds began. Distant at first—the rumble of heavy vehicles, the shouts of men, the crack-crack-crack of something that might have been gunfire or might have been something else. The sounds grew louder, closer, resolving into a symphony of violence that made the walls tremble and the fluorescent lights flicker overhead.

The children did not cry. The children did not scream. They simply sat in their row, still and silent, their eyes fixed on nothing.

And then, softly, one of them began to hum.

Amal didn't recognize the melody at first. It was slow and minor-keyed, with a rhythm that rose and fell like breathing. After a moment, another child joined in. Then another. And another.

Within minutes, all twenty-three children were humming the same song.

Their voices blended into a single sound—high and thin and strangely beautiful, like wind blowing through empty rooms. The melody wound its way through the corridor, filling the space between the gunfire and the shouts, creating a pocket of stillness in the chaos outside.

Amal felt the hair rise on the back of her neck.

Abu Youssef had stepped forward, his face pale, his hands falling to his sides. "What are they singing?" he asked, his voice barely audible above the drone of small voices.

"I don't know." Amal shook her head. "I've never heard it before."

38