Vision in Red by Sajjad Rasool - HTML preview

Vision in Red

Amal opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. What was there to say? That she had heard them? That they had sung words about watchers and blood and standing forever? That the melody was still echoing in her head, lodged there like a splinter she couldn't remove?

The all-clear signal sounded at 2:52 PM. Three hours and five minutes after the lockdown began. The children rose from their places, stretched, complained about being hungry and needing to use the bathroom. They were ordinary again —or as ordinary as children in Falestinam could ever be.

But Amal could not forget the song. Could not unhear the words. Could not escape the feeling that something had changed during those three hours, some boundary had been crossed, some door had been opened that could not be closed again.

She found Yasmin after the school day ended.

The psychologist's office was on the ground floor, tucked into a corner of the building that was always in shadow. The door was closed, but Amal could see light leaking through the crack at the bottom.

She knocked.

"Come in."

Yasmin was sitting at her desk, surrounded by stacks of paper that reached nearly to her shoulders. Her dark hair was escaping from its pins, her eyes were red-rimmed, and her coffee cup sat untouched, its contents long since gone cold.

"Amal." She sounded unsurprised. "Close the door. Sit down. You're not going to like what I have to tell you."

Amal sat in the chair across from the desk, the one usually reserved for the children. It was too small for her—her knees pressed against the edge of the desk, her back cramped by the child-sized seat. But somehow, that discomfort felt appropriate. She was entering a child's world now, seeing things through the eyes of the small and the vulnerable.

"The drawings," she said. "You've been collecting them too."

"For months." Yasmin gestured at the stacks of paper. "Every child I see. Every session. It's the same thing, over and over. The soldier with the red eyes. The hands that look like they've been dipped in blood. The places where violence happened. They draw them, Amal. Every single one of them draws the same thing."

"But that's impossible."

"That's what I thought. At first." Yasmin pulled a file from one of the stacks and slid it across the desk. "Then I started calling colleagues. Other psychologists. Other schools. Other cities."

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