Vision in Red by Sajjad Rasool - HTML preview

Children of Olive

Amal opened the file. Inside were dozens of drawings—no, hundreds—arranged in careful chronological order. The same figure, rendered in crayon and pencil and marker, by hands that ranged from three years old to thirteen. Children from Gaza and Ramallah and Jenin and Nablus. Children from refugee camps and villages and cities. Children who had never met, never spoken, never shared their nightmares with anyone except the adults who collected their drawings and filed them away.

All of them drawing the same thing.

"It started about eight months ago," Yasmin said. "Right after the offensive in the north. A few children at first, then more, then—" She spread her hands helplessly. "Now it's everywhere. Every treatment center, every school, every clinic that works with traumatized children. They're all seeing the same thing."

"The watchers."

"The children call them by different names. The men who don't blink. The ones who stand at the places. The soldiers who aren't soldiers anymore." Yasmin's voice was steady, clinical, but Amal could hear the fear underneath. "But they're describing the same phenomenon. The same figures. The same behavior."

"They stand where violence happened."

"Yes."

"They watch without blinking."

"Yes."

"They get stronger when people forget."

Yasmin was silent for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was barely above a whisper.

"One of my patients—a boy from Jenin, seven years old—told me something last week. He said the watchers aren't just watchers. They're collectors. They stand at the places where children died, and they wait. And when no one remembers the children anymore, when the names are forgotten and the stories fade, the watchers... take them."

"Take them where?"

"I don't know. Neither did he. But he drew this."

Yasmin slid another paper across the desk. It showed a soldier with red eyes standing in front of what looked like a door—a massive door, set into nothing, floating in empty space. Behind the door, barely visible, were rows and rows of small figures. Children. Standing in perfect lines, their eyes the same red as the soldier's, their faces blank and empty.

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