Vision in Red by Sajjad Rasool - HTML preview

Vision in Red

"Baba, did you see any of the watchers today?"

Fadi turned to look at his daughter. "The what?"

"The watchers. The men who don't blink. They stand at the places where bad things happen." Noor continued drawing as she spoke, her voice matter-of-fact. "There's probably a lot of them at the clinic now. A lot of new places for them to stand."

The kitchen fell silent. Fadi's face had gone pale. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again.

"Noor, that's... that's not a nice thing to say."

"It's not nice," Noor agreed. "But it's true. The children who died today—if no one remembers their names, the watchers get to keep them. That's how it works."

Fadi looked at Amal, his expression caught somewhere between terror and confusion. "What is she talking about?"

Amal met his eyes. "I'll explain after dinner. But right now—" She took a breath. "Right now, I need you to do something for me. Tomorrow, when you go back to the clinic, find out the names of those children. All of them. The ones who died and the ones who survived. Write them down. Don't let them become just numbers."

"Why?"

"Because that's how we fight back," Amal said. "I didn't understand it before, but I'm starting to now. The children are right. They've been right all along. We have to see. We have to remember. We have to refuse to look away, no matter how much it hurts."

When dinner was ready, they ate in near-silence, the sound of their spoons against their bowls filling the space where conversation should have been. Noor finished first, pushed her bowl away, and went back to her drawing without being asked.

After a while, Amal went to look.

The drawing was the school again. The same two-story building, the same tree, the same playground. But there were changes from the version Noor had made the night before.

The red-eyed figures were still there, surrounding the building on all sides. But now they were closer. Their ranks had thickened. The space between them and the school walls had shrunk to almost nothing.

And in the corner of the drawing, in Noor's careful, childish handwriting, was a phrase:

THEY GROW WHEN WE FORGET.

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