First published in Redline: Chicago Horror Stories (2025). Reprinted with the permission of From Beyond Press.

From her good eye, the old woman regarded us with suspicion. The other eye was covered by a worn leather patch. Two scars ran from it, like twin streams down her wrinkled face. My father nudged me forward. “Say hello to your grandmother,” Baba said in English. 

She was actually my great-grandmother’s cousin, a woman who had never married, had no children of her own. But it didn’t matter. To me, she was an old lady I was supposed to be polite to. I leaned in and gave her a hasty kiss on each of her papery cheeks. She smelled like orange zest and mildew. My nostrils twitched. 

“Salaam, Sitti,” I said. My Arabic was thick, but respectable for moments like this. I was meeting a woman so ancient she seemed to have fallen out of a museum exhibit. Gray wisps escaped her white veil. She wore one of those old-fashioned, cross-stitched thawbs that my mother wore to weddings. Her back curved like a dented spoon. 

The last time my family saw Sitti Marwa was a decade ago. I was only six years old and the old woman had scared me even then. There’s a photograph of the two of us pasted in some long-forgotten album. I was sitting in her lap, bawling, my eyes two frightened slits. She was staring at the camera, an impassive expression like the one she had on now as she studied me. I was sixteen years old, far from that mewling child, but still as scared. Only this time I could take a few safe steps away. 

Sitti Marwa kept her one eye trained on me as if I were prey—or perhaps she thought I was the threat. My mother gently took her hand, which made the old woman flinch. “This way, ya Hajja,” Mama said, as if guiding a small child who was ready to throw a tantrum. 

Sitti Marwa allowed herself to be led into our family room. But before they reached the threshold, she yanked her hand free and darted toward a portrait on the foyer wall, leading up the staircase. 

“Bayti! Bayti!” she cried, straightening up for the first time. “My house! My house!” She touched the glass protecting a framed sepia-colored photograph. I’d passed it every day, going up and down the staircase to the upper floor. I paid it no more attention than the paint itself on the wall, or the crystal chandelier above our heads. 

I knew the story behind it. This is our ancestral home, my father had solemnly explained when I was much younger. Three generations of our family lived here.

Did you live there, Baba? I’d asked, unable to fathom what a generation was. Nor could I appreciate the sadness of his one-syllable response: No. And then he squeezed me close and said, Inshallah one day you’ll see it. 

It looked like the other relics on display around our house. The gilded rendering of the Dome of the Rock. A map of Palestine carved from olive wood. Coffee trays inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Random shrines to a native land I’d never seen. The farthest I’d ever gone was to Disney World when I was seven. 

Now we all stared as Sitti Marwa traced the stone-brick house with an orchard peeking behind it. “Bayti!” she repeated, her voice dipping. Then her shoulders began to quake and she sobbed. “Bayti! When will I return to you?” 

It took both Mama and Baba to unscrew the old woman from the spot in front of that portrait. I watched dumbly as they steered her toward my old playroom where Mama had set her up—a flight of stairs to the spare room was too much for Sitti Marwa. Baba assembled a daybed and added a tray table with water bottles and snack packets of mixed nuts though I doubted the old woman could chew much with her remaining teeth. 

“She is fine,” my mother tossed over her shoulder at me. She gave me that fake smile indicating Sitti Marwa was far from fine. She seemed hysterical as they dragged her away and shut the door. 

I stood in front of the photograph. I remembered something about it being the only image of the house someone had recovered and imparted to my father before I was even born. The house was actually a backdrop to a wedding procession, which was the main focus. A single car with a groom and bride stuffed into the backseat drove along while the rest of the wedding party and its revelers clapped behind it, their mouths open in mid-verse. I imagined high-pitched ululations among the women, each taking her turn, each louder than the previous one. 

According to my father, the shutters of the house were actually blue. And you see that balcony? he’d pointed. It is called a barranda. That is where my father—your grandfather—played marbles on hot summer nights. The entrance to the house was shrouded in flowering foliage, the color of their petals unreadable in monochrome. 

I glanced back at the playroom. What was it like to see your home confined to a frame with no hope of returning to it? The whole thing weirded me out. 

I slunk up the stairs. My cat, Olive, followed, scampering past me to my room. Even she, an orange and black tabby, was perturbed by the arrival of this stranger. She leaped onto my bed and I closed the door behind me, muffling the whimpers of the old woman. 

Because of our new houseguest, my spring break had taken a rather grim turn. I would have rather gone to Wisconsin Dells than be forced to accompany them to all the tourist traps in the city. I took some quiet satisfaction in the old woman’s lackluster reaction to everything my father still marveled at. 

Sitti Marwa was unimpressed with the Willis Tower, which Baba kept referring to as the Sears Tower as his generation always would. Or as he, in his thick accent, called the “See-rus” as if it were some prehistoric creature piercing the sky. Mama quickly advised against the Sky Deck. Instead, Baba drove us to Navy Pier and snapped pictures of me and Mama posed on either side of Sitti Marwa, who was unsmiling, the gray-blue waters surging behind us. She refused to ride the giant Ferris wheel—I didn’t blame her. I was terrified of heights, too. 

People passed us by, throwing curious glances at Sitti Marwa. Children stared longer until their parents tugged them along. She was like a carnival spectacle, her long white veil trailing behind her. Her eye patch was ominous and her black thawb needed hemming, but she seemed unperturbed. 

From time to time, she pulled a linen cloth from her chest pocket and coughed into it. I felt bad for her though at the same time she creeped me out. When she caught me staring, she stared back with her one eye. It was clear and unclouded by age or sickness. I quickly looked away.

At home, she shuffled to the playroom and closed the door. I could hear her in the old rocking chair my mother couldn’t bear to get rid of, the one she had sat in as I played with my blocks and baby dolls. 

Now when I put my ear to the door, all I heard was creaking. 

I spent the last night of my break in my darkened room. The only light came from my phone screen. And the only sounds were those annoying windchimes suspended on our neighbors’ wooden deck, Olive’s deep purring as I rubbed her belly with my free hand, and the bloop alert every time I sent a text or received a message. 

It had gotten out that my best friend Lena had a crush on Aydin Al-Massari who drove a souped up Jeep Wrangler, and that he actually liked Maha Basheer, a sophomore. They were spotted at a boba tea café. 

Times like these I was grateful no one knew how long I’d been crushing on Sameer, who was the only arrabi boy I knew who enjoyed taking AP science classes as much as me and not simply for college credit. His father owned a Middle Eastern restaurant though it was dubbed “Mediterranean” when it was featured on Windy City Live and Check, Please! But you wouldn’t guess it if you met Sameer. He was a quiet kid—like me. Uninterested in teenage drama—like me. This year, he sat across from me at the lab table in AP Physics. My hands got clammy every time he walked past my desk and I pretended I was checking my phone. 

“Hi, Janna,” he’d say. His hair was cut close to his scalp. His eyes were honey-brown.

“Hi, Sam,” I’d say, trying to play it cool, my cheeks searing beneath my long, straight-ironed bangs. And that was the extent of our pleasantries until we paired up for labs. 

Everyone wanted to be Sameer’s partner. He didn’t complain if his group was lazy and played video games on their school-issued tablets instead of documenting evidence for the weekly lab reports we had to submit to Mr. Njoku, our physics teacher. 

I loved Mr. N. On the walls of his classroom, he displayed posters of prominent African scientists I’d never heard of: Thierry Zomahoun. Noble Banadda. Wilfred Ndifon. He’d won Teacher of the Year every term since I was a freshman and I was thrilled to be in his class. With Sameer. After the bell rang, when every other kid was dashing out the door, already on their phones, Sameer lingered to talk with Mr. Njoku about the lesson that day or something he’d read on a science blog. I tried to stall, slowly slipping my textbook inside my backpack then gradually sliding off my stool as if I was in a stop-motion film. God—I was lame!

But as soon as I reached Sameer at our teacher’s giant lab table where he conducted demonstrations or lectured, I lost my nerve to wait for him to finish so we could walk a stretch of hallway to the stairwell before parting ways to different classes on different floors. I trudged to Gym and Sameer, oblivious to my desire, would head to English. (I knew his entire schedule). At least he didn’t have to see me sweat and look all gross. 

Ayden is conceited, someone was typing in the chat. 

And he only likes white girls, Zainab added, a desperate contradiction to the clear boba tea café evidence that was recorded on Snapchat. 

Then came a series of crying emojis from Lena. 

I was about to respond to ease my friend’s agony with the blue-people-hugging emoji when I saw it. 

Sparks beneath my door, like fireworks. 

“What the—” 

Olive hopped off my bed. She saw it, too. She was on high alert, her ears pointed and tail thwacking the carpeted floor. She pawed at the sparks like she was trying to catch the red dot of her laser toy I waved on the floor that drove her nuts. 

I followed her, clutching my phone. “Shoo, Olive!” 

She sprang away and I stuck my head out the door. 

The hallway was empty. I could hear Baba’s snoring from my parents’ bedroom on the other end. A snorting sound my older sister Aya liked to imitate. Like Mr. Snuffleupagus, we’d joke. I peered in the direction of her room across from mine. It had been vacant for almost two years while she was away at college. Silence. 

“God. I must be tired,” I muttered to myself and carefully closed my door. 

I settled back into my bed while Olive, her lean body taut, positioned herself like a sentry on the corner of the mattress, her attention fixated on the door. 

I grabbed my phone and thumbed the screen to life again. Another romantic rant had transpired in the seconds I looked away. Lena was rage-texting and I imagined her all alone in her room, wallowing in painful adolescent tears. Poor Lena! 

I sank against my pile of pillows, trying to catch up in the thread. And then it happened again! 

Yellow sparks danced beneath my door and this time my stomach sank. Olive was on her feet again, but this time she seemed to sense it wasn’t a game. She cowered in the corner where my hamper of dirty clothes was overflowing. It drove my mother crazy. She couldn’t understand why everything in my room seemed to reach critical mass before I did something about it. Half a dozen empty water bottles gathered on my dresser like bodies at a rave party, and a handful of candy wrappers were strewn across my night stand. Why, ya Janna, do you let things pile up? she always admonished. 

And now I wanted to call for her and didn’t care if I got in trouble for being up so late. It couldn’t be my imagination when Olive was also a witness.  

I stared at the sparks licking the floor. If I wasn’t so terrified, I would call them pretty, like flickering candles on a birthday cake. Or bursting stars. 

I took a deep breath, my sweaty hand clutching the doorknob. “Just do it,” I muttered. 

This time I stepped out into the hallway. The sparks were gone, but there was something else shining downstairs. I glanced at my parents’ door. Nothing. Olive was in my doorframe, deciding whether to accompany me on this midnight reconnaissance. She thought better of it and darted back into my room. I was on my own.

I slowly padded toward the landing, unaware I was on tip-toe like a kid about to commit a prank. Except I felt like I was the victim of some kind of weird joke. What the hell was going on?

The answer came as soon as I peered down the staircase. There was Sitti Marwa in a white linen underdress with long billowy sleeves. She was standing in front of the portrait of the house. Her gray hair was loose and flowed to the middle of her back. Something illuminated the image as if she was holding a flashlight to it. Only when she turned to look up at me did I see it. 

Her empty eye socket was a swirling ball of light, sparks glinting across her face. 

I stumbled backward. What the actual fuck! I must be dreaming. Or was I sleepwalking? 

She reached her hand out, summoning me. I slowly edged away from her—from that brilliant eye—back to my bedroom. 

I jumped under my blanket and pulled it over my head, listening. I must be dreaming. But as desperately as I wished it to be a nightmare, I was fully awake. 

“What the fuck!” I whispered then clamped a hand over my mouth. 

 There were footsteps climbing the stairs and then a shuffling of slippers. My mouth went dry. I wanted to call for my parents, but my scream wilted inside my throat. I snatched my blanket to my chest. 

It couldn’t be the old woman. She couldn’t climb those stairs. 

I peeked over my blanket. Light glowed beneath my door. And then darkness again. 

The next morning I was actually grateful for school to start again and I hurried out the door to catch my bus, avoiding the old woman. I hid behind my sunglasses, my sleep-deprived eyes shunning daylight. It would be hell today, but I would soldier through on two hours of sleep. 

“Hey! Posh!” a white middle-aged security guard called sarcastically to me. “Shades off in the building.” 

Who the hell is Posh? I wanted to yell back, but it wasn’t important. I had to figure out if I was losing my mind. 

Over the drone of lecturing teachers in each class, I replayed the previous night. Maybe it was too much caffeine. Or maybe what my mother had been threatening forever—my devices would blind me if I didn’t take breaks—had finally come to fruition. 

But Olive had seen it, too. And animals—especially felines—were the most intuitive creatures. 

So there had to be a logical reason. I racked my brain. In Physics, we’d studied Coulomb’s Law about electrostatic forces. When particles attract or repulse each other, electric charges occur.

Could that crazy fireball raging in Sitti Marwa’s eye be scientifically explained? But what was causing such a force? And how could she contain it inside her eye socket? Maybe I could record it and show Mr. Njoku and then he could—

“You okay, Janna?” 

It was Sameer. I was so locked up in my head that I had, for the first time, missed his usual greeting. He was pointing at my face. “What’s that?” 

I wasn’t sure what was more shocking: the fact that Sameer was actually looking closely at me or that he found my face disturbing. “What do you mean?” I managed to say. My ears burned and soon the flush of embarrassment would reach my cheeks. 

“Your eye. Did you hurt it?” he said.

“What are you talking about?” I pulled out my phone, and hit the camera button. It was already in selfie mode so I saw it immediately. Two thin, jagged scratches beneath my right eye. They looked like a pair of lightning bolts except they were red. “I dunno—I mean, I must have—” I was stammering. 

The bell rang and everyone shuffled to their lab stools, updates on their spring breaks cut short. 

“Welcome back, scientists,” Mr. Njoku announced. “Cell phones down, brains on.” 

I hopped off my lab stool and dashed past Mr. N., nearly knocking down a late straggler. “Watch it!” she hollered. 

“Miss Taweel!” Mr. N. called after me. But I didn’t stop until I made it to the girls’ washroom at the end of the long corridor. 

My heart thudded loudly in my ears. I stood in front of a sink and examined my face. I ran my fingers from the outer corner of my upper lid and down, just an inch-deep into my cheekbone. The twin scratches felt like dried blood. Like it had just happened. “What the fuck,” I whispered, my reflection turning pale. And then I realized! 

Olive! It had to be my cat! She must have been as freaked out as me. Maybe she’d climbed on top of me when I finally managed to fall asleep. 

I exhaled, realizing I’d been holding my breath. I felt woozy and clutched the steel basin of the sink. Oh, God! I better not faint! I quickly turned on the faucet and splashed water in my face. The coolness helped. I blinked liquid beads away and looked at my reflection again. 

The lightning-bolts were still there. 

I wished I could hide in the stall. I was so embarrassed. As if on cue, a security guard entered the washroom for her daily sweep. “Get to class, please.” She stood by the doorway. “Have a good day,” she said as I rushed past her. 

Back in class, Mr. N. was cool about my sudden exit and didn’t press me. He only nodded and jerked his chin at my lab table for me to settle in. 

“You okay?” Sameer whispered, his eyes flitting between me and the whiteboard where our teacher was writing the coefficient for friction: μ = F/N

“Where F is the frictional force and N is the normal force, yes?” Mr. N. reminded the class. 

“Yeah,” I whispered back to Sameer. “I’ll be fine.” But even I wasn’t convinced. 

At the lunch table, I tried hard to concentrate on the latest developments in Lena’s drama with Ayden. I could tell she was eager to move past my fake story about Olive getting feisty with me last night. 

“Hope that doesn’t leave a scar,” she said immediately. “Anyway. Ayden texted me last period—” 

A din of noise rose around me. Students laughing and talking, utensils clinking in metal bins, deans ordering us to buss our trays or else. I kept touching the scabs. Did Sitti Marwa do it? With that fireball eye? 

Lena shoved my shoulder. “Are you listening, Jan?” 

“Yes,” I said automatically, confirming I hadn’t heard a single word. 

“What’s up with you?” 

“Nothing, nothing,” I lied. “I didn’t get much sleep.”

“Oh,” she said. “So anyway, Ayden wants to meet me at…” 

I forced my attention on my friend without actually absorbing her rambling. I’d have to investigate this strange matter. I’d stay up tonight and record everything. According to a theory called cyclical recurrence, if it happened once, science dictated it was likely to happen again. 

On the bus ride home, I kept my glasses on and poked my finger under the frame, touching the small gashes as if expecting them to suddenly disappear as mysteriously as they’d formed. When I opened the garage door, I heard my sister’s voice, loud and cheerful. Aya was home for her spring break. Maybe she’d get to see the freak show tonight if it happened again and I wouldn’t feel all alone. 

“Look who is home,” my mother crooned in English like I’d been the one away at college. My mother was always good at making me feel included no matter what. 

“What’s up, Jan?” Aya said. She was wearing an oversized college sweatshirt and leggings. As much as she irked me, I had to admit how pretty my sister was. I always felt like such a runt beside her. “What happened there, Scarface?” 

I glanced at Sitti Marwa who was also seated at the kitchen table, hands clasped in her lap. Her tea cup was half-empty, but her slice of a burned version of hareesa cake was untouched. Poor Mama. She was not a great cook, let alone a precise baker. If I was in the mood, I wouldn’t have minded and would’ve scraped off the charred bottom of my slice with traces of pineapple juice, and happily eaten it. 

The old woman fixed her eye on me. 

My fingers darted to my face. “I dunno,” I said, shrugging. “Olive.” I kept my responses short and sweet, suppressing my fear. 

“Let me see, habibti.” My mother held my chin and examined my eye. I could smell the fresh mint leaves she dropped into the teapot before serving. “Alhamdullah, it is not deep. Go put some Neosporin on it. Or it will scar.” 

Grateful for the command, I sprung up the stairs to my room, Sitti Marwa’s eye boring into my back. 

Later that night, Aya burst into my room without knocking—typical of her. “What are you doin’ hiding up here?” she said, hopping onto my bed. She reached to pet Olive, but Olive sprung from the mattress, eluding her grasp. Olive knew what was up.

“Homework,” I said, though I’d been sitting cross-legged, thumbing my phone for the last hour. 

“Sitti Marwa is wild, huh?” Aya said.

I sat up. “What do you mean?” Had she noticed the strange energy that surrounded the old woman like a force field? 

“She’s like a hundred years old,” Aya chuckled. “And that eye patch!”

“Yeah,” I said, forcing a smile. “How did her eye—I mean—what happened to it?” 

Aya bounced off my bed and went to my dresser. She snooped through my stuff with her finger, held up a rubber wrist band then dropped it again. I hated her pawing at my things but I held my tongue. “Um, Baba said she, like, got poked in the eye,” Aya said. “By a rooster or something, right?” 

I shook my head, but my sister didn’t see it since she was still touching my stuff. She held up a scrunchy and looped it over her wrist. “Can I have this?”

“Yeah,” I said, trying not to sound annoyed. I needed information. Facts. Anything that could help me make sense of everything I’d witnessed since the arrival of our great grandmother’s cousin. “But—did anything else happen to her?” 

“You mean besides being disfigured and never getting married?” Aya huffed as if such tragedy had escaped my naïve sensibilities. 

I would have to try a direct tack with my sister. “There’s something weird about her,” I began. 

“What do you mean?” Aya said, hopping back onto my bed. She was scrolling Instagram, her lips curling into a small smile then straightening again when she was unamused or miffed by someone’s post. 

“I mean, like—” I spluttered. I realized I’d have to just come out with it. There was no way to describe something so peculiar except by telling it straight. “Her eye. Sitti Marwa’s eye is—” I hesitated. “—possessed.” I cringed hearing the words out loud. But then I was relieved. Now it was out there for someone else. It wasn’t my secret anymore. 

“What are you talking about?” Aya grinned. “You know, you should be honored she’s visiting. She—wait a second!” Her eyes widened. Then she clasped my knee. 

Hope surged inside my chest. She’d noticed something was completely off, too! 

“OMG!” Aya cried. “I’m gonna interview her! This will be the coolest oral history project! My Poli-Sci professor will love this…” 

I didn’t hear the rest of Aya’s plan. She didn’t believe me. Which meant others were unlikely to believe me. 

I was on my own. And tonight I’d get to the bottom of it. 

It was funny how much you discovered in utter darkness. The objects in my room took on an eerie presence, their edges shape-shifting before turning sharp again. I silenced my phone, muted my chats, and kept guard from my bed. Olive was curled into a ring of fur in my lap, but like me, she was not asleep. By one o’clock, even Aya was finally snoozing in her bedroom across the hall from me. 

I sipped Red Bull and let my mind drift to Sameer. He’d been genuinely concerned about me, as if seeing me for the first time. Something fluttered in my stomach. Maybe he and I could meet up for boba tea—actually, no way. I didn’t want to be the subject of scrutiny and jokes. Maybe we could meet at the Museum of Science and Industry—I mean, if he didn’t think it was lame now that we were older. I still loved it. And so did Baba who’d been taking me ever since I was six years old. My favorite exhibit was weather systems. I got to see the inner workings of a tornado and it was the coolest thing ever. The vortex of wind blew in my hair while I watched the wind tunnel change direction, then increase its speed and altitude. I squeezed Baba’s hand—not in fear, but in sheer delight for this incredible force of nature. Maybe that’s when I was hooked on science. Everything scary to me had an explanation, a reason for happening. 

Sameer would appreciate that. I could ask him what his first science moment was and then we could—

A noise cut off my silly thoughts. Olive stood at attention before I sat up. We both cocked our ears toward the door. And then it happened. Tiny bursting stars. I fumbled my phone and it took three tries before I could unlock it. I approached the door and began recording. 

“Unexplained disturbance,” I whispered, then winced. I sounded so dumb. I shut up. The evidence would speak for itself. 

I slowly turned the knob and stepped into the hallway. I creeped toward the landing. 

And there she was. Sitti Marwa in her linen underdress. The photograph illuminated. Her craggly finger was tracing the stone house protected by the glass frame. My hand was shaking so badly I almost dropped my phone. But I kept recording and took a step closer, the floor creaking beneath my bare feet. 

She turned at the sound and I saw it again. A swirling galaxy of light, like some sort of tunnel. And it beckoned me closer. Despite my terror, I slowly padded down the stairs, still recording, gripping my phone in both hands. I was a scientist. I must not be afraid, I told myself. 

When I reached her, she pulled my phone down so that I could see her face without the obstruction of a small screen. Before I could shriek, she clamped her hands on my shoulders and her fiery eye socket enthralled me. Those bursting stars became radiant ribbons of light and they were pulling me in, a magnetic force tugging at the core of my body. 

Then suddenly, I was no longer standing in the foyer of my house. I felt light and heavy all at once, my limbs my own, but I had no control over them. It was like I’d been cast into outer space, without gravity to contain me. Nothing I’d ever learned or seen or heard could’ve prepared me for this. And before I could begin to interpret what was happening to me, I was still again. 

It was night. A dry heat warmed my cold skin. My legs were wobbly, but I didn’t tumble over. I was standing in front of a house. A stone house. Sitti Marwa’s house. The shutters were actually turquoise in this moonlight and I could see a few windows had been shattered, shards of glass glittering on the rocky ground. I was still barefoot but felt nothing as I walked toward the entrance, a bougainvillea bush forming a half-arc above me. Crickets hummed and I heard a distant braying. The heavy fragrance of a flower wafted toward me, and I somehow knew its name: jasmine. The branches of a lemon tree swayed slightly, their shadows dancing along the front of the house. 

Everything the photograph at home had not captured was alive here and I was in it. I reached out my hand to pluck a lemon—I was suddenly desperate to inhale its citrus wonder—when a series of loud cracking sounds broke the still of the night.  

I startled and ran through an open door to see what was happening. Inside the stone house was a family. I didn’t know them but they looked familiar. Was it Baba’s father? My grandfather? He and the others were being herded outdoors by men holding automatic weapons but they weren’t soldiers. Were they some kind of militia? A few women were sobbing and children were whimpering, their fingers interlaced with their mother’s. 

As I watched them leave, a girl appeared from nowhere and pounced on one of the men who was pointing his weapon at the children’s backs. In one swift motion, he knocked her to the floor. A butcher knife fell from her small hand. He pinned her down. Another man plucked up the knife and plunged it deep into her eye socket. 

Except it was my eye socket, too! 

I yelped at the searing pain, white-hot like a poker. Then an awful scarlet tidal wave blinded me. I couldn’t see through my right eye—it was gone, but this didn’t diminish the sheer agony of my empty socket, every severed nerve throbbing with rage. 

The men laughed as they dragged me across the limestone floor and out the door. My toes scraped the rocky ground and kicked up dust. Before flinging me away, the men kicked me, each vicious pummel a tiny prickle compared to the fire burning my eye. They shouted at me in a language that wasn’t Arabic. They shouted as if I were the trespasser and not them with their combat boots and civilian clothes. 

Through my lonely eye, I came upon other bodies outside the stone house. A few were moving, rising to their feet. A few lay as still as the night after the machine guns ripped through them. I saw and saw and saw more than a single eye should ever absorb. I saw so much that all my other senses were blunted. A man and a woman, faces blood-streaked, their chest wounds looked like an animal had mauled their flesh. A child—was it a girl or boy? I couldn’t tell from the way their body was splayed across the ground. 

I quickly understood that some of us survived and we were being ordered away from the stone house, that our lives were our rewards if we left immediately. 

Someone lifted my body and before I could ask where he was taking me, I was back in my bedroom, gripping my phone. I jolted up. My t-shirt was drenched in sweat. My fingers shot to my eye. It was there but the scabs were gone. My body was safe. There were no bruises on my arms or thighs, no tender wounds. 

“Mama!” I screamed. “Mama!” I leapt from my bedroom and ran down the hallway. But my parents weren’t there. I skidded back to the landing. Dawn broke through the arched window, the crystals of the chandelier catching the light. I could hear voices on the first floor and I flew down the stairs. 

The door to my old playroom was open. Baba was talking and I heard muffled crying. Was it Mama? I slowed down, a sudden dread sinking my stomach. Aya was there, too, and she was saying something comforting. 

Baba emerged, his phone to his ear. “Salaam, Yaseen,” he was saying to his brother. He didn’t notice me yet. “I have some bad news. Hajja Marwa has passed away.” And then he caught sight of me and hurried to hold me in a kind of half-hug while he still spoke into his phone. 

I wriggled free and entered the playroom. It appeared strange to me now. The old woman’s black shawl and threadbare thawb hanging over the old rocking chair was incongruous with the bright yellow paint. 

And there she was. On the daybed. She was unmoving, her long hair framed her face. It was as impassive in death as it was in life. Someone had removed the eye patch and I saw it. The sealed space where her eye had once been. The scars began beneath her brow line and dipped into the empty socket that curved like a small bowl.

 Before my mother could intercept me, I ran to the old woman’s side. “I saw it!” I cried in Arabic, dropping to my knees. “I saw your house! I saw you! I saw what they did to you!” 

“May the Lord keep evil far from us!” my mother said, pulling me away. “She’s dead, my love. Allah yarhamha. God have mercy on her soul.”

Aya tried to comfort me. “She lived a long life, Jan. She—” 

But I pulled away from their hands that tried to hold me back. “I saw you,” I whispered into Sitti Marwa’s ear. “I saw you.” 

For a moment, a soft light glowed beneath the sealed skin.  

The burial and ceremonial azza were a blur. I sat between my mother and sister as the faithful from our mosque bade their condolences. The women on our side of the assembly hall spoke in low voices, their conversations drifting away from the old woman to their own lives. Lena and a few of our friends came and I was sure I said something when they hugged me, but I couldn’t remember. 

When I finally checked my phone, there were a dozen texts, offering me condolences. One was from an unfamiliar number. 

Hello, Janna. It’s Saleem from school. 

I’m sorry to hear about your grandmother. 

I hope to see you soon. 

There was no emoji and he spelled out every word. Tears welled in my eyes. 

And then I remembered. The recording. I swiped my screen and pulled up the gallery. I thumbed to the most recent images and clicked. 

The video was of me, in selfie mode. I checked again. There was no recording of Sitti Marwa in front of the portrait. I swiped the video in reverse. I was coming down the stairs. There was no sound, only light illuminating the terror on my face. 

At home that night, everyone was exhausted from the funeral rites and fell fast asleep. Except for me. I sat in my bed, Olive in my lap, and I stroked her. She rolled onto her back, signaling her content. The house creaked as it settled. I heard the howl of a coyote in the distance. I was wide awake, waiting until I saw it. 

This light was much dimmer as if the stars were imploding into a black hole. Still it glowed beneath my door. Olive scampered from me and I hurried down the stairs and stood in front of the portrait of Sitti Marwa’s house. But it was no longer day in the photo and the wedding procession had disappeared. A crescent moon hung above the roof. I could still make out everything in full bloom at the entrance—the bougainvillea, the lemon tree. They were now dipped in nighttime shadows. 

My eyes roved over the stone house. Everything was peaceful. The windows were unbroken. On the second floor beside the balcony, the turquoise-blue shutters were thrown open. 

In one of the windows, there was a light, softly framing a young girl.