Hear her cry!

by LightinMind

Rated: 18+ · Short Story · Drama · #2356019

Fatima's voice is singing out from the streets and prisons of Iran...

The cell smelled of damp concrete and bleach. Fatima sat on the thin mattress, her wrists resting in her lap, the bruise from the plastic cuffs still purple. The barred window let in a pale rectangle of afternoon light.

Outside, a door clanged. Boots approached, a familiar rhythm. She knew who it was. The guard who entered was young, barely older than her. Dark hair, stern expression, the green uniform of the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps). But the eyes were the same ones she remembered from quiet afternoons at the tea shop near school.

“Fatima,” he said.

“Ali.”

He shut the door behind him. For a moment neither spoke. The silence was full of memory. Finally he pulled up the metal chair and sat opposite her.

“You shouldn’t have been there,” he said quietly.

"You murdered my family!"

Ali looked away.

The protests had begun two weeks earlier, first whispers, then crowds, then whole streets filled with shouting voices.

*Woman, Life, Freedom.*

Fatima could still see it when she closed her eyes. Minab’s evening air had smelled of dust and car exhaust. People were everywhere, young women waving scarves, students chanting, old men standing silently with tears on their cheeks. There was dancing in the streets and hope for a new tomorrow.

Her father had held her hand as they walked. “We walk in peace,” he’d said.

Her mother had squeezed her other hand. Her younger brother walked ahead, turning back every few seconds with a grin. They had been afraid, but something stronger had carried them forward. Hope. And faith.

They had found it only a year earlier, secretly reading an old tattered Bible with a small house church group. The message of forgiveness had felt like sunlight after years of shadow.

But the city didn’t tolerate such light. IRGC units in dark helmets blocked the path of the marchers..

Fatima remembered the crack of gunfire like boards splitting. Someone screamed. People ran.

Her brother fell first. She saw him spin, confusion on his face, then collapse on the pavement. Her mother screamed his name.

Another shot. Her father stepped forward as if to shield them.

Another shot. Her mother dropped beside her.

Three bodies on the asphalt. Then holding her mother, her tears mixed with the blood.

Fatima’s throat closed as the memory returned in sharp color.

Ali was watching her carefully.

“You’re crying,” he said.

“I’m remembering.”

“You people brought chaos.”

“My family marched for truth, the sun of freedom on our faces,” she said. “We danced on your lies and planted hope where you forbade it.”

“These were illegal protests.”

“They were prayers. Prayers for children searching through the trash for bread under polluted skies, for students whose minds should never have been imprisoned, dreaming of the future, for people who just want a normal life, a life where they can hold hands with the one they love and kiss them whenever they want. It was a prayer for freedom.”

His jaw tightened. “Your new faith has warped your mind, there is a time and place for all these things and not in public places, that is just immodest.”

She met his eyes. “Exactly, this is not the vision you hold for us. Yet we are not whispers but the storm. You tried to build a wall around our voices but the wind of our anger slipped through every crack.”

“I should report you.”

“But you haven’t.”

Ali leaned forward. “Fatima, this is madness. Christianity? Foreign lies. You used to understand.”

“Christ was here, in Persia, before Muhammad, before Ali, before the Supreme Leader. I never agreed with you about the twelfth Imam?”

His eyes hardened. “He will return,” Ali said firmly. “He will bring justice.”

“You’ve been waiting a long time, with the Supreme leader keeping his seat warm,” she replied quietly. “Waiting in shadows for a lie to become a truth.”

His hand slammed on the table. “It’s not a lie. ”

For a moment anger flickered across his face, then something else. Pain. “You need to be more careful with your words, people might hear. You were different before.”

“I did not know any better before. My eyes are open now.”

A guard shouted from the corridor. Ali stood. “You’re being reassigned,” he said stiffly. “A Muslim family. You’ll return to school.”

Fatima frowned. “Why?”

“Because you were not finished with that.”

She stared at him. “You arranged it.”

“I kept you out of worse places,” he said quietly.

“Or you put me somewhere you could watch me.”

Ali didn’t answer.

As he reached the door she spoke again. “You killed them.”

His shoulders stiffened. “Orders,” he said.

And he left her alone with her ghosts.

The morning had been ordinary.

Ali stood guard near the wall of the compound, watching the girls file into the school building next door. Backpacks, laughter, teenage arguments about exams.

Fatima walked among them. A headscarf covered her hair. She wore a long loose tunic, pants, and practical shoes, her expression serious and guarded. The Muslim family assigned to her kept a close eye.

But Ali kept a closer one. He told himself it was duty. He didn’t believe that. He still remembered their arguments from before everything broke apart. They used to walk home together after class.

Fatima had always challenged him. “You really believe the twelfth Imam is hiding somewhere?” she’d asked once.

“He’s not hiding,” Ali had said. “He’s in occultation.”

“That sounds like hiding, in theological jargon.”

“He will return when the world is ready.”

“And until then we wait?”

“We prepare and we fight for the liberation of Jerusalem and to undo the work of the Great Satan and its ally Israel. We are the arc of resistance against imperialistic evil.”

She had smiled sadly.

“My faith says someone already came. Someone better. Someone who knew how to treat women properly.”

That had been the beginning of the end. Now she barely looked at him when they crossed paths. So why did he still care so deeply about her.

As he reflected on this there was a sudden flash of light. The ground shook. The explosion tore the air apart. The school building vanished in a burst of fire and concrete. Ali hit the ground as shockwaves slammed against the wall behind him.

Dust swallowed everything. Screams. When the ringing in his ears faded he heard the worst sound of all: Silence where the classroom windows had been.

“God…” he whispered.

Ali scrambled to his feet.The school was rubble. Girls’ backpacks burned in the street. He ran toward the wreckage.

“Fatima” he yelled, as if she were the only one in the school.

A faint voice answered from beneath collapsed concrete. Ali dug with bare hands. Steel chards tore his palms open.

Under a slab he saw a familiar face. Fatima. Blood streaked her forehead. One arm bent wrong beneath debris.

Her eyes fluttered open. “Ali?” she whispered.

He lifted the slab with another soldier’s help and dragged her free. Behind them the ruins smoked. Bodies lay everywhere. Dozens of them.

Fatima stared at the destruction. “My classmates,” she murmured.

Ali carried her toward the ambulance. She was trembling but conscious.

“Why are you helping me? This love does not come from the people you serve.”

Ali had no answer. He felt insignificant compared to the piles of dead children behind him.

She gripped his sleeve weakly. “Ali… do you still think violence prepares the world for justice?”

He couldn’t look at her. For the first time in his life, he didn’t know what he believed.

Fatima floated somewhere between sleep and waking. She heard doors opening and closing somewhere. Her arm was painful, heavy in plaster.
The room smelled of antiseptic. She closed her eyes again and the darkness changed.

She was standing in sunlight. A field stretched before her, green and endless. Three figures approached.

Her breath caught. “Baba?”

Her father smiled exactly as he had before the protests. Her mother stood beside him, and her little brother bounced forward, grinning.

“You’re… alive?” she whispered.

“Not like you mean,” her mother said gently. “We are in a better place now.”

Fatima felt tears run down her face.

“I’m alone,” she said.

Her father shook his head. “You are not.”

“You will come here to heaven one day,” her mother said. “But not yet.”

Fatima felt the weight of everything she had lost. “My family… my school… my country…”

Her father placed a hand on her shoulder. “You still have your voice.”

Her brother laughed. “And your stubbornness.”

Fatima managed a weak smile.

Her mother’s eyes shone with love. “When you have nothing left to lose,” she said softly, “fear disappears.”

“You can change things,” her father said.

“And when your time comes,” her brother said cheerfully, “we’ll be right here.”

The sunlight faded. “Don’t be afraid,” her father said. Then the field vanished.

Fatima’s eyes opened. The hospital room returned. And Ali was sitting beside the bed. He looked exhausted.

“You were unconscious for hours,” he said.

“I was visiting my family.”

He frowned. “They’re dead.”

“I know.”

Silence filled the room.

Finally he spoke. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it.”

Ali studied her and then spoke with some anger and incredulity, "You’re not angry at the Americans?” he asked.

Fatima looked at her bandaged arm. “Anger won’t bring anyone back. You picked a fight with an enemy a thousand times your size and you brought this down upon us all. I doubt they were targeting us but I saw the IRGC point their guns directly at me and fire.”

“That's treason. They killed your classmates.”

“Our government has done worse.”

His jaw tightened. “You sound like a revolutionary.”

“I sound like someone who's done being afraid.”

Ali leaned closer. “You should still be afraid,” he whispered. “Your faith is illegal.”

Fatima met his eyes calmly. “My faith says truth matters more than fear.”

“You could be executed.”

“I know.”

“Then why say these things?”

Because she had seen the field. Because she had nothing left to lose.

“Because Iran deserves freedom,” she said quietly.

“Freedom from what?”

“From fear. From forced belief. From people killing in God’s name.”

Ali stared at her. “And what about America?” he demanded.

“My vision for Iran has nothing to do with America.”

“Then who?”

“Us.”

The word hung in the air. Iranians. Ali sat back slowly.

“You really believe things can change.”

“Yes.”

“And if they don’t?”

Fatima smiled faintly. “Then I’ll still speak.”

He studied her broken arm, the bruises, the bandages. “You are small, broken and alone, what can one woman do?” he said.

“I was.”

“And now?”

She remembered the field. “My family told me something.”

“What?”

“That when you have nothing left to lose,” she said softly, “you finally become strong.”

Ali looked at her for a long moment. Then he stood and walked toward the door. He paused before leaving.

“I still think your faith is wrong,” he said.

Fatima shrugged slightly. “You always did, but I know that you love me.”

Ali gasped. He could not deny that. He hesitated, tears in his eyes. "I don’t think you’re weak anymore and this steel inside you seems like it is made of light. That makes no sense to me...”

Fatima watched him leave.

Outside the window the city stretched across the horizon. Wounded. Angry. Yet with a hint of hope. It was still alive. Just like her.

Notes ▶︎

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