As I am taking my last bite I hear the explosion. I jump up, my head snapping in the direction of the sound. My heart beats fast and I am immediately sprinting. They always come in pairs. Twos or threes. But I still keep running.
The school. It is in the direction of the school. My arms pump hard. I hear a woman shouting "Stop! Take cover!" Men are emerging from unknown places and huddling in doorways with their phones out. Smoke is rising from a few streets over. My heart plummets. It can't be. It's not. I run harder, harder than I ever have in my life, lifting up my skirt so the whole world can see my knees but I don't care.
"Yasser!!" I scream. The smoke is rising higher and higher and suddenly I am in the midst of the choking cloud, on the street I'd dragged Yasser down just an hour prior. No no no no no.
I make a sharp left and stop dead in my tracks.
Only the school outline is visible, smoke billowing out of it like a chimney. But that is not what I am trying to see. I squint and look beyond it: flames are licking the building behind it, and even now explosion after explosion can be heard, but they are not coming from the sky.
For a moment, I cower. I could run to him. I could run inside. The gate is open. Men are shouting from nearby doorways, but no one is on the street. I hesitate another moment, but then I do it: I rush forward and into the thick of the smoke.
A few yell, and one man runs after me a few steps, but I am already in the school and the footsteps stop. Cowards.
There is a lull in the explosions, a strange silence, so I choke through the smoke and run straight towards the back of the building until I am at the door.
It is hanging ajar, the bolt blown off. My eyes are watering with smoke, but I run inside and feel for my brother. Then I am holding him in my arms, against my chest, blood streaming out of one side of his head. Just as I move to pull him outside the door, another explosion rocks the place, and I remember nothing but my body being lifted and slammed against something hard, as if Allah himself had struck me.
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