The Silence After the Sirens

The Silence After the Sirens

By [waseem khan]

The sirens had stopped.

In this city, that meant nothing. It didn’t mean safety. It didn’t mean peace. It meant only that the immediate threat had passed, that the missiles had landed—somewhere. That buildings had either fallen or miraculously remained standing. That the dust would settle again, and that those still breathing would count their blessings by candlelight.

Eight-year-old Sami didn’t flinch anymore when the sky howled. His ears had learned to fold the noise away, to place it somewhere behind the memory of his father’s laughter and his mother’s songs.

He crouched beneath the skeleton of what used to be a bookshop, knees pressed to cracked tile, hands around a tin of beans his neighbor had traded for half a pack of cigarettes. Around him, broken pages fluttered like injured birds.

Then—he heard it.

A sound so out of place it made his heart pause.

It wasn’t crying. That he was used to. It wasn’t the groan of metal, the coughing of dust, or the whine of a starving cat. It was…

A lullaby.

Soft. Gentle. Almost too quiet to trust.

“Tala al badru ‘alayna…”

The words trembled through the ruins like wind through wheat. Sami’s eyes widened. That song. That voice.

Mama.

He stood too quickly, nearly knocking over the tin. His legs carried him faster than thought—over shattered concrete, past the mural where someone had painted birds escaping a burning cage, beneath a wire fence tangled with scarves and old flyers.

He chased the lullaby like a scent he remembered from before the sky turned red.

“Min thaniyyati al-wada…”

It grew louder near the old courtyard. That place had once been filled with lemon trees. Now, only their gnarled trunks remained, blackened by fire, defiant.

Sami slowed his steps.

A door—half hanging from its hinges—opened into a building he didn’t recognize. But the song was coming from inside.

He stepped through.

The air was thick with ash and memory. The hallway beyond was dark, and for a moment, he hesitated.

What if it’s a trick? What if it’s not real?

But the song didn’t falter. It pulled him forward, each step echoing like a question.

“Wajaba al shukru ‘alayna…”

Room after room, dust danced in the stillness. Then, just beyond a broken archway, Sami saw it.

A small, square object sat on a low shelf covered in grime. A battered tape recorder. Its tiny speakers trembled with the weight of the melody.

He froze.

It was her.

He knew it like he knew his own name. That faint shake in her voice, like she was always on the edge of laughter or tears. That warmth, even through static.

The last song she ever sang to him.

Before the bomb. Before the ambulance that never came. Before silence.

Sami dropped to his knees. The air felt heavy. He reached out and touched the machine like it might vanish under his fingers.

Someone had placed it here. Protected it. Left it playing on a loop. Why?

He didn’t know. He didn’t care.

He sat there for a long time.

Letting the song pour into him.

Letting her voice braid itself around his ribs.

Letting the silence after the sirens finally mean something more than fear.

For the first time in months, Sami cried. Not because he was scared. But because he remembered.

Her hands brushing through his hair.

The way she hummed while stirring lentils.

The way she whispered “good night” like a secret just for him.

When the tape clicked to a stop, the world went silent again.

But it was a different kind of silence.

Not the gaping quiet that followed explosions.

This silence was sacred.

Like the space between two notes of a song.

Like the breath before saying “I love you.”

Like standing in the ruins of everything you lost and finding, somehow, that not everything is gone.

Sami pressed a finger to the button marked “rewind.” The tape whirred softly.

He waited.

Then pressed “play.”