As If Nothing Is Burning by Wasima Khan

As If Nothing Is Burning | Wasima Khan

The kettle clicks off at exactly 6:48. The whistle is broken, so you have to listen for the silence, that sudden hush of effort ending. You get up, pour water over coffee grounds, stare out the window. The buses are already groaning down the hill. In the balcony below, Mrs. Wahida is brushing her son’s hair, her mouth moving in a slow recitation. Maybe a prayer. Maybe just a to-do list. You can’t tell.

You check your phone. Notifications. A few headlines.

Thousands Flee Amid Escalating Violence.

Confirmed Death Toll Surpasses 10,000.

The thumbnail for the second one is a pile of limbs blurred into dust. You scroll past it, heart squeezing, then quickly forgetting. You open the weather app instead. Rain today. Heavy by noon.

You imagine sending a text to Amal, remembering how she had a way of turning headlines into human voices. She once translated a poem scrawled in charcoal on a refugee tent. She would call your silence by its true name.

But you don’t text her. You haven’t in months. Not since the last argument. You said, “It’s not like we can do anything,” and she said, “That’s what they count on.”

You sip your coffee. It is bitter. You put more sugar in it than you used to.

In the city, life thrums. A construction site is tearing into the earth across from your office. The jackhammer pounds like a memory you’d rather not have. Men in yellow helmets pass around thermoses, laughing. A truck backs up, beeping like a child imitating distress.

Your colleague, Martin, arrives with a story about his dog. Something about diarrhea and a missing chew toy. You nod, you laugh. He never asks about the news, and you never volunteer it. 

There was a time, you recall, when people would say “Never Again” with the kind of sincerity that builds churches. Now it’s just again.

You once made the mistake of bringing it up during lunch. The room fell into that particular kind of silence. A silence that protects itself. One woman said, gently, “I think it’s important to take care of our mental health too.” And you nodded. Of course. Of course. Compassion has limits. Everything has limits.

You go to the supermarket after work. You stand in front of the tomatoes. You remember a story you read about a man who was shot while trying to save his sister, who was pregnant. He had a name. You forget it now. You reach for the plumpest tomato.

In line, a little girl behind you is crying. Her mother hushes her in Spanish. The man in front of you wears a shirt that says “Stay Kind.” He’s buying wine and birthday candles.

The woman at the till smiles and says, “Have a good evening.” You say, “You too.” You do not ask where she’s from, although her accent reminds you of a region you saw on the map this morning, painted in red.

At night, you do not watch the videos. But you read the comments underneath.

Where is the humanity?

Why is the world silent?

We cannot look away.

And yet, you do. You look away. You take off your socks. You stretch your back. You brush your teeth. You click the lamp off. The room is dark and still. Somewhere across the world, someone is screaming. But your windows are double-glazed. And the city hums on.

You dream of oceans. Always oceans. Not the peaceful kind, but the vast, cruel kind that carry bodies too far from names. You wake up drenched, heart galloping like hooves over mud. You whisper into the dark, “I didn’t mean to forget.”

But forgetting is not a decision. It is a symptom. Of distance. Of safety. Of privilege. Of being able to choose whether to remember.

You’re torn between the life you have built and the life that is burning elsewhere. The ache of belonging and betrayal sitting in the same room, drinking the same tea.

The next morning, the kettle clicks off at 6:48. You pour your coffee. You scroll your phone.

Survivors Describe Horror.

You pause. You read. The article names the village, names the bodies, names the silence that followed. Your chest tightens. You think of Amal. You type, I read the article. You send it. Small, maybe. But a beginning. A crack in the wall of forgetting.

Outside, it starts to rain. Not the kind that cleanses. Just the kind that falls, and falls, and falls.

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