The Loud Silence
Prologue
The crowd roars as the soldiers close in.
I grip the rusted balcony rail, knuckles white, heart hammering hard against my ribs.
Below, the square boils with bodies — Tariq at the front, bareheaded, his voice slicing through the chants:
“We will not go silently!”
Banners snap in the wind. Smoke curls from burning trash barrels. Across the square, a wall of armored police advances, shields locked, batons raised, faces blank under glass. The Ministry’s silver sun gleams on their shoulders — once a symbol of pride, now a mark of fear.
That silver sun, once stamped on schoolbooks, hung above Father’s classroom door. I remember tracing it with my fingers as a child. Now it shines cold and hard on helmets, on guns.
Behind me, the door bangs open.
“Mirah!”
I spin. My sister Leila — eldest of us, always the brave one — stands pale in the doorway, eyes wide. “They’re coming. We have to go.”
“But Tariq. He is at Monika’s. How will he—”
She grabs my arm, hard. “Now.”
We run. Down narrow stairs, through alleys thick with piss and petrol. Past shuttered cafés, broken tiles, graffiti-spray-painted walls with my song lyrics — some of which include the admonition SING FOR US, MIRAH.
My breath tears in my throat. My heart pounds against the silence inside me, the silence where my songs used to live, before I lost them on that horrific day when my father was gunned down in the street for the crime of being a schoolteacher in a city and a nation that had come to value obedience over education.
At the checkpoint, the soldier’s eyes flick to my name. His brow furrows.
“Are you really her?”
His voice tells me there is no right answer.
Leila yanks my sleeve. “Run.”
We run.
On the boat, the cold bites deep, through coat, through skin, through bone. Salt spray lashes my face, burns my cracked lips. The motor coughs, sputters, catches again. Black waves rise around us like walls.
Beside me, a man clutches a plastic bag — papers, photos, whatever scraps he couldn’t leave behind. A child sobs quietly under a blanket.
The sound of gunfire shatters the air. We duck. The boat tears away from the dock and soon we are clear of the range of the guns.
I hold Leila’s hand tightly. She squeezes once, faintly.
“Tariq escaped last night,” she says. “Find him.”
I look to her, surprised by the news my brother left without us. Then I see it — blood seeping from her fingers, clutched to her belly wounded by the gunshots. It’s bad.
I swallow my tears in protest. I feel the tremor in her fingers. It’s a feeling all too familiar. I can feel my voice squeezing tighter around me, a prisoner in a body that once traveled the world, singing to masses of adoring fans. But that was then and this is now. I feel guilty for wondering in this moment if I will ever sing again. But it’s easier to think about the voice gone missing than the sister fading in front of me.
“Promise me something, Mirah,” she says insistently. I stare into her eyes. It won’t be long now.
I nod.
“Promise me you’ll find your music,” she says. “The world needs it. You need it.”
I start to protest, but it’s too late. She’s gone. Just like my sister to think of me with her last breath. I hang my head in shame. Just like me to think of myself when she’s drawing that last breath too.
Somewhere behind us, the city burns, its glow flickering against the clouds.
Her voice echoes in my skull:
“Promise me — you’ll find your music.”
I press my hands to my throat. I try to open up. But I can’t. I haven’t been able to for months. Has it been a year already?
No — longer. I count back and realize it has been nearly two winters since I last lifted my voice on stage. Two winters since I last felt whole.
No sound. Only the wind.
When the boat cracks under the weight of too many passengers and violent seas, the sea pulls us under and I have to let go. I will forever feel Leila’s hand as it slips away. Her life and body both gone to the gods. I weep and try to tread water all at once.
I let the waves carry me. Let the cold hollow me out. Let the salt fill my mouth, my chest, my lungs.
The world dims.
And then — a voice, sharp, urgent, slicing through the wind:
“Hey! Hey, miss!”
Survival
I wake to the sounds of coughing. I don’t know where I am or how long I’ve been asleep — if sleeping is what it’s been.
I hear a cry. Not mine. A child’s, thin and wet, rasping in the thick wool air.
Above me: pitted concrete ceiling, rusted pipes, bare bulbs strung on cords. The smell of damp stone, boiled cabbage, bleach, bodies.
The blanket on me is heavy, military-issue. My skin aches. My mouth tastes of salt and metal. My hair is stiff, tangled.
I remember the sea.
I remember the fire.
Again, I remember Leila’s hand slipping away. My grief.
I try to push myself upright. My body tells me it has been days. My throat tells me it has been longer. I glance around at the narrow room, the dozens of cots crammed side by side. A refugee shelter? A clinic? I cannot tell. Outside the walls, I hear no birds, no horns, only the low hum of a guarded city.
When I try to sit up, the room sways. A cold sweat breaks across my skin.
Footsteps. A soft voice.
“You’re awake.”
I blink.
A young man — early twenties, maybe — crouches near me, orange jacket too thin for the cold, wet hair clinging to his forehead, notebook balanced on his knee.
He offers a paper cup, steam curling faintly. “Tea.”
His German is soft. His Arabic is careful, clumsy.
I take the cup, both hands trembling.
The tea tastes bitter, metallic. But it’s warmth.
The man watches me with quiet, searching eyes. He scribbles in his notebook between handing out blankets, speaking to shivering figures on the cots.
I am weak. I fall back asleep. When I wake, it is night. I fall asleep again and then repeat. I don’t know how long it has been. Days? Weeks? Does it even matter?
Above me, I sometimes hear footsteps marching in rows. Soldiers? Police? This country’s uniforms look different from home, but the tone is the same: authority. Power. Even here, on this side of the water, the world holds its breath, waiting to see what will break next.
As time moves forward without me, I slowly regain my fluid consciousness. I look around. A refugee camp? A city? I sigh. I’m a refugee. The weight of that slams into me hard.
The young man who stays dutifully, but nearly silently beside me, pulls his chair closer to my bedside, as if he senses I will be willing to speak at last.
“My mother,” he says quietly, “used to play your records. Mirah Nasser. You are her. Right?”
I nod.
My words sound foreign to me. How long has it been since I have even spoken? “Not anymore,” I whisper.
He ignores my skepticism.
“The Nightingale of Al-Nour,” he says, voice genuine.
His smile is small, sad. “When you arrived here, I didn’t think you were real.”
I look away.
He doesn’t press.
“I’m Jonas,” he says, as he pushes his chair back against the wall in a gesture of giving me space — and time.
That night, under the scratchy blanket, I press my fist to my mouth, stifling the ache in my chest.
I don’t see the boat.
I don’t see the soldiers.
I see what I remember: Velvet curtains, a stage, a hall hushed and waiting, the lift of my voice as it climbed, shimmering, just on the edge of breaking.
Ten thousand faces turned up to me, breathless.
I close my eyes.
When Jonas kneels by my cot the next morning, asks softly, “Will you sing something for us?”
He waves around the room. It is nearly overflowing with broken people whose lives are as broken as mine. Maybe more so.
I shake my head.
“No. I cannot. I lost my song,” I say softly, my voice cracking. “I have not sung in more than a year.”
His face registers sadness. Disappointment.
He nods. “I heard something about that. Will you ever sing again?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
I think of my sister’s last words again and I wince internally. Maybe it even shows in my face. “I don’t know,” I repeat.
The Search
It begins as a whisper.
A boy leans across the cots. “You’re from Al-Nour, aren’t you?”
I nod.
“You are Mirah?”
I nod again.
He lowers his voice. “Your brother. Tariq. He’s been here.”
The words slam into me. My breath stops.
Tariq.
I thought he had died — that along with Leila, I had left his ghost behind. I thought he was ash, or bone, or name only.
I am about to dismiss the boy as silly, when he hands me a piece of paper. It is in Tariq’s hand. “Find your voice, Mirah,” he says. “The world needs you.”
My fingers shake as I trace the letters. How long has this note waited here for me? A day? A week? My chest tightens with hope — the dangerous kind, the kind I’ve taught myself to fear.
I find Jonas in the corner, folding blankets.
“Help me,” I ask simply.
His head jerks up. It’s the first thing I’ve said in days.
“Help you?”
I grip his wrist, hard. “My brother. Help me find him.”
Jonas hesitates — then nods. “Tell me where to start.”
We search.
Through basement cafés where men scroll cracked phones, eyes flicking up nervously when the door opens. Through soup kitchens thick with steam, where exhausted women ladle rice into tin bowls. Through shelters packed with thin figures clutching papers, their names scrawled on yellow cards.
Everywhere, taped to walls or shoved under doors, we see printed warnings: new curfews, new travel restrictions, new arrests. The tension is not just ours — it hums through the city, through everyone we pass.
Everywhere, people shake their heads:
“Tariq? He left.”
“Try across town.”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
My chest tightens with every “no.” The city folds in tighter.
Everywhere we go, we find my lyrics sprayed as graffiti — on bathroom stalls. On bridges. On abandoned buildings and fences.
“Stand and shout,” says one wall.
“Together, we will conquer,” says another.
Lyrics.
My lyrics.
Once they were just silly love songs but now words of comfort for so many. Words of strength. Words I cannot sing. They bring me only grief.
Now and again, I see the words “Sing to us, Mirah,” scribbled or painted nearby on one of the quotes from my songs.
Most don’t recognize me anymore. It’s been years since I have looked like that famous girl they knew. But now and again, I feel their eyes. I hear the whispers.
“Is that her?”
“Will she sing again?”
At night, we sit on a bench under a flickering lamp. Jonas unwraps a sandwich, presses half into my hands.
“Eat.”
I take a bite. Taste nothing.
“Why are you helping me?” I whisper.
He shrugs, small, tired. “Because you sang for my mother. She played your songs every night when I was small.”
He looks down. “She died last year.”
Once, outside a station, I see a protest march: banners raised, fists pumping, voices chanting. Words in Kurdish, German, Arabic. I recognize the rhythm, if not the message.
For a heartbeat, I think I see Tariq.
I shove through the crowd, breathless, frantic — but it’s not him.
I stand frozen in the middle of the street, heart pounding.
Jonas finds me there, touches my shoulder. “Come on.”
My legs feel hollow, but I follow.
The Reunion
We find Tariq on what feels like the coldest night of the month — the coldest since I have been here.
The old depot sags under blackened windows. Inside, the air smells of mildew, old smoke, damp brick. A mural peels on the far wall — a dove breaking from barbed wire.
Jonas’s flashlight cuts through the dark.
There — near the far wall, hunched on a crate, coughing hard enough to shake his whole body:
Tariq.
His face is sharp with fever. His eyes blaze when they find mine.
“Mirah.” His voice rasps, but his arms are fierce when they pull me close. “I knew you’d come.”
Jonas hovers nearby, silent, watching.
Tariq talks all night, between coughs that nearly split him in two. “Bronchitis,” he tells me. “I have medicine.”
The protests. The marches. The chants. The leaflets passed hand to hand. The voices lifted against silence.
“They remember you,” he murmurs, fever-bright. “Back home and even here they still whisper about you. About the songs you gave us.”
My throat clenches.
All I want is to curl small, invisible, safe.
But Tariq’s hand closes over mine, light but burning.
“Your words are fueling the revolution,” he said. “You have to find your voice.”
“My words are just silly love songs,” I counter. “The rantings of a lovesick girl.”
Tariq shakes his head. “It does not matter what they once were — only what they are now.”
I close my eyes.
“I don’t know if I can,” I say.
“I believe in you,” he says.
“But what if I don’t believe in myself?”
He sighs. “Then believe in your country. Believe in our father. Believe in our sister. Courage comes from believing in something bigger than yourself.”
His words stick into me like a knife. But he’s right. My tears begin to flow. As they do, for the first time since my father died, my chest begins to open. My throat relaxes. I have not yet sung a note, but the music finds its way home. I know it’s here.
“I’m ready,” I say at last.
He believes me.
Reclamation
Dawn.
The square hums, alive with tension.
Police line the edges — black helmets, clear shields, batons resting but ready. Protesters press together, shoulders tight, banners raised. Some wear scraps of red cloth — a signal from Al-Nour, a promise of unity.
The smell of tear gas still clings faintly to the stones. I wonder if this square has known anything but struggle in the past year.
Tariq stands beside me, burning with fever, trembling but upright. His hand clutches mine like it’s all that holds him up.
Jonas is just behind, pale, watching, waiting.
The air crackles.
Tariq leans in, voice shaking: “It’s time.”
I step forward.
My knees nearly buckle. The crowd tilts around me, banners blurring, shields gleaming, breath sharp in the cold.
I open my mouth.
And I sing. For the first time in more than a year, I sing!
The first note cracks. Thin. Raw. Almost breaks.
But then — it stretches, rises, steadies.
Heads turn.
The crowd hushes.
The sound coils through the air, trembles against the stone, threads itself through every held breath.
Tariq’s grip trembles on mine. Jonas’s eyes glisten.
And me — I stand.
Not whole.
Not unbroken.
But I am standing.
I sing of jasmine nights. Of silver rivers. Of hands I’ve held and lost.
I sing because I survived.
I sing because we survived.
I sing because there’s no other way forward.
And this time —
this time —
I hear what they hear. Not songs between lovers of misbegotten youth. Songs of love of country and from countrymen. They are still my words, but they land differently. I see.
I raise my voice still louder. Still prouder. Something once dead finds life. Is this patriotism? I look over the sea of faces as they start to join in. We are united. We are one. This is no longer my song. It is ours!
The Echo
The high crescendo of the final note tears its way out of my soul like a buzzsaw but somehow makes its way through my throat like a perfect bird of song — as if removed from me. As if removed from this reality. A gift from heaven itself.
The square holds still.
At first, there are no cheers. No surge. Just a ripple, a held breath, a shiver in the air.
One officer lowers his shield. Another blinks, just once.
And then pandemonium!
“Encore!” they shout as if one voice. I begin another but they know all the words. I direct responsibility for the song toward them. Tears stream down my face as they sing to me. Not for entertainment. Not for fandom. But for strength. For country.
Tariq sways beside me, breath ragged, eyes fierce. “You did it,” he whispers.
I stand mesmerized by what has just happened. Jonas touches my shoulder. “Come on, Mirah.”
I turn toward Tariq. He shakes his head. “I’m staying.” His voice is thin, but his spine stays straight. “The nation has its voice back. But revolutions also require soldiers.”
I grip his sleeve tightly. “Stay alive,” I murmur. “Stay alive, brother.”
He presses his forehead briefly to mine, a childhood gesture. “And you — stay loud,” he answers softly. “Stay loud, no matter what.”
I brush my fingers over his sleeve. I know he’s right. And somehow I know he’ll be alright. We’ll be alright. Tough times will come. But they will also go. And in the end we’ll be standing. In the distance I hear my music blaring through a loudspeaker, distorted by the old times and repurposed for the new. For the first time in months, I smile from my soul.
Tariq bends down and kisses me on the cheek.
“I meant it. Keep singing,” he whispers. “Keep singing no matter what.”
I turn without another word, and Jonas follows.
We slip through the side streets.
Past the graffiti. Past pigeons scattering on wet stone.
Past a city that, for now, still holds its breath.
My throat aches. My legs tremble.
But inside me —
inside me —
the echo lingers.
That night, under the tracks, I stand alone.
Above, the trains scream past, sparks flaring like torn stars.
I close my eyes.
I open my mouth — this time to remind myself.
And I let the smallest sound slip free — a thread of melody, thin as breath.
It rises. It coils its way through the darkness. It echoes back.
And then, as Tariq told me to do, I keep singing.
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wow and on a personal note....I am so glad we became friends. I think my life would be a lot more empty had it not been for all your stories. I look forward to them at the end of my very long days. I know when I sit down to read them I am either going to laugh, cry, be angry and upset or numb. I never have anything to say just know I love your writing, I love your stories. Thank you for being my friend.