The Tattooed Heart Read Online Free Page B

particular.
    Without even realizing what I was doing I stepped into his frame and peered as though through his eyes. I saw the thing he focused on.
    It was the upraised barrel of an assault rifle.

3
    AIMAL BEGAN YELLING. IT WAS NOT ENGLISH, OF course, but I understood it nevertheless.
    â€œHide! Hide!” he yelled. “All the girls must hide!”
    But by the time his shouts were noticed and conversation had fallen silent and all heads had turned toward the truck, two men were already leaping from the back and both were armed with assault rifles.
    â€œRun! Run!” Aimal shouted.
    Some of the girls responded now. There were only six of them, ranging in age from ten to perhaps fifteen. But now they saw what Aimal saw and understood whatAimal understood, so they ran.
    POP! POP POP POP!
    That’s what it sounded like, the gunfire.
    One of the girls fell facedown in the dirt. A cloud of dust rose from the impact.
    A second girl ran to the fallen one and a piece of her shoulder blew away, a twirling chunk of bone and meat, trailing blood.
    Now everyone, boy and girl, was screaming, screaming, but only Aimal was running the wrong way. Not away from the guns. Toward them.
    He waved his arms and shouted, “No, stop, stop, this is against Islam, this is against God, you must stop.”
    He ran until he was between the gunmen and the girls, some of whom kept running. But two of them seemed to have collapsed in sheer terror.
    â€œGet out of the way!” a gunman yelled, and waved his rifle at Aimal. “It’s not you we want.”
    Aimal shook his head, almost a spasm it was so quick and violent, like he could not control his bodily movement. He was terrified. He was terrified and barely able to keep his knees from buckling.
    He saw what would happen.
    He saw and knew and understood what would happen and still he did not back away.
    â€œGo away! Leave us be!” he shouted at the gunmen.
    â€œWe are only here for the girls, get out of the way!”
    He shook his head again, slower this time, slower, knowing . . . knowing that—
    POP! POP POP! POP POP POP POP!
    The two men standing, and one still in the truck, opened fire.
    The high-powered rounds did not simply strike Aimal’s body, they dismantled it. Before he could fall his right arm was hanging by a spurting artery and his spine had exploded through his back like a bony red alien, and the side of his face was obliterated, turned to red mist and flying chunks of meat and bone.
    He fell and now the two girls who had been unable to move cowered and screamed and died, their bodies jerking and jerking and jerking as the gunmen emptied their magazines into them.
    One of the gunmen ran into the tiny schoolhouse and came out with a man so undone by fear that he had stained his clothing. The teacher was forced to his knees.
    â€œSchool is not for girls,” a gunman said, and fired two rounds into the teacher’s groin. The teacher howled in pain and writhed on the ground.
    â€œAnd since you are a girl now, it is no place for you, either.”
    They executed the teacher with bullets in his head and neck.
    Someone, Messenger or maybe even me, froze the scene then.
    Shocked boys stood staring. One surviving girl lay slumped over her dead classmate. In the distance another girl was frozen in midstep, running. Aimal lay in dirt turned to mud by his blood.
    I felt as frozen as the scene around me. I knew I was panting and yet did not feel I was getting air. The very skin on my body seemed to reverberate with the concussion of those gunshots.
    We’ve all seen movies and games with shooting. Sometimes it’s in slow motion, sometimes it’s played for laughs, sometimes it’s shown as tragic and awful, but nothing in media prepared me for the real thing. For murder.
    It’s always been an ugly word, murder , but still wemanage to sanitize it. We jokingly say we’ll murder someone. I’ve said it. But I don’t think