They say a butterfly flapping its wings can cause hurricanes on the other side of the world. The butterfly effect. A single dandelion can prevent floods. A singular, insignificant action or thought can alter the tides of history.  

Take a dot.  

A dot in the wrong place can make you a rich man or, you know, just exist as an inconsequential dot. But let me bring you in on a secret: no dot, no matter how small or random, is without consequence in the grand scheme of things. 

This is the story of an ordinary boy and a dot.  

A simple red dot that caused a civil war. 

*

Shaheen Abdaal was an unassuming 12-year old boy. A little short for his age, with stubby tree-trunk legs and hairy brown arms, he was the most normal boy you could come across. Painfully ordinary. The kind of normal that goes unnoticed in the classroom and at dawats. The kind that a mother with more than two children will misname. 

A forgettable face: the same two ordinarily spaced beady eyes, a hooked nose, the same 32 teeth, all airbrushed in a deep tan and topped off by a lopsided haircut (the only kind his barber could manage).  

If someone were to write a story on him, it would be comically short: a couple of lines dedicated to his days of passing out as a fielder for his local cricket team. 

Except, I am not someone, and Shaheen Abdaal’s life isn’t as plain as it seems. There are two distinct chapters to his life: the time he was a mediocre cricket player and the time he became the face of civil unrest.  

All because of a dot.  

A singular bright red circle of cheap paint he decided to leave on a stone house.  

It all started when he was on a bus to a hill station on the other side of the country, a school trip he had saved up for all summer. The joy fizzled out when they were left stranded on the side of the road after the bus shuddered one last time before breaking down in the heat wave.  

Back slicked with sweat, Shaheen Abdal took in his surroundings: a few stone houses, three unattended sheep with mean expressions and mouths full of bright, long-stemmed flowers and a run-down tuck shop with off-brand cola. The background was jagged grey mountains, deep in the heart of the north, and clear open skies.  

Wiping the sweat off his brow, he went to the tuck shop to buy some water. A pot-bellied man sat behind the dingy counter, with an unruly moustache covering most of his face, and offered a paintbrush and a dusty palette of red paints instead of change.  

Scowling at the shopkeeper for giving him a bad bargain, Shaheen balanced the brush on top of the palette and made his way back to his group. 

The engine of the bus whirred and coughed occasionally but did not attempt to work. Bored and friendless, Shaheen returned to watching the sheep and houses. The heat gave him a headache. The stone houses supported wooden sheds, and he made his way to one of them and sat down with his back resting against the uneven, jagged wall. His eyes fell on his paint palette. The wall behind him did not seem averse to serving as a canvas, so he got to work, carefully mixing the last few droplets from the water bottle into the brightest shade of red, a deep bloodlike tone. Finding a smooth portion of the wall turned out to be a challenge, but when all was said and done, there was a bright red dot on the wall. The watery paint snaked down to Shaheen’s wrists as he reached for the bottle again.  

Need more dots for a bouquet of balloons. Make a clown holding them by the strings?  

His eyebrows scrunched in concentration as he held out his paintbrush in front of him, visualizing his masterpiece.  

Before he could begin completing his first balloon, the sound of his PT teacher’s whistle pierced through the air, startling him. He dropped his art supplies, dusted his shorts and sprinted back to the bus. The resurrected bus weaved deeper into the mountains, away from the heat, sheep and the stone house now marked red.  

*

Sometime around maghrib, Shah Jee (he wasn’t really a Shah, and his real name had been long forgotten, even by his parents) decided he had the worst luck in all of the north: his precious sheep had consumed poisonous flowers, all because they looked bright and pretty; his chai wasn’t in the right cup at the dhaba; the ko polo game at five got cancelled, and now there was a huge ugly red dot on the left of his front door. 

The dot was the last straw. No one messed with Shah Jee. He dropped his walking stick near the entrance and hobbled to the living room, calling for his sons. Three gigantic men appeared at the fireplace and asked him what bothered his tired old mind this time.  

Riled up and in the mood to hate, Shah Jee threw his hands up in a dramatic huff of anger and recalled the menacing circle on his door. He shook his finger towards the heavens as he thought of the faceless offender who had ruined his wall. His speech soon turned into a fit of coughs and a yearning for the good old days where public executions kept young rascals in check.  

His sons stood in quiet reverence and immediately decided to investigate, after their father stretched his bad leg out on the sofa and began to doze off.  

See now, Shah Jee’s sons had a reputation as the local brutes, the bullies, the feared. They loved nothing more than their dear old father and maybe the occasional dog fight. So, when they learned that a puny dot ailed their father, the three sons wreaked havoc in a 10-mile radius. Backyards were broken into; the local artist’s house was thrashed; his paints were spilled, and children were lined up and interrogated. Even the animals were checked.  

The pot-bellied shopkeeper, Ashfaaq, decided to check on the sons and ask what the commotion was for; their harassment had scared away all the tourists he had meant to scam.  

He snuck up behind the three brothers as they picked up goats and inspected their hooves (they weren’t the brightest young men). Ashfaaq cleared his throat. No one paid him attention, for he was a small man with only his pot belly and moustache to keep him from blending right into the crowd.  

He cleared his throat once more and fell into a fit of coughs, from which he just managed to recover before he tapped on one of their shoulders.  

‘What do you want, old man?’ huffed the tallest brother, with a tattoo snaking down his neck and an arm hooked under a goat’s legs.  

The shopkeeper began to complain about their commotion. Said it scared away tourists.  

The brothers continued harassing nearby goats.  

The shopkeeper went on and on about how business was slow, and the last customer he managed to scam was a short boy in uniform. He smiled smugly to himself as he recalled how he’d saved a whole 20, giving the boy old paints.  

The brothers froze when they heard the word paint.  

‘What kind of paints?’ bellowed the shortest brother as he approached the shopkeeper in menacingly quick strides.  

‘Old red ones?’ stammered Ashfaaq in confusion.  

Suddenly, his view was blocked by three mountainous beings.  

‘Wh-Why?’ he asked, shrinking towards his shop. ‘Planning on painting your old shed, old boy?’ 

His nervous chuckle stuck in throat as they closed in on him.  

Ignoring his question, the middle brother with no hair growled. ‘Where. Is. The. ​​Schoolboy?’ 

Sensing he’d said something wrong but suddenly feeling bold, Ashfaaq crossed his arms and stood his ground, refusing to be bullied by the good-for-nothing brutes. Trying to figure out how to hold this ground, his eyes darted between the brothers and his shop. Finding nothing but a lanky tourist standing by the shop, he realised words were going to be his only defence. 

Before the shopkeeper managed to give the brutes a piece of his mind, an impatient brother, with a goat’s hoof still in his hand, grabbed him by the neck. The shopkeeper backed away just in time and hurled his chappal at the brother closest to him. It hit him flat in the chest but did little to hurt him. The tallest brother dropped his goat and delivered an uppercut before the shopkeeper could hurl another chappal. 

The pot-bellied man fell on his back and groaned in pain. Struggling to sit up, he reached up to massage his jaw. Before he could catch a break, all three brothers grabbed him by his kurta and gripped his neck. The shopkeeper’s moustache went limp, and his vision went blurry; red and white dots danced in front of his eyes. The last thing he remembered before passing out was a mortified American with a camera hanging around his neck looking at them from the shade of his shop.  

*

Blake Donovan had never seen a street fight. He gripped his camera as he watched the little man flying in all directions before he was choked by three men built like the mountains in the background. He picked up on bits of conversation amidst the fighting. Red paint. Schoolboy. Devastated father.  

Although he was scared witless, an ironic sense of pride bloomed in his chest; the language immersion gig at the Marriott really paid off. 

He stared and stared in mortified fascination before he realised that the small man was no longer fighting back. Blake Donovan sprang into action and ran towards them, yelling at the three similar-looking men to stop. Unfazed by the lanky American approaching, the brothers continued to choke the shopkeeper until he went limp.  

Ashfaaq never sold another re-priced palette of red paint again. 

Blake Donovan froze in horror as he realised he had just witnessed a murder. His breathing laboured; he reached for the closest form of support. He found a small stone house with a splattered red dot near the left side of the door. He immediately pulled out his phone and dialled 911 before realising how far away he was from that service. He felt ridiculous. Shaking like a leaf, he searched for the guide’s number and pressed the call. While the phone rang, he observed the red dot more closely. Trying to distract himself from the scene, he flashed his camera lens at the dot. It looked so out of place – so stupid – something to which he related a little too well.  

A few minutes later, several things happened. An ambulance siren wailed and arrived to take away the shopkeeper. A frenzied guide, expecting his licence soon to be revoked, carried a trembling Mr. Donovan to the car as he stared blankly at his camera: on it a picture of a wall with paint on it. Police surrounded the area. An old man watched all of this from the window next to the red-splattered wall.  

By 5pm the next day, Blake Donovan boarded his plane back to New York while he was on the phone with the Huffington Post about his near-death experience in the unruly north of Pakistan. His statement on Twitter was already among the Top-5-trending hashtags, and The New York Times was scheduling an interview with him.  

Over the next few weeks, news outlets searched for the little boy who braved his art in the conservative wasteland that was South Asia. Letter after letter was issued with descriptions of him, all around Pakistan, while the picture of the red dot went viral. People gathered in solidarity against human brutality and the right to free expression. Journalists flew into Pakistan trying to access the house with the red dot. Funds poured in from universities in North America for the arts in Pakistan. The whole country went up in a frenzy in search of the boy who painted the red dot: the face of the artistic revolution.  

That same evening, Shah Jee spoke to his sons and later his friends. He rallied the older men at the local dhaba to raise their voices against the ignorant tourists trashing their homeland. There was no way he was going to allow a menace like this schoolboy from the south to get away with the mess he’d created in his town. The child was malicious. A threat. No one questioned him about what killed their beloved shopkeeper as their eyes darted from one gigantic son to the other, quietly standing behind him.  

Eventually, when the previous speech about the child did not get through to the people, and suspicion arose about the real murderers, word (from Shah Jee’s living room of course) got around that the reason the shopkeeper lost his life was due to the poisonous money the child from the south had handed him. Devastated at their loss, the locals felt betrayed by their countrymen and demanded revenge. They took to the streets. Processions with flags bearing Shah Jee’s face flooded the north as the face of the movement for vengeance. Shah Jee and company invited the journalists present to his house to see the red dot and poured their grievances into their notebooks. News outlets became polarised between the child being a hero or a villain all while the world held its breath to discover his actual identity. 

   *

Shaheen glanced at the message from his school announcing an emergency lockdown; they were off school until further notice in light of the recent riots from the north that had poured into the south. He shrugged and went back to scrolling.  

His father called him into the room next door to yell at him while he surfed through channels (a whimpering child was good white noise for Mr Abdaal). While he scolded his son for his falling grades and his performance in the latest cricket match, an image flickered on the 9 o’clock news. It was his son. It was Shaheen with a red blot on his left cheek, on a banner held by hundreds of protesters. Shaheen gaped in horror as Mr. Abdaal sprang from his chair and grabbed him by the collar.  

‘What did you do, you piece of trash?’ he gritted through his teeth, raising his hand, face reddening with anger.  

Before he could bring his hand down to hurt his child, the front door broke down, and their house flooded with protestors. Two burly boys with heavy-set shoulders, around Shaheen’s age, separated him from his father and hoisted him onto their shoulders.  

Shaheen froze as they left the house: hundreds of people cheered his name, the face of revolution and the future of Pakistan. The sun shone bright on his caramel skin, and the people carried him onto the streets. His feet never touched the ground as he swam the crowds for hours. His father and his home long forgotten, he was taken in by the local mayor, who put him in special security because he had intel on people leaving the north to get revenge.  

The south was ready to spill blood, bright and warm, for its people. The north swore no rest until they had the boy. The government sent out orders for a border between the north and south to maintain peace.  

The months dragged on as the country was torn into sides, the wind turning cold and the smell of fresh blood almost at the tip of the nose.  

*

Bilal Shafkat almost wished to be back in his anatomy lecture. 

Almost. Maybe a civil war wasn’t exactly comparable to the horrors of the body’s structure. In any case, the rifles were about as heavy as the textbooks for three lectures. Looking at the man he had become in the mirror, he wondered what went wrong. His elfish features and petite frame were not meant for the battlefield. Maybe theatre. Definitely not biochemistry.  

His parents’ wish for him to become a doctor was all he had left of them, and now he was forced to give that up. He wasn’t exactly complaining; medicine was not his niche at all. But it was the least he could do.  

Anyway, he thought as he fixed his auburn hair (he had his fair share of bullies thanks to the way he looked; thanks, Mom and Dad). He crossed the makeshift headquarters and grabbed a sniper rifle. The north and south had demolished all cities near their borders, and the wasteland reigned supreme. Bilal Shafkat was the best sniper. Time to see what these babies can do. He smiled as he weighed his newest toy for doomsday.  

*

Shaheen enjoyed about a week of being a national revolutionary before he grew tired of it. He was sick of stamping red dots onto people’s left cheeks at press conferences. He was especially tired of the emergency drills for his safety.  

Vowing to never visit the north again, he reclined into his sofa and switched on the TV. Some cities hailed him as a hero while others were after his head as they burned dummies pasted with posters of his face.  

When can I play cricket again? 

The truth was he was tired, and he was scared. Shaheen Abdaal wanted to go home. He even missed his dad yelling at him. He just wanted to be a boy again.  

Suddenly, he heard shouting. Almost as a reflex, he ducked and rolled onto the floor, covering his head. No bullets flew past him. No screaming for help either. He listened hard. It was children. Kids his age. Playing, Playing cricket.  

Shaheen lay on his carpet, dumbfounded as he thought about his days running on the field. He leapt to his feet and dashed to the front door of the VIP guest house he was living in.  

He basked in the scene: boys and girls his age, playing in a makeshift field, old, battered guns as bats and empty grenades as balls. He waved at them. They froze, looking at him, but a second later waved back to him and invited him over.  

Shaheen looked around for guards and, finding the coast clear, ran over to the group. He took his position as a fielder, adjacent to an abandoned shopping centre.  

They spent the afternoon playing. No one noticed the sun dip below the horizon. No one noticed a lonely boy on the second floor of the shopping centre, flat on the ground, elfish features scrunched in concentration as he pointed the nozzle of a gun towards Shaheen.  

Certainly, no one noticed the laser dot shining on the nape of Shaheen’s neck. A small dot. Blood red in the shade.  

2025 Commonwealth Short Story Prize Shortlist