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Sarah walked the cobblestone streets of the slum, her flute clutched to her chest like a talisman. The black dress she inherited from her mother brushed her knees, frayed at the hems. Every night, she practiced by the river, where the echoing water drowned out her mistakes. People whispered that her music sounded like weeping, but she only wanted the notes to carry her away from that place where dust clung to dreams.
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Leyla heard it first. Sitting on the fire escape of her building, she strummed the strings of her acoustic guitar until her fingers bled. The sweat-faded pink shirt contrasted with the melancholy of her chords. She had stopped believing in love when her boyfriend disappeared, taking with him the sheet music they had written together. Now, every song was a map of scars. As she heard Sarah's flute, she felt something in her chest let go, fragile as a wounded bird. Tazz watched from the shadow of the alley, the saxophone dangling from his shoulder like a gun without bullets. He wore black not by choice, but because the charcoal from the workshop where he worked stained everything. Saxophones, he said, were demonized instruments: they demanded the soul in exchange for a decent melody. He had sold his own years ago, when he buried his younger brother and promised to play in his place. But that night, between the wailing of the flute and the moaning of the guitar, he remembered that even demons can cry.
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The three notes met on the abandoned roof of the Luxor cinema. Sarah went up first, guided by the light of the full moon; Leyla followed her, drawn by an impulse she did not understand; Tazz came last, shuffling as if the wind were pushing him. Without words, they raised their instruments. What emerged was not a song, but a hurricane of broken sounds: the flute drew spirals of hope, the guitar scratched the silence with restrained rage, the saxophone roared like an awakened beast. The windows of the nearby buildings lit up one by one. No one knew who started calling them The Ghosts of Luxor. Week after week, they gathered on the roof, improvising melodies that spoke of what they could not pronounce. Sarah discovered that her flute could laugh if she held the high notes; Leyla stopped bandaging her fingers and let blood stain the guitar neck; Tazz, for the first time, wiped the saxophone with a cloth before playing. People arrived with candles, cheap bottles and looks hungry for beauty.
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The night of the street festival, everything fell apart. A talent scout arrived from the city offering contracts, and fear seeped through them like poison. Sarah trembled as she imagined failing far from home; Leyla saw the ghost of her ex-beloved in every signed piece of paper; Tazz understood that if they succeeded, he would have to leave behind the only promise that still tied him to his brother. They played that time as if it were their last: frantic, torn, imperfect notes. When they finished, the silence was so thick it drowned out even the rumble of traffic. At dawn, Sarah found the flute split in two on her bed; Leyla gave her guitar to a beggar boy; Tazz left the saxophone in front of his brother's grave. The talent scout left without them, but bootleg recordings of their performances circulated from hand to hand. Years later, in seedy bars and subway stations, people still hummed those nameless melodies, feeling that something inside them was coming loose, fragile and alive, like a bird learning to fly.