So when only days later, Ben whispered, Supply closet at four, she realized again the enormity of her mistake. Four p.m. came, and she watched the clock and didn’t move. When he returned to his office, he watched her as he went and then found her later in the break room. Que pasa? he asked quietly, slyly, by the refrigerator. And she faced him and said far too loudly, I can’t. A woman by the sink turned, her eyes flickering between them.
And though her point had landed, she instantly regretted her choice in words. Because she didn’t mean can’t. She meant won’t. I won’t.
Minutes later, the edge of her desk gouged a line in her arm, and the late-afternoon sun simmered from the windows and fell short of where she sat. She had wanted to be someone else, she realized, and it hadn’t worked. Because she was Olivia. Open, craving heart and all. A person longing to love, the way others were resolved to conquer.
The morning call to prayer sounds in the dark, waking her from staggered sleep. Olivia listens from her bed, trying not to hear their conversation last night, trying to hear only the call that has filled this land for generations, sung into darkness from multiple mosques in the city. Haunting voices that seem to echo themselves, dipping and pausing and rising. A hook to the past. Quietly she goes to the living room, intending to stand on the balcony and let the ancient sound consume her, but stops when she sees Soraya on her prayer rug.
In the kitchen, Delan pours tea into small glasses, liquid the color of rich amber. The time on the wall clock says 4:14.
“I couldn’t sleep either,” he says. “The call. Azaan in Arabic, bang in Kurdish.”
He won’t look at her. Just mops up a spill, then wipes down the counter.
“It’s beautiful.”
“It’s early. Now it doesn’t matter, because I’m up. But soon I’ll want him dead. There’s yogurt.” He points to a bowl covered in dampened cheesecloth. Beside it are soft-boiled eggs, a stack of naan bread, and a small dish of honey with a silver spoon. “They do that, head on the ground, to be humbled. To remind themselves to take time from their day to remember God. Fajr, the first prayer. There’s a line in this one that prayer is better than sleep. Not for me, but I wanted to make her breakfast.”
Olivia stands directly behind him. “Delan.”
The call goes high, and he smiles. “Right there, we used to say someone grabbed his balls.” Finally he turns to her. “I didn’t have the right. I know that. Last night. You were with who you were, and me as well.”
“But I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“You should say what you need to with me.”
“And so should you.”
He watches her as the muezzin’s voice reaches from a long pause, building and going wide. “But that you thought I saw you in a bad way. Why? Why would I be with you if I thought you were naive?”
“That’s what I’ve wondered myself, I guess.”
“You don’t see what I see.”
She smiles. “Probably not.”
He reaches for her, pulling her against him. “Then you’re the one missing out.”
Outside, the sky is still dark, city lights hesitant. “I’m not leaving. I’m not changing my ticket.”
A close-lipped smile. “I didn’t think you would. You, who wouldn’t come inside during the manhunt.”
A year ago. Men with rifles and a helicopter that made low, loose loops, who barked out orders to not go outside and to lock all doors—a directive that backfired on Olivia, as it drove her out onto the porch to try to seek a better view. “We were blocks away.”
“And told to stay inside. By the men with guns and knowledge. You don’t listen to warnings.”
“I do, though. That’s all I’ve ever heard.”
He smiles, his lips now inches from hers. “If that were true, you wouldn’t be here with me.”
She’s about to ask him what he means—is the location what he thinks she was warned against? Or him?—when Soraya appears in the threshold and reddens upon seeing the two of them. Then she spots the tea and breakfast, places her hand over her heart, and looks up, nodding as if something has been answered, as if this whole time she’d been asking for just one morning’s help.
Later, they stand in the ruins of a long-ago garden, a gift from a king to his wife, who missed her homeland of lush forests. Rubble that had once stretched to the sky in majestic structures. Terraced levels filled with vegetation that combined to form an impression of a mountain of trees and plants.
“Queen Amytis,” Delan says. “The daughter of a Median king. The Kurds, we’re one of the descendants of the Medes. The area she missed, that’s where I’m from. We used to hike to a Median king burial chamber. Empty, though. The Brits took the bodies in the thirties. But the carvings, you should see them. Maybe you will see them. There was a door that was also taken. It locked from the inside. Slid on a rail. The person who locked it from inside had all eternity to wish he’d picked a different job.” With that, he laughs and places his hand on the small of her back, and the move—in this country of studied distance and separation—feels daring and romantic.
Another cab ride. More prayers. Naan bread slathered with honey, the scent of kebab on the streets. Then, at last, a knock on the door and their luggage is wheeled inside, and the next morning a second cousin appears with a car. From the balcony, they watch as he smokes on the street, while inside Soraya covers her hair with a bright floral scarf, tying it at
