“At home,” Olivia says to Delan, “you don’t leave someone knowing it’s the last time you’ll see them. Possibility exists, just from proximity. But here, now—what if this is it with your aunt? The one and only intersection with her life? It’s meeting someone just to say goodbye.”
The sandalwood oil he wears has mixed with a green soap from his aunt’s bathroom—olive and laurel oils, an herbaceous, dark freshness—and already she knows this smell to be him, here. Together they watch the morning caught in the gold of the mosque. Men appear at the café below, a game of dominoes set up.
“A small key opens big doors,” he says. “One of our sayings.” Then he smiles. “Everything, always, is the beginning.”
CHAPTER 5
They will drive north to Kirkuk, then to Erbil, passing Khanzad Castle, which Delan tells her was built of stone and gypsum by Princess Khanzad in the sixteenth century and still stands strong. From there, they will drive on Hamilton Road, named after the engineer who connected Erbil to the Iranian border in the twenties, winding through what he calls the Grand Canyon of Kurdistan, until at last they reach their destination in the Rawanduz area. A journey that will take the whole day in a car with seat belts that work only in the back and a fender that once belonged to a different vehicle.
Only Olivia’s suitcase fits in the trunk, so the rest get piled in the front seat. Delan sits next to Olivia in the back, knees pressed against the seat before him, and though a few times his cousin tosses a comment toward him, all in all the man seems interested only in the silence the ride provides and the endless opportunity to smoke. Now and then, his hand taps on the open window to a beat no one else hears and whenever they speed up, the wind becomes a wild whip in the car.
Soon, her hair, tied with a clip, comes undone, and she’s forced to hold it back with both palms on her temples—catching the heady scent of the damask rose oil she’d found whole and intact in her suitcase—appearing as a passenger who is shocked at what’s before her, which, given the condition of the roads and how closely the cousin follows cars in front of them, wouldn’t be far from the truth. Beside her, Delan laughs when he sees her.
Small rivers. Flat and bright with blinding sun. Palm trees in low, leaning kisses with the water. Clutches of grass grow from dry ground, like the strange, bold vegetation on a sand dune, and everywhere there are fallen fronds, swept against old trucks or buildings. They pass a car that’s been reduced to a burned shell, and she turns to watch it go. It recedes in the distance, a scorched remnant of a day someone would never forget—if they were lucky.
There was a daydream she used to have. On the way to work, she’d think of it, a way to pass the time. She pictured herself coming in to work late one day, her boss angry, yelling, till he’d see the streaks of soot on her pants and the expression on her face. One by one, the entire bullpen would notice. Phones would go unanswered as they looked to her, wanting to know what happened. And so she’d tell them: a crowd gathered, one person with a hose trying to get it to reach a car that had just caught fire. She was passing by as well when just past the flames, she saw a head. A child in the front seat. In a second, she was outside with a jacket she’d grabbed from her car, running to the man with the hose, dousing the jacket in water and then using it to open the door before carrying the child to his mother. And right as she finishes the story, the newsroom silent, the photo editor, Peter Darrow, would burst into the room. You’ll never believe what just happened down the street. I got pics; this girl, she—and then he’d see her. And everyone would see her. The moment practically came with a trilling sound effect, and as she saw this, Olivia would grin to the streetlights ahead, lost in the magic of a moment that never happened, seeing her once unseen bravery.
For almost a month, she thought of this, every day on her way to work. Now she thinks of that car on fire, the one they passed, and feels a pierce of guilt. Because there would be no man with a hose that barely reaches. Only flames and heat and a desert that seems forever.
The road they’re on eventually becomes dirt, and the air thickens when they ride within the path of another car. Mopeds, donkeys, and embattled vehicles, everything dulled with blown sand. Houses with light-colored brick walls and pink and white oleander.
In the distance now, there is something. At this point, it’s just a promise, a shape that slowly sharpens. Cars stopped, men with rifles. Iraqi military are both on the ground and up high in lookouts. Cement barricades divide and reroute the road.
“It’s just a checkpoint,” Delan says. “Don’t talk. Our papers are fine; we’ve done nothing wrong. But don’t draw attention to yourself.”
Tall grass gone to seed feathers the edge of the road, waving with the wind. When it’s at last their turn, a man who wears his rifle slung across his body like a beauty contestant’s banner approaches their car. Without meaning to, Olivia’s gaze goes up a fraction, just a bit, to the man’s eyes, and in the tilt of his head, she understands he’s identified her as foreign. A split second, that’s all it took.
Delan’s cousin hands him their papers, but the man is now leaning into the car, peering at Olivia. His eyes are silty water, a hazel that would be beautiful in any other situation. Quickly she looks down, realizing she’s doing exactly
