Time passes in a new, tar-thickened way. That’s what people said after the ’71 earthquake, the one Olivia missed by a year. Still talked about to this day, stories shared late at night—where were you? What did you lose?—terror told through wine-stained lips. Early morning, six a.m. Rebecca ended up outside in nothing but a towel she held closed with a fist. It was only twelve seconds? Olivia made the mistake of asking, because the damage was legendary and to her, twelve seconds should not still be felt years later. Don’t say “only” to someone who’s been through something like that, Rebecca said. One second of true fear beats hours of anything else.
This, Olivia finally understands.
The man still won’t take his eyes off her, even as he backs away from the car. Just barely he nods and motions them forward. The cousin puts the car back in gear, tense. Slowly they pull ahead, and no one speaks until the checkpoint is small in the rearview mirror.
“What happened?” she asks quietly.
“Nothing. Just making sure you were you.”
“Money,” the cousin says.
“You paid him?”
“I’ll pay him back,” Delan says. “But there will be many checkpoints and many soldiers curious about an American with a giant camera bag. A blanket over it, please.”
The camera bag gets covered, and the checkpoints they go through from that point on are fine, though through each one, Olivia’s pulse rises and her breath feels shallow. As they pull past another one, Olivia watches it diminish in the side mirror, a fading threat. “There go my spy daydreams. Shaking too badly to take my cyanide pill.”
“You’d want to be a spy?”
“Like CIA. You know, something fun.”
“CIA is not fun.”
In her mind, she’d seen intrigue. Red dresses. Handguns in small purses. A harmless fantasy, something that had no bearing on her actual life. But now Delan’s cousin’s eyes find her in the rearview mirror, and she realizes her mistake. Remembers a Saturday of too much wine at a Persian restaurant where she sat with a group of Delan’s friends on a patio snaked with vines. That day Delan had organized a protest at the Federal building, an attempt to shed light on the Kurdish situation. Though the signs and banners had all been left in cars, he carried his anger with him, railing about the portions the Village Voice had leaked of the Pike report, the congressional investigation into the CIA. One element had to do with the Kurds: the United States and Kissinger had encouraged and funded them in a rise against the Iraqi government, as a favor to the shah of Iran, but abandoned them when they no longer served their purpose.
“They never wanted us to win,” he told his friends. “That’s what the committee found. They wanted us only to fight and keep Baghdad busy. We were a pawn. Kurds quit their jobs, school, you name it. Everyone joined in to fight and to die in a battle we were never allowed to win.”
It was reckless to talk of the shah and the Kurds there, and a ridiculous choice in venue to begin with, but Delan seemed fueled by the setting, his voice loud with daring.
“More than two hundred thousand refugees when they abandoned us, when we were being slaughtered, and not one dollar of humanitarian aid from the United States. Our leader, Barzani, he begged Kissinger for the United States’ help. ‘Our movement and people are being destroyed in an unbelievable way with silence from everyone.’ That is what he said. And Kissinger, he was later asked how he could justify such betrayal.” A pause as Delan looked each of them in the eye, and the belly dancer who’d been edging closer caught one look at him and abandoned course. “‘Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.’ That is what he said to the Pike Committee. The man we trusted. When Kissinger got married, Barzani even sent him a necklace and rugs.”
As they drive now, Olivia remembers that with those words, everything had changed. Because he no longer looked angry—he looked heartbroken. “A gold and pearl necklace,” he’d said. “And three rugs, I remember.” Then silence from everyone.
The landscape turns in a slow pivot. Hills erupt like giant seams upon the earth, trees in muted army greens. She asks Delan a question, but the words are lost in the wind. What? he mouths, and she leans in close to be heard, her head against his shoulder.
“Are you nervous?”
He doesn’t answer. He’s looking beyond her. She turns and sees a clutch of partially destroyed buildings, as if someone had grown bored mid-obliteration and simply turned their back. A wall-less kitchen. Dishes still on the table. Left for all to see is that turn, the moment between then and now, a frozen second in time after which nothing would be the same. She wants to stop and take a photo, but judging by his cousin’s speed, the question would not be met kindly.
“Always,” Delan says a moment later.
It takes her a moment to find the prompt for his words. Are you nervous? A stupid question. Before them, houses now give way to barren land. She stays leaned into him, and with his arm around her, he holds down her hair from the wind.
“There are parts that remind me of California,” she says.
“I saw home so often, I thought I was inventing things.”
She doesn’t tell him she’s wondered the same. Instead she falls asleep against him, and when she wakes from the car’s swerve, the world’s gone cooler.
“An hour away, Sleeping Beauty. Look where you are.” He nods to
