“That, I do not think. Ferhad lost his business months ago. His family is in good standing, but the bride-price was—” But then he stops talking, and Olivia turns in time to see Delan shaking his head.
“What?” she says. “What’s a bride-price?”
“Sheerbayee. Bride-price. What it sounds like,” Soran says. “The man’s family pays it to the bride’s family. They are losing a set of hands, someone valuable in the house.”
Olivia turns to Delan, eyes wide.
“My mother,” Delan says quickly, “she makes the decisions in the house. All the money, how it’s spent.”
“But she also does all the cleaning and the cooking.”
“And that does not happen in America?” Delan asks.
“Here, it is a patriarchy,” Soran says. “And traditional. Less traditional than other cultures, yes. Much less. But roles are slow to break. We are far from perfect.”
Delan shakes his head. “Soran-gyan, it depends where you are from. Rural, not rural, educated, not educated. Life in the mountain villages, it’s not like here. And that is true for any country.”
“Yes, that is true. You remember Roza,” Soran says. “Wassim’s sister? She’s a judge.”
“See? A judge. And family, everyone is different—even in America, that is true. But the struggle for freedom, you admit, that has united men and women. Women are respected politically. Think of all the women Kurdish leaders, the women Peshmerga. Our family—my aunts, cousins—many are political—”
Soran holds up his hand, glancing toward the soldiers at the end of the street. “It is one thing to talk of history quietly. Another to talk of our family. Even in English. The walls have ears. No more, please.”
Delan, silenced, taps his finger against the table, then glances at Olivia. “Ferhad was to have married someone else, you know. But he didn’t. Because of her, his bride. Because he loved her that much.”
“He loved her so much, he didn’t marry someone else? And he gets credit for that?”
“Arranged marriages are also for love. Love of your family. And he could’ve grown to love the other woman.”
“And what if she never loved him?”
“Then he’d miss out.”
“As would she,” Olivia says. “Imagine, not getting a chance to love. Never getting those butterflies just because you heard someone’s name or feeling like everything’s better because someone exists. No one should miss that.”
Delan smiles.
“What?”
“No, you’re right. No one should miss that. But you described in love. The in love part of the first few months. That is when they can do no wrong and your stomach jumps and everything is bliss. But really, truly, loving someone? To me? What in love becomes? That’s deeper. That’s when they can do wrong and it’s not always sunshine. You love them for who they are, sure. That’s the easy part. But you also love them despite who they are. That’s the important part.”
Saying nothing, Olivia pours tea into her cup. She’s trying to remember what Rebecca told her about her ex-boyfriend’s return from the war. Broken in too many ways, he’d not made it easy. But not once had she stopped loving him, even when it hurt. Even when he made a final choice and took away any chance at getting better. Love, in that case, was certainly not all sunshine.
Delan turns to his brother. “And you, what of your girl, the one who was the one?”
Soran shrugs. “I loved to love her. How is that? Can we walk now? Enough riddles.”
The day ekes into the afternoon. A drive and a hike to Shanidar Cave, where a stair path zigzags through thistles and tall white flowers to an entrance that’s dark upon the mountain, the shape like a gaping frown, as if the mountain silently wails. Inside, the stone walls are streaked and darkened, and Soran tells her of the Neanderthal remains that were unearthed, thought to be sixty thousand years old.
“When I was a kid, we’d come here,” Delan says. “At the time, they’d not been found. Imagine the discovery, waiting.”
“The skulls,” Soran says, “the bodies were covered with pollen. Hollyhock and thistles. It meant flowers were thrown in the graves. The first signs of humanity, in creatures not even fully human.”
Right here, where she stands. “My mom’s in my dad’s den. In an urn, brass with engraved daisies. They were her favorite. Underappreciated, she said.” Sitting in the grass in someone’s yard, they’d made daisy chains, tying stems so they fit around her wrist. “I want to stay on the earth like this. To be found in a cave that no one will look in for thousands of years.”
“Only you would have that request,” Delan says. “The most difficult request. Look.” He points to the grass outside, yellowed from a light that could only mean a storm. “We’ll be here for a while.”
Just as he says that, heavy drops bullet the dirt outside the cave’s mouth, kicking up dust. Within minutes, it’s as if a curtain of water has been lowered before them.
“Think of how many people stood here,” she says. “Listening to the rain. These exact acoustics, in this exact spot. Sixty thousand years ago, someone stood right where I am, hearing this.”
The rain beats the valley. This is what she’s wanted, what she’s needed. This connection, this tie to the core of humanity—it clenches something within her. After so much war and politics and struggle, here it is, the essence. A cave for shelter. Flowers for grief. Uncomplicated and pure. So basic, what’s needed, and yet how easily she forgets.
Delan leans against the cave’s wall, his head turned toward the rain. Soran stands before him but faces the mouth of the cave, his hands in his pockets. Both brothers watch the water as it beats the earth. Without them noticing,
