“So what, you’re excluded from that because you weren’t tormented? Because you don’t have a mental illness? Be thankful you don’t. Of course there’s a connection. But it’s not the only one. I’ve known brilliant actors who had wonderful childhoods. What pain were they drawing from? Is their performance less brilliant because they’ve got loving parents? Because they told a joke that day? Of course not. And I’ve known people who’ve suffered like you could not understand and they have no more creative ability or desire than someone who sells tennis rackets.”
Lailan jumps to Delan, holding on to his leg as if about to fall in, and Delan grabs on to her, saying something in Kurdish that makes the girl’s eyes go wide.
“Lava?” Olivia asks, nodding to the ground. Lailan’s head turns at the strange word.
“Flood,” Delan says, then explains lava to Lailan in Kurdish. The girl’s eyes narrow, as if she has a bone to pick with fire that would dare flow from the earth. “You missed her shivering,” he adds to Olivia. “The water’s freezing. It was actually very realistic; I was impressed. There, Lailan, to safety! I see a boat.”
“Where is boat, where?” Then Lailan stops, laughing. “Where-ah. Where-ah boat.”
“Were,” Delan says, pronouncing it as she did, “means come in Kurdish. You’re calling the boat to you; is that what you’re doing, Lailan?” He turns to Olivia. “Soran only talks to her in English. She’s better than I was when I came to the United States.”
Lailan puts her hand to her mouth, as if holding an imaginary megaphone. “Where-ah boat. Where-ah boat.” She’s serious. Searching the street, squinting. Intent and focused.
Delan nudges the girl’s shoulders. “The anchor’s down. You’ll have to jump for it. Go, Lailan, now!”
Lailan sees the spot where he points—the bottom step to her house—and makes a leap.
Delan gives her a thumbs-up, then turns back to Olivia. “You judge art on art, not biography. I see it, you know. The way you compare yourself to friends, to everyone, like they have some ticket to being an adult you don’t. But when it comes to your talent”—he motions to her purse, to her camera—“it’s your eye. What you’re drawn to. What you see when you look at something. Empathy, that’s it. Some people have it right off the bat. Others need to learn through hard lessons. If you didn’t need to learn through hard lessons, to have an eye like you do, good for you. Don’t question it. And a smile doesn’t make you any less intelligent or creative. Just like a frown doesn’t make you smart. I choose to be happy, and I’m lucky I have that choice, and I won’t apologize for it.”
And now she hears it. It’s not just her he’s defending; it’s himself. Not for his past, which certainly has its share of torment, but for who he is now. Welcoming. Grandiose. Loving. The one who smiles at strangers and strikes up conversations with cabdrivers and people in checkout lines. “You feel like people pass you off because you’re happy?” she asks. And then adds, “For the most part.” Because she has of course seen when he is not.
“No one passes me off.”
It was quick, but she saw it: insecurity. Slight but present in the way he leans seemingly nonchalantly against the house, the way he didn’t meet her eyes as he spoke. Protection, she realizes. What at times must be a forced arrogance that prevents people from looking closer. She takes a couple of steps so she’s inches from him, so close that she smells the detergent they use at home. “It wouldn’t be proper to kiss you now, would it?” In the background, Lailan jumps over the threshold to her house, the door swinging shut behind her.
Delan’s eyes find Olivia’s lips. “Definitely not.” With his finger, he pulls her collar so she’s even closer. But he holds back, just barely. There’s the sound of him breathing, then a door opening across the street. Thwacks of a rug being beaten. He glances toward the noise and stands up straight, and in response, she turns to see dust rising from the rug and Soran’s car as it takes the corner.
The roads are dirt, and windshield wipers chase clear a path as they drive to another town for an early dinner, a town with a famous restaurant owned by Kurds. There’s no parking nearby, so they find a spot blocks away, next to an old, tilted minaret. Men lean in the doorways of stores, chatting with neighboring owners, cigarettes wedged between stained fingers and smoke curling around eaves. Their eyes search for customers, and when they spot Olivia, they stand aside, smiling and gesturing into crowded rooms of clothing, rugs, and knickknacks.
“Where you are from?” one man asks. A gray suit jacket over a plaid shirt. He stands with his hands together before him and nods to her with his head, encouraging her answer.
A pause as she turns to address him. “California.”
His hand goes to his heart. “America. We love the America. Please, you to have a wonderful visit in Kurdistan.”
Delan salutes the man, and Olivia yells out a thank-you, waiting for the typical sales pitch, the imploring call to come inside, to check out a sale. But all the man does is raise his arm in a farewell, his face a broad smile. Once more, she nods a thank-you, and turns back just in time to sidestep a woman crouched on the sidewalk with a burlap bag piled to the rim with green fruit.
“Almonds,” Delan says. “You eat the whole thing. The outside, everything. Delicious.”
A man carrying a cage with chickens cranes his head to watch her as she passes. People, she realizes, are staring at her. “I look American.”
He laughs. “You do. Sure. But that’s not it. You’re tall. The tallest woman they’ve ever seen.”
But it’s not just the women she’s taller than. Passing through crowds, she
