He smiles. “I knew it. The girl is an actor.” After a moment, he wraps his arms around Olivia, his chin on her shoulder. “I don’t know anything in life but that you deserve better. Like I said. You always have.”
The dress shines. The woman was right—the olive color looks good with her hair, the two colors like poppies she’d seen in the mountains, green and red in a disappearing sun. Then she sees it. A difference in her face. She leans in. Older, maybe. Suddenly. The only makeup she brought is red lipstick, and with slightly unsteady hands, she twists the gold tube and dabs it on. A brightening. She looks more alive and then realizes that might have been it—she looked sapped. Drained from all that’s happened. For a second, she sees herself as she used to be, the young woman with the tall boots and the short suede skirt. The one looking out the window, waiting for the party to start or waiting to go out, always waiting. Then she backs up and sees her dress and the long wings of her sleeves and knows she is no longer that person. She moves her arms, and the fabric sparks in the light. Under the copper of her pendant, the green jasper seems eager, emboldened by the green of her dress.
Downstairs, Soran and Hewar see her and both take to shyness, Soran saying something quietly that sounds like “incredible.” Gaziza, leaving the kitchen, sees her and hurries to tie her sleeves, then studies her eyes as if mentally lining them with kohl.
“He’s in the garden,” Soran says, catching her peering into the kitchen.
Outside, Delan is moving potted plants on top of the trapdoor.
“It looks fine,” she says, “don’t worry.”
“It’s not fine,” he says as he turns, then straightens. He blinks against the sun.
There’s no smile, but his mouth opens. He looks surprised. Unnerved. “You’re making me worry,” she says. “Is it not right?”
“Olivia,” he says, and her full name is again formed with his true accent, his true voice. “No one, ever, ever has looked so beautiful.”
She gives a small, disbelieving laugh. “Then why that look?”
He takes her hand and studies her palm, the base of her thumb, before again closing his eyes. “Because I saw you exactly like this, in a dream when I was away.”
His dreams. She wants to laugh but can’t, because she remembers her restless nights and her father’s long-ago words, When you can’t sleep, it’s because you’re awake in somebody’s dream.
“But I don’t remember it,” he says. “What does it mean that I just remember you?”
“That I’m all that matters?” A small smile.
He brings her hand to his lips, their eyes locked until she catches a glimpse of something next door and looks up to see Lailan in the window, mouth open. Delan, spotting her as well, blows the girl a kiss, and Lailan blows one back before ducking from the window.
“I told Miriam,” he says.
“Good, thank you.”
“For all I know, nothing will happen, and now she’s worried. Don’t thank me.”
“Better to be worried and ready.”
“Is it? Sometimes I think it’s better to just never see it coming. Why end on a worry?”
The sounds: hollering, singing, music playing. Even the women are like bright chimes when they walk, gold adornments jingling. Throughout it all, the groom’s family waits with horses for the bride, who eventually arrives in a bold red dress and a red veil edged in gold, walking behind a man who carries a giant mirror bright with her reflection. After a lifetime of weddings in white ordered silence, the day is a beautiful shock.
Sugar cones are rubbed together. Henna painted on the bride’s hands. Swords get tucked into the men’s waistbands while the women shine. Ferhad still has his arm in a sling and clumsily guides his horse, unable to take his eyes off his bride, so entranced that he lets the horse tromp through a bed of purple irises. An older woman with a sunken face and dots of tattoos below her chin shoos him off before bending to straighten the stalks.
Delan didn’t exaggerate. There are four kinds of rice at the reception, which is a picnic in an open, grassy meadow edged with trees and a creek on one side and an orchard of pomegranate trees on the other. Behind it all, the mountains loom like solemn guests, rugged and protective, and when a man with a long wooden flute stands upon a ledge and begins to play, Olivia closes her eyes and the ancient world wraps around her, a conjuring by the spectral sound. “Ney flute,” Delan whispers in her ear, right as the low notes soar high.
Rows of food in giant aluminum bowls. Layered rugs. Samovars that shine, polished and steaming. Songs indeed last for twenty minutes, with everyone dancing in a line that winds its way through the field, arms linked and feet moving in step. Drifts of clouds, even, seem stirred to movement. Nothing is unaffected by the celebration.
Delan dances with his family and friends, his shoulders lifting and dipping with each step, and yet still, with all the beauty and music, Olivia hears the words as if the warning’s caught on a breeze: Put the books in the ground. Even the fact that he saw her like this in a dream has stuck with her, a whisper of fear. Still, she tries to shove past it by taking photos, by feeling the warmth and the ease of those around her. Nothing might happen, the alarm sounded just to be safe. Someone offers her tea, with a date placed alongside the cup, and as she tastes the two together, she tells herself that’s all it was, just a little caution. Just in case.
Lailan, in a pink dress and silver-sequined vest, must glimpse the worry on Olivia’s face because she pats her hand and says a phrase she’s heard Olivia say many times: “It’s okay.”
