And her confliction, of course, pales in comparison to his. To leave his family before was one thing, but now, in the aftermath of this? She watches him, and when he speaks in Kurdish, she studies his face, worried he’s making plans to stay, that she will board the plane alone. In her mind, this is the worst thing. A naive assumption.
Early evening, after funerals, everyone in the neighborhood pays visits to each other. Armed with food, they drop in to check on each other, to hold each other in a smothering dusk before quickly returning to their houses. Outside, leaves rustle in a growing wind, shimmering like something turned electric.
“I have a friend who has okra,” Soran says. He’s sitting on the steps to the back door, elbows on his knees. “The plants, I mean. They’re babies. Very small, but I’d like to get them started. At the area in the back.”
Olivia finds the spot. A small plot of untamed land against the wall. It won’t take long to ready the area for planting, and even though tomorrow will be their second to last full day in Kurdistan, the garden and rote motions are all she craves.
“We’ll do it,” Delan says. “We’ll have it ready. And stakes to hold the plants. Right?”
“Sure,” Soran says, which makes Olivia smile because it’s Delan’s word, adopted now. “Maybe you can find sticks, tall sticks. I’ll go to my friend, to make sure the plants are ready.”
“And beans if he has them,” Delan adds. “You could get them going up the wall.”
Soran agrees, and as they continue to plan out the back garden, Olivia sees it, the need for normal. And she knows that Delan was right in some ways. You don’t move on. You move with. Even if the other night is not found in her every conversation or thought, it lives with her. Tucked away. A hidden stash of meaning.
The next day, the sun is tangerine bright and the sky a stunning, deep blue but equipped with a wind, as if offering a slight undoing to its beauty. Soran is already gone, so Olivia and Delan join his parents for breakfast. Yogurt and naan bread, tea and fruit in the dining room. There are oval-shaped bruises on Hewar’s arms where the soldier grabbed him, and he lowers his sleeves when he sees Olivia notice.
Clearing the back area won’t take long, and Delan wants to go on a stick-finding mission in the hills sooner rather than later, so he tells her they’ll work on the garden when they return. Again she has that feeling she’d had when they first arrived, that the garden is safe. The walls enclosing and protective. The last thing she wants to do is leave. But it’s their second to last day, and there are photographs she could take of a landscape she might never see again, and so she agrees, straps on her yellow Nike sneakers with their orange symbols, and gets her camera. On the dresser in her room is the little tube of damask rose oil, which she dabs on her wrists and in the hollow of her chest. Already its deep, provocative scent reminds her of sugary treats and the warm gaze of others, the garden and old walls and secrets.
Soran’s car is outside, so they find his keys and take a short drive to the base of the mountains, then walk along hills covered in oak trees and grass that’s begun to dry. Truly, it’s the most beautiful morning she’s experienced since being here. Temperate. One of those days that draws you outside, charming you with waving flowers and full bursts of white clouds. Apparently they’d arrived in that fold of spring to summer, the perfect last chance, because even now, at the end of the trip, the land looks parched, though wildflowers remain, toughened and battle-weary.
Stopping in the shadow of a cloud, a little continent of shade, she sees Delan twenty or thirty feet away, bending to pick up a long stick before holding it up for inspection, and watches him for clues. Is he surveying this land with the greed of a last glance? Or with the ease of someone who will see it again? After a moment, she lifts her camera to her eye. Thankfully it’s color film, because the sky has never been bluer than it is above him.
The grass whispers against her legs as she approaches him. Together they walk, gathering more sticks until the collection becomes unwieldy and they stop. Delan spreads out a long, thick strip of fabric; puts the pile on top; and ties the fabric around it, then hoists the pile on his back and holds both ends. In the distance, crooked boughs of oak trees angle toward the ground and sky, and all at once, the leaves shake with a gust of wind. At first, the sound that reaches her is the ocean but then becomes something else, something haunting, like hundreds of ancient whispers. A warning, she thinks. You don’t listen to warnings, Delan said back in Baghdad, which could be true because she shrugs it off. Her camera with its MD-2 motor drive hangs heavy on her neck.
“I’m taking pictures,” she says. “I want that view, there.”
She points to a crest a ways up, one that promises a vista. Above it, clouds tumble from the
