“Are you crying?” he asks, and she hears it in his voice, that he, too, feels futility. A shared burden.
“No,” she says, and he laughs, knowing the truth. “What about Miriam? How is she?”
And now he goes quiet, and in the quiet she hears what he doesn’t want to say, and then hears that clicking, steady and spaced-out like a slow, dying heart. “Sick,” he finally says, and then adds that it will be okay. That Lailan is with them. That she’s a brave, feisty girl.
After a few more minutes, he tells her this will be expensive, and he should go. “But I can’t come back now,” he adds. “I still don’t know why, you understand?”
“But that’s why I’m calling.” She’s about to tell him she looked at the photographs when she realizes she never told him about them. He doesn’t know they exist. How to tell him now that she captured his brother’s final moments, and to tell him in code, no less? And then she hears Soran’s words. Kurds do not tell bad news to someone who is not with their family. It is a kindness to lie until family can be there to help. Even if she could safely tell Delan, she shouldn’t.
Suddenly, his voice goes low, as if he’s attempting to dip below the surface of what can be detected. “We can’t,” he says. Then adds, “I’ll be home soon,” and it’s fast, as if he’s being chased, as if he’d spat the words behind him to make someone go away. She knows not to say more and listens as he takes a deep breath, becoming himself again. “I miss you,” he says, his voice his own.
She can almost hear him lower his head, feel him push into the phone as if it could draw them closer. She presses the receiver harder against her ear, knowing there will be a round imprint later. “I miss you too.”
Another moment of silence. She feels I love you unspoken but there, coming through between the clicking beats of the phone—until suddenly there’s nothing.
“Sorry,” the operator says. “The line dropped. Should I try again?”
What can Olivia say? Their whole conversation would be another attempt to not say what they mean, to hunt for meaning behind false words. So she tells the operator no and watches the reflection of the room in the window. Rebecca and Mason face her, waiting, the yard beyond faint, like a mirage. The new garden, she thinks, wishing she’d told him even that.
At last, she turns to her roommates. “There’s nothing I can say. If I try to talk in code—what if he thinks I mean someone else? I can’t use his cousin’s name. I can’t even describe him—I say his arm is in a sling and anyone listening might know.” She motions to a bottle of wine on the counter. “Is that open?”
“No,” Rebecca says, getting up. “But it can be.”
“Ferhad. What they must have done to him. Broken his arm, who knows. Delan said it’s so bad sometimes, what they do, that you give them a name. Any name. Just to make it stop.”
Now Mason stands. “I have money. I got a credit card.”
Both Olivia and Rebecca turn to him.
“I mean,” he continues, “I can’t go. I don’t have an Iraqi visa.”
“No,” Rebecca says, understanding. “She can’t go either.”
Olivia turns to her. “But I could. To his aunt in Baghdad. Just there. I couldn’t do more if I want my job when I get back.” Even as she says this, she thinks of Lailan. I wouldn’t have time for her. A pain and yet a relief. To have to say goodbye to her again—it’s not something she can do.
“Call in sick,” Mason says. “Or I’ll call for you. When you’re gone.”
A swing of optimism. This will happen. With every thought, it’s as if she’s waking from a sleep, lifting from a stupor. “I know Soraya’s address—we used it for my application. He can meet me there. I’ll book and tell him the flight and call it a layover—in case the phone’s tapped. What would the government care about a layover?”
“No,” Rebecca says. “You both need to stop. This is crazy. After everything. This is not an option.”
“But this is what he needs. So he can come home. And Soran. For him.”
Now Rebecca stands, walking to the sink as if needing distance. “Think about what you’re saying. Does traipsing in there with photos of someone being killed by the government seem like a good idea?”
Silence. Rebecca sees she’s landed her point and continues. “Even he wouldn’t want justice at your expense.”
You were trying to stay alive, Soran said that night at the restaurant. Even the dead would want that for you. She’d told him no, they’d want justice, and that justice sometimes starts with a photo. Yet still, he’d not agreed.
And sometimes it is just a photograph, he said. And that photograph could get you killed.
In her room, she tries to conjure Soran’s voice, to hear what he’d want her to do. But instead there are just Rebecca’s words about traipsing in with the photo of soldiers killing a man. Of course she can’t do that, and the fact that she’d thought she could should be proof that she shouldn’t take this trip. Describe it, then, Mason said. You know it’s him. But what if it wasn’t Ferhad? There’s always the chance it’s some other man with his arm in a sling. She’d looked through her other photos from the wedding and it looked like him, with the same arm that was injured. His features. But if there’s revenge, if there’s action based on this, if someone were to be hurt or worse, it can’t be from
