Take What You Can Carry by Gian Sardar (superbooks4u .TXT) 📕

friend of Rebecca’s is a travel agent and called with names of hotels nearby Soraya’s, just in case, and though Olivia has folded the list in her purse, she knows she won’t need it. If for some reason Soraya isn’t home and Delan never shows, she will wait in the hall all night. She will sleep against her carry-on bag till the morning’s call to prayer, and then she will slip the envelope with Delan’s name under his aunt’s door and catch her flight. He was there, she will write on a piece of paper. This man. That day in the mountains.

Concourses and gate changes and sleeping through sunlight. Before she knows it, they’re lowering through a haze of smog to a land that is flat, becoming roads and fields and sand and shrubs, and when they touch the tarmac, there is a feeling that she is on his land and even that is one small miracle. No bomb threats. No diversions. Throughout everything, she makes eye contact and is not afraid to smile.

Key phrases in Arabic written in a steno notepad. The cabdriver nods at her request and her address and then chews gat the entire ride. Tearing the leaves with his teeth, he squints through a dusty windshield, then turns to her to offer a warm bottle of Coca-Cola.

“Halha ltf mink,” she tries. That’s very kind of you.

His dark eyes find her in the rearview mirror. He nods before correcting her. “Hadha ltf mink. You are most welcome.”

From his rearview mirror hangs a small photograph of two little boys that’s been threaded onto a string, and as he takes a corner too fast, they swing to the side. The littlest one has no teeth and grins for the camera as if proud of that fact.

A thought has been working its way into the forefront of her mind: Lailan could be with Delan. Olivia pictures the door to Soraya’s apartment opening and the girl standing by the walls of the painted garden. Hi-lo. Only a few hours they’d have before Lailan would tuck herself against her, head heavy, sleep overtaking. Only hours, but that’s okay. For a moment, Olivia allows herself the memory of the girl’s arms, but there is a physical ache to it and so she stops, as best she can.

Al-Kadhimiya Mosque is gold even in the veil of late evening. Her nerves are building. What if he’s not there? She’s prepared, of course, as she needs to be logical, but her heart would break because she wants to see him. To feel his shoulders and his chest against her cheek. Just the thought makes it worse, the craving for him, and so she turns to watch vendors on the sidewalk and date palms that stand tall and swaybacked, bent from time and circumstance. Night is falling.

When they turn onto Soraya’s street, she looks up. Balconies are stacked one on top of the other, emerging from buildings in all shades of wrought-iron railings. Dark gray, she remembers, and scans until she sees one. Six floors up, with vines of a plant and a man who stands and faces the other direction.

She knows his shoulders. Knows the way he leans. Knows him even in the way one arm hangs slightly over the railing. Before them, cars are inching and honking, everyone stopped for what appears to be a donkey that won’t budge. And Delan is right there. After all this time. Right there, scanning the streets, looking for her.

At last they pull closer, and as if looking away would snap the connection and wind him back into the apartment, she keeps her eyes steady on him. A white shirt against the night. He faces a breeze. They park one building over, and she has her head out the window as she looks up, not caring that she’s smiling like a fool—and as if he feels her there, he turns and sees her. And takes a step back, as if unbelieving. But then he leans forward and shields his eyes from the lights of the city, trying to see her, to be sure. And she’s still watching him when she opens the car door and steps into the noise and dust of the street. Still watching him when he must understand it’s really her, her in her American sneakers and jeans and too-tight T-shirt and big knit purse. For a second she looks down, to the driver, and remembers Lailan and that it was only him on the balcony. Quickly she looks back up, but he’s gone.

It’s best, she tells herself. But already there is an ache within her for the lost hours with the girl. She peels off dollar bills, the only currency she has, handing over an amount that’s way more than the ride was worth, but she doesn’t care because she’s missing Lailan and thinking of those two little boys in the photo. The cabdriver’s face narrows and then becomes sad, as if bracing for a joke, for her to pull the money back from him, and when she doesn’t, he looks up at her, and in a flash, he’s smiling with half his mouth green from gat. Then, ashamed, remembering, he covers his mouth and looks down. “Shukran,” he says over and over. Thank you.

“You just paid him his whole year’s salary.”

She doesn’t care about decorum, about rules, about anything. She’s in Delan’s arms and he’s half lifting her, her toes brushing the ground. Around them, people must be staring, but she’s got her eyes closed as she breathes him in, his sandalwood and olive oil and that mix of here, dust and kerosene and spices. And then he’s kissing her, and it’s as if she’s stepped into an underwater sway, that moment in an ocean when your feet leave the ground right as a wave you’d not seen catches and holds you. When she finally opens her eyes, she sees the driver still there, watching and smiling with his hand over his mouth as