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

told me he saw Soran leaving town a few times a week, right after curfew lifted. You remember that. That right there—with no new job, no reason for Soran to leave as far as anyone knew—that worked. For both sides. So he could tell the Kurds Soran was a traitor meeting with the government and tell the government he was meeting with the resistance.”

Then she remembers. The restaurant. Soran had told Ferhad he was there the night the Kurdish political figures had been killed. Outside the bakery, he had innocently offered information that could further sell himself as the traitor. As she tells Delan this, he turns to her, quietly taking it in.

“He said we were lucky,” Olivia continues. “Lucky Soran got us out of there in time. And Soran had just met with men who were in the resistance. At the bakery, they were all in a back room.”

“He was playing both sides. That was icing on the cake.”

Ferhad feels your love for Delan, Soran had said. And he says you should see with your eyes and hear with your heart, because Delan is alive and will be back, and you know this. And Delan was back. The very next day. Now Olivia wonders, did Ferhad have something to do with his release? Or even with him being taken in the first place? “Delan, he was surprised to see me at the picnic. But he knew you’d be there.”

She watches him absorb this. Silently, he traces a little circle on her knee with the tip of his finger. “The military,” he says, “they patrol the mountains. I’m sure that was it.”

But the idea is planted. Her mind is racing. If Ferhad had turned, could he have seen opportunity when he heard Delan was in town and offered up a cousin he barely spoke to, someone connected with a high-ranking Peshmerga, to try to appease the government? To put off turning in Soran? Then, maybe after the sabotage, they’d demanded more. Maybe at that point there was no other choice but to go through with it. Again she thinks back to when Delan had been taken, to Ferhad on the street outside the bakery, and the look of surprise on his face when he realized Delan had not returned. As if something had happened that shouldn’t have. As if someone had not kept up their end of the bargain. “Maybe he thought they’d just take you for a day. Even a night.”

“Stop,” he says and flattens his hand on her knee. “I came back. That’s what matters.”

And she accepts this, because she has to. Because he doesn’t want to know why he was taken. Because he can’t add another wrong to the list.

“My cousin,” Delan continues, “he was shocked, did I tell you? When I told him about Nina, Soran’s girlfriend.”

“Everyone was shocked.”

“Not like this. He was going to be sick. Even then I wondered, why would he care so much that there was a woman he’d never met with a broken heart? But now I know. Because he caused it. He who believes in love, it’s the last thing he wanted.”

She watches his hand as again he starts tracing a circle on her knee. The lines of his tendons. The veins beneath his skin that rise and fall.

“My cousin,” he says at last, looking up to the ceiling. “My god. What they must have done to him.”

Legs threaded on the couch. So close that whispers are felt. Recaps of life until sleep steals in and one or the other wakes. A shake of the shoulder. “Hey.” Then more stories, more kisses.

“So you’re calling in sick,” he says. “You’ll be back to work when?”

“Friday.”

“That’s the contest. Am I right? June fifteenth.”

She shrugs. The contest. She’s told herself it’s over. “You know it’s Mason who’s calling me in sick.”

“No. He’s in your good graces?”

“He paid for this trip.”

“Mason has money?”

“A credit card.”

“That’s not good. I’ll pay him back.”

“You don’t have money.”

“I do. I told you, didn’t I? By the oregano. That piece of granite. Lift it and there’s some money.”

“You have a trapdoor in the garden.”

“It’s a hiding place. Everyone looks under a mattress. I thought I told you this.”

“No.” She smiles. “It’s okay, though. Rebecca’s been covering you.”

He nods, distracted. His mind no doubt wound back to his hometown, back to his cousin who’d at one time been like a brother. All at once it hits her that maybe she was wrong. Wrong to come here and make him relive it. Wrong to add to everything the injustice that it was his own family who caused the loss. Because despite everything, he loves his cousin—and any retribution will be more hurt upon his family, upon people he loves.

On the wall by the lamp is a faded painted hyacinth. She moves toward it, to the far end of the couch, and watches him. “Was I wrong? To come here with this?”

One of his hands kneads the other as he shakes his head. “No. You were right. I had to know. He loved Soran. I know he did, and I know he still does. And one day I will forgive him for this, because he must’ve saved someone he loved even more. And that’s what I’m going to tell myself. That it was for love. And if that’s not the case, that I don’t want to know.” He pats the place next to him. “But you. You did the right thing. So come back. Let me tell you about the garden.”

And so she does, and he tells her of the okra they planted where Soran intended. The new pomegranate tree. A baby with four blooms. But when he starts to tell her about Miriam, how she’s mentally not well, and then Lailan, Olivia shakes her head and untangles herself from him.

“Not her. I can’t.”

“You don’t want to hear about Lailan?”

“You,” she says, “I know I will see again. Leaving you is awful, but it’s not it. With Lailan—I wanted you to bring