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

She motions down the hall, where she can see its corner. Hewar points, verifying, and she nods. “It’s beautiful. The paintings.”

“Careful,” Delan says from the stove. “If you tell a Kurd you like something, even a small comment, it’s custom for them to give it to you. And be warned, there will be more presents.”

Several times already, Gaziza has stopped what she was doing and raced from the room only to return with something hastily wrapped, and Olivia now has three gold necklaces, two rings, and a bracelet of eyes. Protection, Delan said.

When the kitchen door opens, everyone turns. A man almost as tall as Delan stands beneath the back porch light. The same straight nose and slightly curled, dark hair but with no beard, which makes him look younger and softer, like someone who’d write the poetry Delan shouts from stages. The man spots Delan and in a second is across the room and embracing him.

Delan, however, looks torn. Genuinely happy but worried. Reaching for the man but stiff. Everything a confliction. “This is Olivia,” he finally says. “Liv.”

The man turns to her, and his face narrows. A split second. A flash. That’s all it is and once again he’s smiling—though saying something to Delan in Kurdish, something that his mother catches and responds to happily. Within seconds, the man has both Olivia’s hands within his, changed. His skin is soft but his grip strong, and his eyes are a darkened green, like a plant gone wild in the shade.

“Olivia. From California. Congratulations.” His accent is slightly British, and the second she hears it, a fear wedges beneath her heart.

“Liv,” Delan says, “this is my little brother. Soran.”

In the dream, my brother wasn’t in England. He was back in my hometown. Nailed to a tree in our yard. A big fig tree we have. Blood dripped down the trunk onto the rocks. Soran was not supposed to be here. She tries to remember the yard, the fig trees, and the very attempt makes her feel both ridiculous and slightly sick. Looking at Delan, who believes his dreams hold an inherent truth, she sees the same consideration. That confliction when his brother walked in, it was a clash of love and worry.

“I thought you were in London,” she says.

“He does not write enough or call, or he would know that I am no longer in London.”

“School is over?” Delan asks.

“For me.”

“But why?” Delan asks, angry. “You were doing so well. You need to graduate. Why—”

“Maybe at Baghdad, I have not decided.” Soran glances toward his father. “Things change.” Then a smile at Delan. “You look the same, Hollywood.”

As if surrendering, Delan hugs him again, saying bra—brother.

“If you had told me you were coming,” Soran says, “I would have picked you up.”

“On what, your bike?”

“I have a car. Part owner. I share it with Baktiar down the street. It is orange. That is all I can say for it. And you remember Sarchal, in town? I do his bookkeeping.”

“But architect,” Delan says.

“Yes. Well, it may still happen. But for now, I decide the hours I work. Some I can do here, from home.”

Another hug between the brothers, their mother and father watching them with the happiness of parents whose greatest joy is their children in one room. Olivia, too, is caught up in the moment, till she catches something burning on the stove.

As they sit for dinner, there is thunder. A distant boom, followed by another. And though Olivia waits, there is no lightning. The air outside the open window stays warm and dry. An approaching storm, she figures. Dark, bunched clouds must hover in the distance.

The food is at once known and unknown, much like Delan and Soran look like their parents but different. The same ingredients, done differently. Again she hears the thunder, three claps, but now there is a rumble, a rolling, all-bass sound that reminds her of far-off fireworks, that low, deep-throated growl that happens every Fourth of July. Soran catches her watching the window.

“Cannons,” he says. “The Peshmerga and the government fighting. Handren and Karukh Mountains. Close enough to hear but not to worry. They start up in the evening but stop at night.” A glance at Delan. “Peshmerga mostly have Handren.”

“That’s far,” Delan says, pouring more wine into juice glasses for everyone but his parents, who don’t drink. “Always there is fighting in the mountains.”

Already another story is being told. Fighting in the mountains. In her mind, she sees the range they passed through, the tall peaks. Where they are now is against a mountain, right at its base. But then there’s English. The translation to the story just told. It’s considerate, that they do this, but it makes everything take twice as long. Still, she appreciates the inclusion, the way his father or mother will say something and then pause, expectant, waiting for the English version.

It’s in one of these pauses that there’s a different rumble. Loud and approaching, gathering and building. A tremble she feels within her. Tea and wine shimmer in glasses, and the windows of the room begin to shake. Still it increases, an impossibly loud noise but one she recognizes as a low-flying plane. Still, Gaziza bolts up from the table, and Hewar searches the ceiling with eyes gone wide, while Soran appears to be praying. Trying to understand, Olivia turns to Delan, but he’s frantically speaking in Kurdish, grabbing his mother’s hand when she starts for the door. His fingers press into her wrist as she pulls away.

And then it is dark. Nothing ticks. Nothing hums. Like the final beat of a countdown. Something is about to happen. Now.

But there’s only the plane. Louder, it gnaws through the sky as Gaziza backs against the wall, her face blanched in moonlight from the window, her eyes on the ceiling. Suddenly it occurs to Olivia that low-flying planes drop bombs. She tries to get up, but Delan stops her.

“No. No. It’s the electricity. Liv, that’s it. The power’s out.”

But the plane.