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

realizes she’s a head taller than most of the men. Faces tilt toward her. A woman kneeling beside a bin of walnuts peers up at her, her face weathered, black hair threaded with white.

“You failed to mention I’d be the tallest woman in the entire country.”

“There is no hiding you,” Soran says. “That is true. There, that is the restaurant, across the street.”

But they’re passing the opening to a bazaar. The thick smell of spices, a mix of voices. A long, narrow walkway of dirtied cement shoots through the chaos of goods. Each stall appears to have a different focus and a different merchant but is right on top of the other, the result a confusion of intents and rewards, a market that would render a shopping list useless. Overhead, tarps and canvases crisscross to protect against the sun or rain, everything lending itself to a beautiful chaos. A sensory overload, even from its edge. To be lost within the rows, to pry kebab off with her teeth and buy rugs or little brass dishes she’ll have no real need for, it’s all she wants.

“After,” Delan says, then nods to an area with tall bags of lentils and beans: green, white, black, orange, and every hue in between. “We’ll buy white beans for dinner tomorrow. And the next day, for the picnic.”

Crossing the street, they pause to let a moped lurch past. A few older men smoke hookah on the sidewalk, and the air by the entrance of the restaurant smells of burning coal. Inside is already crowded. Against one wall is a chipped tiled pool with hazy water, and fish swim in repetitive, lethargic arcs. Toward the back, before the kitchen, is a rounded open fire surrounded by metal spikes on which fish are impaled and cooking.

“Well,” she says as they take their seats at a table against the mirrored wall. “I actually don’t like fish. But fresh is good.”

“Masgouf. River carp,” Delan says. “You’ll like it. All netted today. Gone tomorrow.” He leans back in his chair and smiles, while his brother holds his water glass with both hands.

“We took you to a restaurant of fish,” Soran says, embarrassed, “and you don’t like fish.”

Delan turns to find the waiter. “She will like it. Trust me. It doesn’t get better. I used to dream of this fish.”

And there’s something in his last sentence that makes her smile. Because it’s true. He probably dreamed of this fish. And it’s not that he thinks he knows better or doesn’t care what she likes but that he wants desperately, more than anything, to open what he loves to others. To exist in a shared land, where one glance or do you remember is all it takes. And in his excitement to be in this place, he turns boastful and clumsy—a man who’d spill on a precious rug while hurrying to share his favorite meal or step on a toe while rushing someone to the dance floor.

“I’ll be fine,” she says. “As long as they have bread.”

“I didn’t think to ask,” Soran says. Soran, the one who’d watch from the edge of the dance floor and who’d mop up the spill. Soran, who now glances to the back of the restaurant unhappily.

She touches his hand, and he turns to her, surprised. “It’s okay. Really.”

Delan waves to the waiter, who approaches. “They have bread; of course they have bread. Let’s get drinks. The streets are swimming with food. If she doesn’t like it, we’ll buy kebab at the bazaar. Or shifta. You’ll love shifta. The Kurdish hamburger.”

Beside them, a couple drinks directly from soup bowls, bones of fish piled on saucers and charred tails left on rims of plates. At another table, a family uses their hands to eat, a platter of three fish lined with sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, and lemons before them. There are two little boys, one whose feet don’t touch the ground and who’s sitting on what looks like a telephone book. Bangs cut unevenly, a dimple on his right cheek. His face breaks into a smile when his mother spoons more tomatoes onto his plate, and as he eats, a seed catches on his chin. His father smiles and points to his own chin, miming the spot.

Delan doesn’t so much order as indicate there are three of them, which starts the food coming. When the waiter sets the main dish in the center of the table, Olivia wonders if the Neanderthals caught these same fish. Did they use spices or herbs?

“We need to go,” Soran says, having returned from the bathroom.

Delan looks up at his brother and then around the restaurant.

Soran doesn’t even take a seat, just says quietly, “We need to go. I’m paying. I’ll tell them I’m not well.” Then he leans in to whisper in Delan’s ear. There is a pause, and Delan’s eyes flicker to the back of the restaurant. Then Soran is gone, joining the host by the front door and peeling dinars from his wallet.

“Is he okay?” Olivia asks.

“He might be right and we should go.”

Now she looks around the room. Nothing appears wrong. The little boy beside them kicks his foot under the table, back and forth, back and forth.

Delan leans toward her and says quietly, “Too many political figures. Soran recognized them at that long table by the kitchen. And another one just arrived.”

A table of men, all wearing dark-brown or gray suits. Most glance at menus, some drink water, and others are leaned in and talking quietly. Elsewhere in the restaurant, no one seems bothered. People eat, the fish swim, the fire blazes.

“But we didn’t do anything.”

Delan leans in so close, his lips brush her ear. Beside them, a man walking to another table stares hard as he passes. “It’s not that we’re doing anything wrong. It’s that this restaurant just became a target.”

A target. The word rings in her ears.

Then he sits back and points to the naan bread. “Take one to go if you want.” Casual, as if he’s