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

doesn’t turn around but angles his head toward the sky as if refuting her words with a careless glance.

Soon Lailan is pointing out everything she knows. A child’s encyclopedia of life, a simple narration that takes them halfway up another hill. Girl. Man. Mother. Camera. Flower. Sky. Tree. Head. Tooth. Foot. Shoe. Cloud. Rainbow. Olivia peers at the sky, finds no rainbow, but still nods her approval. Then she sees the women in their bright colors on the hillside and realizes that the girl was right.

Suddenly Lailan points to Olivia, and Olivia’s hand goes to her throat, to the necklace that must have come out from under her shirt.

“The tree of life. A symbol from where my family’s from. A symbol is something small that has big meaning.” She pauses and looks to Delan, who’s stopped alongside them. Every word feels loaded. “Like the eyes people have on bracelets or necklaces. Those evil eyes. Those are a symbol for protection. And this is a symbol of the connection of heaven and earth. The stone is called green jasper,” she adds, “which is also supposed to be protective.”

Delan turns to the girl, speaking Kurdish to fill in the gaps of language. As he does, Lailan watches the pendant, then points to an oak tree on the hillside with long, gnarled branches.

“You got it,” Olivia says. “That’s it. An oak tree. The most sacred tree. The Druids—those were my people long, long ago—they believed family and spirits in heaven spoke to humans through the trees.” She glances at Delan, knowing he’ll have to translate at least a portion of that, but instead he studies her.

“That’s why your dad gave it to you, isn’t it? So you could hear your mother.”

A nod. The copper’s gone hot from the sun. “Something like that.”

The sooner you figure out easy is good, her father told her, the better off you’ll be. His words come back to her and remind her of something Rebecca had said after Olivia complained about Delan’s temper, how a pleasant night could take a turn with any mention of politics: We all love him. But I live in this house, too, and I see his baggage, and I don’t know why you’d sign up for that. If they were to make it past this hurdle, what would await them? Hard years of trying? Long sprawls of rough patches? Would they go through all that only to eventually succumb to the fact that ultimately they are too different and the issues too great?

“Soran’s done a good job with her English,” Delan says, nodding to Lailan. “He told her she can be an architect like him. She said she wants to be an artist. Her favorite color is pink but the other is khal. Dots. Like polka dots. Not a color, but that’s what she told me yesterday.”

Olivia keeps walking. Then, finally, “When I was her age, I wanted to work a cash register. Pressing buttons.”

“For your birthday, I will get you a cash register.”

He says this, and his words sit before them, a reference to a point suddenly she’s not sure they’ll be at together. She wonders if he feels that, too, if he sees this question within her.

“September fourteenth?” he asks.

She nods, trying to soften her demeanor. “Double Virgo. Not an easy job.”

“You say that as if it should have meaning.”

“It means I overthink and worry.”

He laughs. “I never believed in astrology till now. And me, what am I?”

“Sagittarius. You’re the life of the party, Hollywood.”

He watches the trail, the backs of legs of the people before them. “They’re not calling me that because they’re impressed, you know. Yes, they are, a little—but that’s not the name; that’s not why. The West they love, but I loved it more, and they thought I was too good. That I thought I was too good, because of where I wanted to go. I’m Hollywood, the one who thinks he can make a living doing something that to them is like playing in the park. It’s not real. It’s not a job.”

Ahead, Lailan climbs a small boulder only to jump off without pause. Dust rises around her feet. “Well, it is like playing in the park.”

He shrugs. “If the park made you memorize thirty pages of lines, work every night with almost no pay, and then insulted you so you never wanted to leave your house. But sure. Compared to what most people here do, it’s playing in the park. So the name, in a way I like it, because it’s true and I’m lucky and I have worked for it and taken risks. But you see why it shames me.”

Everyone stops alongside a creek. Old branches lodged between rocks, the current rolling white at the bend. There is a smell that Olivia at first thinks of as cold but then realizes is fresh. When has she last smelled something so fresh? Already Lailan is in the water, holding up her pants legs as much as she can without an older woman scolding her. Does she know how to swim? The creek could barely carry the girl, but still Olivia keeps an eye on her till she sits on a rock at the edge and churns pebbles with a stick.

Neighbors, cousins, aunts, and uncles. Friends he grew up with, who he went to school with. Everyone seems to have poured through the mountain to this one spot. Bright blankets and coolers and bags unloaded. Fires going, the nearest one topped with parallel cast-iron poles with legs that lift them from the ground. Upon one side is a teakettle and the other kebabs.

Delan talks to everyone, to old men in traditional dress and young women who shyly approach, glancing at Olivia when they think she’s turned away. He embraces all and jokes with kids who clearly look up to him, and again Olivia feels that tug in her heart, because she wants to be with him. And truly, nothing is over. A bump, a new ingredient.