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

Taking photos that afternoon is a stab at distraction. But it turns, her passion rebelling with its own anxiety.

Two boys play with a soccer ball. Their clothes are patched and dotted with stains, one brown shirt with Snoopy as the Flying Ace but with chunks of white worn away, Snoopy’s existence precarious. Their ball is scuffed. Somewhat deflated. Most likely it was found, discarded by someone who had one better, and the empty lot they’re in is scattered with broken slabs of concrete and thick, scraggly thistles. But the boys are in heaven. Olivia lifts her camera, wanting to capture their joy, the way they’ve adapted the physical obstacles into part of their game, but with one click, she realizes that in truth it’s everything else that makes the photo interesting, that makes their joy stand out. It’s their circumstance. Their stains and tears. Their broken field.

In her childhood, the grass was green. There were cleats and freshly laundered jerseys with silly team names and sliced oranges on the sideline. And to see the differences, to find these beautiful boys worthy of curiosity, of examination—it’s the core of her chosen profession but it feels like human sightseeing. A tour of others. Look at these poor boys, happy despite everything. She lowers her camera. Within her, a sort of protective love for them, as well as a disgust with herself.

Now she turns, unable to watch. Everything within her a confliction. The camera does not judge, a professor said. It captures. Judgment is what humans place upon the photo. The logical side of the argument. She’s halfway down the block when her own logic kicks in: to deny differences, to be afraid to look a little longer at something that is not us—what kind of insular world would that be? What kind of limited exposure would our lives be hemmed in by? And with this, she turns back. This is what she does. What she needs to be comfortable doing. And the boys, when they see her with the camera, they climb to the top of a slab of concrete and pose like Superman, small chests thrust out and hands wedged on their hips. She leaves only when she realizes she’s started to cry.

Down the street from Delan’s house, a fig tree is diffused with sun. A safe subject. Adjusting the focus on her camera, she tries to capture the lit-up undersides of the leaves, drawn to their texture, to the veins that seem to pulse with light. Click. Its base is thick and gnarled like an old man’s knuckles. After what Soran has told her, she sees anything here of age as a miracle in survival, people and houses and mosques and even this tree that has no doubt seen its share of sadness.

Leaning down to shoot from below, she hears a voice and turns to see a short man with a Kurdish turban and khaki pants gesturing wildly to Soran at the front door. When she catches Soran’s eye, he waves her over, but the man spots her and takes a few steps back. Quietly, Soran says something in Kurdish, and the man nods and gestures, indicating a foot above his own head as if talking about a tall man.

The message must have been received. But when she’s with them, the man is already leaving, glancing at her camera, his white klash shoes dirtied from his travels.

“Where’s he going? What just happened?”

Soran hushes her and brings her inside. “He knows where he is. He described him, had his name, told me of the scar by his eye.”

“But he left.”

“I need money. Bribes, transportation. Safe passage doesn’t come cheap. There’s a house where they’ve been holding people, and this man says he is there. This evening, right before curfew, I will meet this man with half the money, and tomorrow I meet him and Delan at the Bekhal Waterfall.”

The relief is tremendous. But she stops herself—only when she sees him, then she will believe. But hope can be a cruel companion, and soon she’s caught in the momentum of optimism, rehearsing what she’ll say to him. Lailan snores and got me with her elbow. The Kurds yell everything they say. And say everything they think. I love the raw sugar chunks with cardamom, and I know they’re supposed to go in tea, but I ate one straight and I think someone scolded me and said I’d get fat. And we need to get your brother a longer hose. The one he has doesn’t reach past the pomegranate tree and you need to use a pail for the rest.

She pictures him seeing her in her dress, the look on his face. Thinks of their first hug, how he’ll have to pry her arms from him. He is almost home; she can feel it.

I love you.

She will say it. Felt in some ways from the start but spoken at last.

Early evening seeps in. Soran is meeting with the man alone, so Olivia stays behind and watches images on their old black-and-white television set, the volume turned low. Lailan is there, curled into her, toes pressed against the couch’s armrest. The wisps of hair by her face have curled from the day’s heat, and the tops of her feet hold the tanned outline of her flip-flops, white vees like small, distant birds in flight. When Olivia adjusts herself on the couch, the girl burrows in tighter, resting her head on Olivia’s thigh, her arm slung across Olivia’s lap. Absentmindedly, she wiggles her tooth.

Soon Olivia forgets the TV and watches the window. The sun is dialing down, fading. It’s after six o’clock. Minutes from curfew. Still, the street is empty, Soran not returned.

Gaziza as well finds the window, standing sentry at the sill. Though her prayer beads must be in another room, her hands still mime the motions, the gesture automatic and ingrained. What did Delan say would happen? Whatever the authorities want to happen. Jail