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

at the least, and yet still the sun sinks. If this were Delan, in fact, she wouldn’t worry. Delan and his rashness, his races against clocks and rules, but also his luck. Soran was right with that. But it’s not Delan. It’s Soran. Soran who is logic and preparation and quiet planning, and for him to be gone after curfew means something is wrong.

When the window goes black, the room suddenly skimmed upon its surface, Gaziza lets go of the wall. A nod toward the kitchen and she disappears, so Olivia takes over. One hand upon the wall, her face staring back at her, the street empty.

Then there is tap dancing on the TV, the reflection in the window a frenzy of movement. She turns to catch it and it’s fast, a commercial maybe, but Lailan is up and inches from the screen, captivated, which is why a bit later, Miriam opens the door to find them both “tap-dancing” in bare feet and without music. Lailan’s moves involve a lot of arm swinging and running in place, and Olivia is laughing until she sees Miriam in the threshold of the door, hand pressed against her mouth and eyes wide.

The woman’s judgment comes down hard, mixing with Olivia’s own shame for happiness in a moment like this. But then Miriam moves her hand, and Olivia sees that she’s smiling. Is in fact watching with a sort of shocked pleasure, the kind that exists when something lost is found. It lasts but a moment, though, and then she’s grabbing Lailan’s hand and nodding thanks and from the front door, Olivia watches Lailan on the path, still caught in the throes of scattered dance moves, Miriam grinning beside her.

The clock ticks. The sky’s gone black. From the kitchen, there are the quiet voices of Gaziza and Hewar, conferring, and with their whispered worry, Olivia thinks of the nearest soldiers, trying to remember if they’d be blocking the entrances to this street.

Then there is movement. Quick. Right outside the window. The door opens, and Soran slips inside. Within seconds, Gaziza is there, scolding him while holding his arm, as if needing a tactile verification of what’s before her.

Olivia locks the door behind him.

“I took alleys,” he says. “No one saw me. But there was no choice. The man, he wanted more. I had to find it. Medical care, he claimed.” He sees the expression on her face as he sinks into a chair, worn. “It could mean nothing. But we are meeting him tomorrow, with Delan, he says. And Delan was asking about you. Telling people about a tall girl with dark-red hair.”

With Soran’s words, it’s as if a cold current has swept through, because the man saw her. “Did he say my name?”

Soran shakes his head. “No. I asked. He said Delan described you and said you were waiting for him.”

She sees it in his eyes, a shade of doubt that matches her own. “And you paid him?”

“How could I not? It’s been days.”

“Four days.”

“Yes. I had to pay him, did I not?”

She’s thinking of money. Of the expense of bribes and risk, how lucky that they can meet the demands but what of those who can’t? “I’ll pay you back. Everything. Of course we take the chance.”

“No. You do not have to pay me back. That’s not what I meant.”

It’s only after he’s left the room that she realizes he just wanted an answer. A verification that he’d made the right choice, because at this moment, he doesn’t know what was right or what was wrong. And with this, any assurance she had left is gone.

Morning burns orange on the horizon. Olivia’s packed snacks and water in a bag that sits by her feet in the car. Day five. How can she eat if he does not? Are they giving him water? How many days can one go without water? Sometimes she finds herself thinking of his details—the disordered part in his hair, the vein at the top of his hand, a freckle behind his ear—as if the whole of him would be too great. But in fact, it’s worse to see him that closely, because in those specifics is the frailty of being human. How much can he take? What is he having to endure?

“At the waterfalls,” Soran says, eyes on the road, “where we are going, my mother and father were engaged.”

“It wasn’t arranged?”

“No. Encouraged maybe, but not arranged.”

“And you, will you do an arranged marriage or marry for love?”

“There will be nothing arranged for me. Delan’s fault is his reliance on fate. Mine is not being able to resist love. Love is the only thing that makes me not think. I cannot talk myself out of loving someone.” He pauses, looks over his shoulder, and veers onto a road that dips on the right side, angling them toward Olivia’s window. “If I am to be with someone forever, it will be because I cannot stay away. Right or wrong. There will be no choice.”

“That doesn’t sound like a fault. That kind of love.”

“What if you should not love the person who your heart picks?”

“Right. Religion.”

He glances at her. “I do not think when I love. And I do not trust myself when I am not thinking.” A nod in the direction of the mountains. “There’s another cave there. Bestoon Cave. Those are your undiscovered Neanderthal graves.”

The morning dips to gray. As they drive to the waterfall, clouds in the sky seem to toy with becoming ominous, flirting against a white background. Soon mountain peaks flatten, becoming giant plateaus of layered rocks and jolting green grass. The Grand Canyon of Kurdistan, Delan had said. He should be here. His voice narrating the passing scenery. Instead there’s just a whistling from a window seal that’s not properly fit and now and then a clicking with a sharp turn. A car ride that feels longer than it should, both of them struck silent with hope.

When they arrive, the falls thunder even with