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

Pressing into him, she feels his other hand in her hair, tilting her head back slightly as he bends toward her. She pulls at his belt loop until he undoes it himself, and as she slides her hand down, reaching, she catches sight of their reflection in the mirror. His arms, tanner in this light, hold her to him and are now lifting her, his mouth on her neck, and seeing this, feeling this, she sighs without meaning to and then closes her mouth, trying to be quiet, just as he takes another step and the floor groans beneath their weight. Her laughter rises in a flow and won’t stop—the whole world, she feels, is ridiculous—and he has to put his hand on her mouth to silence her, holding in a laugh himself. And that’s when they hear another sound.

Later, it returns to her as a keening, a word that has a ghostly feel, which is appropriate for such a sound in the black of night. A high-pitched sound that ends low. Over and over. As they listen, she tells herself it’s an animal, though from the reaction of her body—hair on end, pulse quickened, a need to run—she knows it’s not.

His window is covered with a heavy drape but faces the street. Later, she will realize that from the time they moved aside the fabric just enough to see, everything took mere seconds. But time starts its slow crawl in part because what she sees, the shapes in the street, do not make sense. Not to her, whose mind is unaccustomed to truly dark possibilities and thus provides alternate explanations.

A dog being dragged in front of Miriam’s house. Legs to its stomach to protect itself. That it’s a person, a woman, actually Miriam, hits Olivia a split second later when she sees men with rifles leave the house across the street, pulling a man who is standing but hunched and reluctant to follow. A shot is fired, and the man hunches into a complete crumple. With that, her mind realigns and all the shapes take forms: a soldier on top of a woman. A person dragged by their collar. Another soldier in the distance on top of yet another woman, while nearby a man is forced to watch with his arm bent at a hard angle. When the man leans forward to scream, Olivia hears it because sounds all at once attach to meaning.

A few seconds, this took.

Lailan. The girl’s window is still dark. Olivia prays for it to stay that way, for no shapes to move against her wall. Within her an irrational conviction: as long as that room stays dark, as long as she stays asleep, the girl is safe. A mind’s necessary white lie. A panacea for the heart.

Outside is chaos. Time inches and spreads. In a beat, she understands that the light could be enough for images, especially if she pushes the film later and develops it for a couple of extra minutes, and though her camera is downstairs in the kitchen, she can race back to this window to keep an eye on Lailan’s room while taking photos. But to look away, to go downstairs, how could she? In a flash, she thinks of her own mother. Sees her at the bottom of a playground’s slide, smiling as she waits.

Just then, a shape darts from Miriam’s open front door. Lailan. Scurrying to a car. Now crouched by its tire.

Already Delan is in the hall, fist slamming on his parents’ door as he pulls on his shirt, yelling to them as Olivia flies past him and down the stairs and only vaguely does she hear him shouting her name as she runs past Soran, who scans the bookshelves for anything they might’ve missed. Then she’s got the front door open and sees the girl only feet in front of her, crouched in a yellow nightgown with pink flowers, huddled by the fender of a car and holding on to the metal as if she could pry it off and use it for defense, which of course she cannot. Before Lailan can say a word, Olivia has her hand on the girl’s back and is clutching the cotton and pulling, dragging her toward the door. Low to the ground. She will remember that later, knowing to be low not just so they wouldn’t see her but so there was less of her to shoot.

And then they are inside. And Delan is there just in time to catch the door she flung shut. Quietly, softly, he closes the door. Even over the noise from the street, she hears the click of the lock.

Everyone stands still. Quiet. A strange moment of peace. A family gathered. Mother, father, sons, and friends.

Then there is a scream like a falling rocket, something that plunges and is gone. A few short bursts of light through the drapes and a smell of burning. Gaziza and Hewar frantically race to the bookshelves only to see that everything is gone. Delan says something to them in Kurdish and Soran hisses, “Not in Kurdish! They are looking for Kurds. They—”

But Delan’s not listening. He’s turned to Olivia, who stands with Lailan frozen at her side. “You need to hide. Now.”

But time is a trick again. Sped up impossibly even as it draws out, and already there is banging against the door. Words spoken that need no translation. Without thought, Olivia sees the cabinet with the paintings, the woman with flowing dark hair who somehow senses everything, and quickly flings open the center door, the one that’s just big enough. Inside is a stack of sheets, which she sets on a chair like freshly folded laundry. Quickly, she motions Lailan to crawl inside. “Shh.” Terrified, the girl nods. And the door closes.

Just as the front door opens. And Delan sees that Olivia is still standing there.

Soldiers. Rifles and hatred and indignance. Their shoes dusty. Olivia sees this and understands that it has been a long night for