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

top of the mountain like something released from the earth, and as she walks, she pauses for a photo. They look alive. As if they’re speaking. Great rolling storytellers. Click. The MD-2 starts its automatic film rewind, and she realizes the film in her pocket is black and white. A disappointment, to remove the color from the day. Somewhere, an insect whirs alongside the rewinding, and she listens, trying to find it, at first entertained by the imitation but then thinking snake. Do they have snakes here? She thinks of the Garden of Eden, which surely must have been around here somewhere, and decides yes, yes they do. To be safe, she stands on a rock and thinks, I’m on a rock in Iraq, as she loads in the black and white.

Then she begins to walk.

At the crest, there is a view of the town and the streets that lead to his house, haphazard and jumbled. All the buildings are made of mud brick or stone or even beige cement, and they blend into the drying landscape as if built with the intention to hide. Trying to get higher, she climbs onto the first branch of a tree. Then back down. Kneeling to get the grass and a world that seems to drop away. Different angles, different views, like a study in perspective from her first late-night photography class. As she loads in another roll of black and white, there’s a sound. A great flapping of wings. She turns, her eyes drawn to birds that scatter like buckshot from the ravine below. Lifting, they spread into the sky.

Her eyes follow them, and she’s raising her camera to capture their flight when her vision catches what’s underneath. Soldiers. And someone with a hood over his head.

She sinks to the ground. Heart slamming. The grass is tall and she’s above them, but did they see her? She was standing in the open, thinking of clouds and sky and birds. She glances back the way she came. She could crawl back. Just to be over the ridge and out of sight, where she can run. But the camera is around her neck, as if the moment was created with this in mind—why else would she be here with film newly loaded? Fate, she thinks, now angry at her new way of seeing things, at the responsibility it brings.

Slowly she crawls to a large rock, crouches behind it, then raises her head and the camera just high enough to capture what’s below. Through the viewfinder, she sees the soldiers beating the man. Savagely. There is no break between the hits. Yet still, he tries to stand, and with a great lurch she feels a love for him, whoever he is, for his determination and his pride that make him rise again. Another punch spins his hooded head, and she focuses there, on the hood, and starts taking photos, trying not to absorb what she’s seeing, trying to think only of justice and payback and a reveal of this moment that could make a difference somehow. Her back burns as if blistering, exposed. Click. Anyone could be behind her. Run, she thinks. But if this man can keep rising, she can press a button.

Kicked onto the ground, the man rolls on his side and this time does not get up. Legs drawn to his stomach till someone behind him kicks him in the back, and his body lengthens in reaction. She cannot hear the sound and is grateful, so grateful, because another kick from a soldier in front of him meets his mouth, and she knows there would be a shattering of teeth, a choking on blood. Over and over, she clicks until two soldiers take him by the arms and prop him up, holding him in place while a gleam cuts through the air and meets his torso. His body hunches, as much as it can while being held up, and as the soldier retracts the gleam, she realizes it is a knife. And the soldier strikes the man again.

Still she clicks, though now she looks down at her feet. Dust and dirt coat her sneakers. Everything rises inside her, and she fights the urge to vomit on this hillside with what she realizes are this man’s final moments below her. Her arms and legs start shaking, coursing with adrenaline, so she leans against the rock to steady the camera. Every shot from here on out will be blurred. Still, she takes them. She will not stop.

She doesn’t know how many she’s taken when suddenly the film begins to rewind. And all at once she remembers Delan, who doesn’t know the soldiers are there. Right now, he could be looking for her, calling her name, about to stand in plain sight and scream for her. And so she straps her camera around her neck and starts to crawl. On her hands and knees, dried grass whipping in her face, rocks digging into her palms. Now and then, she has to lift her head to see where she needs to go, and when at last she finds the trail she took earlier, she stands and runs downhill so fast, her legs seem wobbly, faster than the rest of her.

And then she sees him. Tying more sticks to the stack. He spots her and straightens and waves, then registers the look on her face and is running toward her.

Olivia seems to just be in the gold chair in the living room. She doesn’t feel herself there but is there. That’s her arm on the armrest. Her fingers. Her chipped orange nail polish. Before her, Delan paces and Hewar stands at the window, watching the empty street. Brown-colored pants. A white button-down shirt. A man. With those words, she might’ve described half the population. Gaziza starts to give her tea but sees the tremble in Olivia’s hands and so sets the saucer on the end table and carefully lifts the cup to Olivia’s lips. Olivia takes a