by Tal Bauer
“It’s been five years. I’ve been sure for a long time.”
“I can arrange everything.” David had a small smile, a look of expectant wonder on his face. “I’ll see how fast we can actually get it done.”
Kris beamed. “I will take care of the clothes. I’m only marrying once. So we’re going to look phenomenal.” He savored his mimosa, visions of white suits with black satin finishes, black bow ties and magenta cummerbunds flitting through his mind. “Phenomenal,” he repeated.
David smiled. Their laptop had been abandoned on the kitchen table, but he spun it toward them and turned it on, plugged it into the ethernet cable. “I also want to buy you a house.”
That stopped Kris’s fantasies. “What?” They still, supposedly, lived in Kris’s tiny studio, even though they hadn’t been there in over a year. The rent had been auto paid. Hopefully everything was still there.
“I made way over three hundred thousand while we were in Iraq. And I have savings from before, when I was in the Army. I want to buy you, us, a home. A palace, just for us.”
“A palace?”
“Figuratively speaking.” David grinned. “I want us to have everything. I want to give you everything you’ve ever wanted.”
You already have.” Happiness, security. A man who loved him, and who he loved in return. Stability. Confidence. Empowerment. “I never had a house. I grew up in Manhattan. We had a two-bedroom block, stacked on top of other blocks. Low income housing.”
“I loved the house I grew up in in Libya. In Benghazi. There was so much light. You could see the ocean from the roof, and the beach. The sand. When I came to America, I fell in love with trees.” He chuckled. “Forests. I always loved field exercises when we were buried in the woods. Everyone thought I was insane.”
“What kind of house do you want now?”
“Something quiet. Maybe a bit farther from Langley. Something with land, and trees. Privacy. But most of all, peaceful. Someplace you and I can relax.”
“That sounds perfect.” He slipped around the table and perched on David’s lap. He took another sip of his mimosa. “Okay. I accept your wedding gift.”
David laughed. One hand landed on Kris’s briefs-covered ass. “This is not how you take a break.”
Kris shrugged. One eyebrow arched.
David’s laptop chimed. The website he’d clicked finally loaded. An advertisement and a service for gay couples eloping to Canada scrawled across the top. “Elope in Canada for US$200! Call today! Next Day Services Available!”
Their eyes met.
“Want to go to the airport?”
On the way to the airport, Kris called Director Edwards back. He was owed two full months of vacation after working nonstop in Iraq, hunting Saqqaf, and he was going to take every single day of it. He told the director he accepted the assignment in Afghanistan and that he’d report back in six weeks.
They flew to Toronto on a red-eye and checked into a hotel downtown. Kris dragged David from store to store, looking for the perfect pair of suits. David picked out a pair of fitted smoking jackets, and he looked so perfect in the dark brocade that Kris gave up the hunt and bought two, along with matching dark slacks, French cuff shirts, and bow ties.
David disappeared to buy rings while Kris window-shopped, promising to be back to meet Kris at an art gallery for the evening.
The elopement agency had a small assortment of locations where they could get married. They chose Gibraltar Point, a stretch of sandy beach near a park, for the next day.
They couldn’t stop giggling the next morning. From making love with huge smiles to getting dressed in their pants and shirts, to tying their bow ties, they kept devolving into smiles and handholds, nervous and delighted laughs that turned into tiny and lingering kisses. They held hands in the taxi the whole drive to Gibraltar Point, stealing looks until they just stared into each other’s eyes. Kris could see the outline of a ring box in David’s pants.
A tall man, slender and wiry and dressed in a blue suit, met them. He was geeky and affable, and kept grinning at the two of them, obviously amused by their lovesick adoration of each other.
And then they stepped to the edge of the sand. Waves lapped at the shore. Seagulls cried overhead. Summer sun warmed the early afternoon, turned the sand golden, the sky a perfect azure.
David took Kris’s hands. Kris’s breath shuddered.
Kris hadn’t known what David was going to arrange. He half expected an Islamic ceremony, if there were any Islamic imams who would have wed them, two men, and one not a Muslim.
Though, was David a Muslim? What did he consider himself? David’s pain was too raw, too poignant, to wade into those waters. Kris would be his lighthouse out of those memories, out of the anguish, his life preserver back to safer shores.
The officiant kept the ceremony short and simple, a standard exhortation on the beauty of marriage and then the exchange of vows, first David and then Kris promising to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, from that day ever forward. David slipped a gold ring, with a channel of diamonds in the center, onto Kris’s finger. Kris did the same for David, biting his lip as he beamed.
Kris’s breath kept coming faster, his smile kept getting wider. He thought he’d faint, or launch into space. He held David’s hand in both of his own.
“Before we conclude,” the officiant smiled at Kris. “I understand your groom has something he’d like to recite?”
Kris paled. David chuckled. “I do, yes. It’s a poem of Rumi’s.” He cleared his throat and looked deep into Kris’s gaze.
“Oh Beloved,
take me.
Liberate my soul.
Fill me with your love and
release me from the two worlds.
If I set my heart on anything but you
let fire burn me from inside.
Oh Beloved,
take away what I want.
Take away what I do.
Take away what I need.
Take away everything
that takes me from you.”
The officiant wilted. Kris, frozen, tried to come up with something, anything to say that could come near David’s love, near his intensity. He scraped his brain, but David’s vows kept repeating on an infinite loop, his love drowning everything else out.
Kris grabbed him and pulled them together, capturing David’s lips, kissing him with everything he had, every part of his being. David wrapped him up, held him close, and somewhere, they both heard the officiant exclaim, “I pronounce you married! Congratulations!”
There were claps from passersby who had stopped to watch, three walkers and a pair of old ladies. David buried his face in Kris’s neck as Kris waved, thanking them. The officiant shook their hands and snapped a few pictures, part of the package, and promised he’d email them as soon as he could.
“Husband,” Kris said, squeezing David’s hand.
“Husband,” David repeated. “Beloved.”
After two more days in Toronto, they flew back to DC. David had already started looking online at houses to buy, and he had a long list of homes ready to check out with a realtor. Buying a house seemed all the better after they returned to their cramped studio, which, shut in for a year without air or light, was covered in dust and musty with disuse.
On the third day, they found their home. Older, with a North Eastern style, it sat on a couple of acres within a dense woodland outside of Leesburg, Virginia. It was pure Americana, the kind of home from sitcoms and television shows. The backyard had a porch and a grill and a patio set, and miles of uninterrupted woodland views. From the moment they walked through the door, it was home. They both felt it, immediately.
“We’ll take it.”
The seller balked, at first, at a gay married couple purchasing their house. But when David offered to pay cash, they accepted. The house was already vacated, the previous couple already moved on to their new home on the West Coast.
Kris and David moved in ten days later.
For a month, they lived a dreamscape, a fantasy life their childhood selves might have once imagined, but pushed away as unattainable, too far-fetched. Happiness that pure, that distilled, wasn’t possible in their lives, they’d thought. Nowhere was there a future with a husband, a home, professional respect. Not for scrappy gay brown boys from the Lower East side, or for an exile separated from everything he’d once known. His home, his country, his family, his faith.
But how life curved and turned and twisted.
Happiness was waking up in their bed together, making love with the windows open and hearing the birds in the trees. David, baking breakfast, cinnamon rolls and French toast and mimosas. Eating together on the porch, walking hand in hand through the trees. David grilling as the sun set. Curling together in front of the fireplace until they were kissing, making love, flickering flames casting glowing light against their sweat-warmed skin. Day after day of perfection.
Kris called his mother, the first time he’d called her not on Christmas or Easter in almost a decade. She immediately, of course thought he was dying, that he had cancer and was in the hospital. “Mi chico, Dios mío, what is wrong? You’re in the hospital, you’re dying? You have cancer? Dios mío, what is it?”
“Mamá, Mamá!” He’d laughed at her. “Mamá, no. Mamá, I have a surprise for you.”
“Ay, I cannot take surprises. You know I do not like them. You know!”
“Mamá, I got married!”
Silence. “Ahhhh!” She’d cried, a blubber of Spanish and English and exclamations, happiness that blurred into noise over the scratchy call to Puerto Rico. “But, mi chico….” His mother had hesitated. “Mi chico, I thought you…”
“His name is David, Mamá. We have been together for five years. He’s the love of my life.” He couldn’t stop the happy sigh in his voice, the joy in his words.
“Cinco años? Ay, ay, mi chico! You are happy? This man, he makes you happy?”
“The happiest I’ve ever been, Mamá.”
She’d clucked at him, telling him she was happy for him, that she kept praying for him every night, always praying for his happiness, his safety. She was happy her prayers had been answered, she said. “I just want you to be happy, mi chico. I love you so much. I couldn’t make you happy when you were little. I’m so sorry, mi cariño.”
“Mamá, you were great. I love you. I’ll always love you.”
“I love you, mi cariño. Tell David hello.”
For not seeing each other in over a decade, and for only talking twice a year, it went better than he’d expected.
David spent a week gearing up to call his mother. Kris caught him pacing in front of the phone, staring at it and mentally composing what he was going to say. When he finally decided to call, they sat outside on their porch, David’s favorite spot, and Kris held his hand.
“Mama, as-salaam-alaikum. It’s me.”
“Wa alaikum as-salaam! Dawood!” Her voice, warm and rich, erupted from the phone. “How are you, my son? Where are you? It’s been so long since we spoke.” Her voice held a gentle reprimand.
“I’m sorry, Mama. I’m outside Washington DC now. I’ve left the Army. I work for a contractor.”
“Oh.” She didn’t say much about that. Contractors’ reputations had been hit hard, especially in Arab communities. Most Americans called contractors mercenaries. Most Arab communities called them murderers.
“Mama...” David took a deep breath. “Mama, you’ve always wanted me to be happy, right?”
“In shaa Allah, it is what I pray for, Dawood. That you find your way to happiness, and to Allah, again. They are one and the same, habibi.”
David flinched. “Mama… Why did you not remarry? After…”
She didn’t speak, not for a moment. “Because I married your Baba for this life and the next. We were two souls meant to be together, habibi.” She paused. “Why do you ask me this now? In shaa Allah, is there a reason…”
“There is, Mama.” David’s voice shook. “I’ve met someone. Someone who, I believe, is the same for me. Part of my soul is theirs. And I am so happy, Mama. So happy.”
“Allahu Akbar! Dawood! This is a blessing from Allah! Bismillah, I have prayed for you to find a loving wife, a woman who can calm your soul! Dawood! Allahu Akbar!”
David squeezed his eyes closed and clenched Kris’s hands. “His name is Kris.” He held his breath.
His mother stopped. Stopped everything. Stopped cheering. Stopped praying, praising Allah. Stopped celebrating. Stopped breathing. “You mean… you have found a friend? Not a wife? This is like the friendship of the Prophet, salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam, and Abu Bakr?”
Abu Bakr, the Prophet Muhammad’s best and closest friend, and the father of Aisha, Muhammad’s most influential wife. The two men had been inseparable, brothers in arms and in faith, a model of friendship for over a millennium to Muslims.
Kris bowed his head. She wasn’t getting it. She was choosing not to get it.
Cringing, David trembled in Kris’s handhold. His expression crumpled, and he curled forward, dragging one hand over his face. “My best friend, Mama. My best and closest friend. Kris will be with me forever. In this life and the next.”
Silence.
“Do you understand what I’m telling you, Mama?”
“Dawood, I am grateful you have found such a deep friendship. I am. But, habibi, do not let this friendship take the place of what you need. The love of a wife, and a family. I will continue to pray for your heart to find its match in a wife. In shaa Allah, your wife is waiting for you. It will happen, habibi. I know it. You will find your love.”
“Mama…”
“I can ask my friends about their daughters. If you would like help? I thought you wanted to do things the Western way, but I can help you, habibi.”
“No, Mama.” Tears trickled down David’s cheeks, rivers that turned to waterfalls at his jawline. Kris squeezed his hand until it hurt, until he thought all his bones would break. “No, Mama. In shaa Allah, I will find my soul mate.” David squeezed back.
“Ana bahibak, habibi.” His mother’s love flowed over the phone line. “I pray for you every day.”
“Mama. Ana bahibak.”
He hung up before she could say anything else, cutting the line and dropping the cordless phone on the porch. He pitched forward, burying his face in both hands as sobs tore through him. Kris kneeled, holding him as David’s tears soaked his shirt. “I’m sorry.”
“She’ll never accept it. She’ll never understand. Even if I brought you to her, showed her how much I love you…” He sniffed, tried to wipe his tears away. More fell. “I wish I could introduce you to my father.”
Kris shook his head, unable to speak, and his tears joined David’s in a puddle on the porch beneath them. David clung to him, crying as the sun set and the stars peeked through, as the day turned to night, until Kris guided him to their bed and held him for the rest of the night.
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
September 2006
“Where do I submit paperwork to update my personnel status to married?”
Eight weeks after leaving Iraq, Kris strutted into CIA headquarters and into George’s new office. George had been promoted again, now the deputy director of operations, in charge of clandestine field operations around the world. Time had been kind to George; rank advancement even kinder.
Kris couldn’t begrudge him too much. George had carried them all alongside him with his rise through the agency. Kris was off to head up a base hunting Bin Laden in Afghanistan again, and Ryan was the chief of station in Afghanistan, just beneath George.
First things first. Kris wasn’t going back to Afghanistan without official endorsement of his marriage to David. During the Saqqaf hunt, David had been transferred from contractor status to employee status, a way to bring him on board without having to send him to The Farm, interrupt the Saqqaf hunt. Which meant he was now a CIA employee. Which meant Kris an
d David could be deployed together to Afghanistan as a married couple.
He held up his marriage certificate, sent from Toronto, like a warrant. He arched one eyebrow.
George’s fingers hovered over his keyboard. He blinked. “Married?”
“Last month. In Canada. We’re married now. I expect we’ll be treated like every other married CIA couple.”
George blinked again. “I… don’t know how that will work. There are no gay married couples.”
“Yes there are. We’re married. And it doesn’t matter if we’re gay. We will get the same treatment.”
George cringed. “But… gay marriage isn’t legal here, Kris. Only a few states recognize it, and the federal government explicitly stands against it. The DOMA—” George frowned.
The Defense of Marriage Act. Kris’s blood boiled. In 1996, the same year it was finally legal for homosexuals to hold security clearances, Congress passed the DOMA, defining federal law to recognize marriage as between one man and one woman only. No federal agency recognized same sex marriage or civil unions. “You’re the deputy director of operations. You can make this happen.”
“I cannot change federal law.”
“You can get us stationed together. He’s coming with me to Afghanistan. And this time, none of the bullshit about not being able to share housing. We’re fucking married. And I don’t give a shit what some ridiculous law says. You want me to find Bin Laden? This is my price.”
“You’re an employee of the CIA, not a mafia boss. You don’t have a price we’ll pay. You do the assignment or you’re out of a job.” George’s voice turned sharp, his face sour.
“You called me in Iraq. You begged for my help, and I came through for you,” Kris snapped. “You going to show up for me?”
George’s jaw clenched. Kris watched him lick his teeth, purse his lips. “You need to go to HR if you want to update your marital status,” he growled. “I’m not the person to talk to.”
“Mr. Caldera, there’s no option in the system to list you as married to Mr. Haddad.” The frazzled HR tech threw up her hands. “If I change your status to married, it asks for the wife’s name. If I say that the spouse is also in the CIA, in order to give you the joint assignments that you want, it gives me a list of female employees to select. Mr. Haddad isn’t on the list of people you can be married to.”
