Daughters of Smoke and Fire

by Ava Homa

  “You’re going to stab armed men?” His raised eyebrow gave him a comic look.

  “Myself, if need be. And we need a safe word. How’s . . . umm . . . I don’t know. Think of something.”

  “Ice cream on my face?”

  I smiled at the memory of our happy hiking days. “Okay.”

  “Can you sit for a second? I have something I’ve been meaning to tell you, and I want you to consider it carefully before saying an impulsive no.” Karo scratched his ear.

  I sat across from him. “I should have been out of here last week.”

  He clasped his hands. “I’ve made arrangements for a place for you to stay until things get safer.”

  “Until Chia is forgotten?” Something clawed at my heart.

  “We should pack the absolute essentials and leave. Right now.”

  Books on the shelves, food in the fridge, clothes in the drawers. “Where’s this place, and how do I know it’s safe?”

  He stared at me in silence for a few seconds. “You still don’t trust me, do you?”

  “Should I?” My wet hair dripped down my spine.

  Karo plugged the phone back in and played the messages. “Ms. Saman, report to your local police station immediately. We know everything.” Click.

  “I don’t know if you have a better option.” Karo’s shoulders drooped.

  “How did you know that message would be there?”

  “It wasn’t hard to guess, was it?”

  I got up and paced the apartment. “They’re just trying to intimidate me. Otherwise they’d be here right now.” I didn’t care if Karo heard the tremor in my voice. “Unless they know they can trust the public to silence me before they do.”

  Karo held my shoulders. “We have to get out now.”

  He stared at my mouth. I swallowed, expecting his lips on mine any second, unsure how to react. The knot of my robe was already open. He put a fingertip to my lip, and it came away red.

  “Oh!” I tasted the blood on my lips. I had been chewing them.

  “I will try to pack some stuff while you get dressed.”

  The robe slid down before I got to my room. The weight of his look on my hips. In a few minutes I was covered head to toe in black. Karo picked up the suitcase I had packed earlier. “Anything else that is absolutely vital?” he asked.

  “Personal stuff.”

  “We will get you new stuff. I parked three blocks to the east. Leave in exactly ten minutes and walk toward the police station. Go inside the shopping mall across from it and take the first elevator to the parking garage. Level five. I’ll wait for you there.”

  “Be very careful with my luggage. All Chia’s photos and journals are in there.”

  I squeezed a few more things into my purse, donned sunglasses, and pulled my headscarf forward before hitting the street.

  I tried hard to walk with confidence but couldn’t help looking behind me every few minutes. My shadow had never been more petrifying.

  I picked up my pace before the police station. That was a crazy move, but I had no control.

  When I got to the fifth level of the mall’s underground parking garage, Karo’s silver Xantia was nowhere to be found.

  This was a set-up. Karo was with them. That’s why they had released him. I kept my purse before my chest, my hand touching the silver knife inside.

  An empty parking lot was the best place to be murdered, and the state wouldn’t have to bother with arrest and execution. No one would find out.

  I walked back to the elevator, constantly checking my surroundings, terrified by every sound. Three trucks were parked in the dimly lit garage.

  I kept pushing the button, but the elevator was too sluggish. I tried the stairs. The sharp smell of urine emanating from the dark staircase made me want to throw up.

  I looked around at the amateur graffiti, the gigantic sketch of an ejaculating penis on the wall.

  The roar of an engine. A car skidded.

  “Great timing.” Karo rolled down the window. I stared at him.

  “What are you waiting for?” He reached over and opened the passenger door.

  I got in and held my breath until we left the garage. The smog blocked my view of chia, the mountain. The honking cars freely voiced their frustration. I let go of the air trapped in my chest.

  “There’s another thing I must talk to you about,” he said.

  I looked at his pensive profile. Karo drove inside another garage. “Where are you going?” I looked left and right.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “I hate underground parking garages!”

  “Since when?”

  “Since now!”

  He made a U-turn and parked on the street before the shopping mall.

  “Why are we here?” I asked.

  “We need to clear our heads first.”

  “I hate shopping malls!”

  “Stop hating things and think for a moment.” He raised his voice. “Don’t make this harder than it is, Leila. No one would look for you here.”

  The storefronts of the posh clothing retailers lining the block glittered in the afternoon sun. In the window displays, the mannequins’ nipples were cut off. Scarves were draped over their misshapen heads—also cut off right where the brain should be—so the mannequin’s faces were only visible from the nose down. Plastic legs were sloppily concealed by newspapers and Scotch tape.

  “I can’t stay in this country, Karo. It’s not just because anything could happen to me any second. I simply can’t stand it any longer. I don’t belong.” I looked back at his face. “I never belonged, but I used to have reasons to stand it. Now I’m desperate to get out. I need to be anywhere other than here.”

  Karo mashed his lips together.

  “I only need to find somewhere safe to stay until Shiler connects me to people who can smuggle me across the border. A day or two at most. I need to figure something out. Maybe I can stay with Joanna until then. Though if they don’t find me in my apartment, they’ll surely look for me in Mariwan.”

  Karo turned on the engine. “Wait, I should get in the back seat, no?” I didn’t wait for him to respond and slid over the center console. The last thing I needed was to be pulled over by morality police for driving with a man. This way we could pretend he was driving me for a fee. “Sorry.”

  For a while Karo drove in silence, and I took my last looks at the bustling streets of the city that had sheltered, then demolished me. The hushed derisive message had been: Live here, but you’ll never be one of us; try catching up, but you’ll never arrive.

  “I don’t know how to say this, but . . .” Karo was barely audible in the driver’s seat. “I was thinking about this all night. I want to . . . I mean, I can if you want me to . . .”

  “Sorry, I can’t hear you well.”

  “I can . . .” He coughed to clear his voice. “I can take you to Canada.”

  “You can what?”

  We came to a stoplight. “You’re probably thinking . . .” He raised his hands in surrender. “That I’m a shark like other men.”

  “What’re you saying, Karo?”

  He cracked his knuckles and looked left and right. “I’m offering only because I am sure Chia would want me to. I’m sure he would do this for my sister.”

  “Do what?”

  The light turned green, and he sped through the intersection, cutting off a Mercedes before making a sharp right. He pulled over and turned on his hazards. “Okay, listen. I can take you to Canada, and there you will be free to go your own way. I swear upon my honor that I’m not trying to take advantage of you. Chia’s sister is like my own sister. I promise.”

  I met his gaze in the rearview mirror and shook my head in confusion. I remembered that his family was in Toronto and that he’d had a Canadian permanent resident card too, although he’d never stayed there long enough to become a citizen. But how could he take me there?

  “I can apply for your Canadian visa and get your papers in a year or
so.” He looked at me, then back at the road. “Once there, you can get your own permanent resident card, then you’ll be free to go your own way. No commitment. No risks. You’ll just have to remain discreet in the meantime.”

  “Why would you do such a thing?”

  “How?”

  “Well, why and how?”

  He checked his side mirror and reentered the flow of traffic, heading north of Tehran, toward the prison. “You lost a brother, and I lost my dearest friend. I can help his sister. I wasn’t able to save Chia, but I can protect you. You know better than I do that Chia has become a sensation, and they’re afraid of you too . . . I don’t want to ramble. News to me is history to you.”

  “But why would Canada give me residency? Shiler said that I should apply to the UN office in Turkey for asylum. I have more than enough evidence to prove that my life is in danger, but I don’t understand how you and Canada come into play. If I ask for asylum, I could ask to be sent to Canada, but they may not allow that. Also the process takes three to five years, not one.”

  He pulled a bottle of water from the cupholder and took a sip. “Marry me.” I gaped at him. “You’d have to marry me. But only on paper.”

  I started laughing. His indigo eyes looked solemn in the mirror. He stole a quick look at me before focusing on the road.

  My stomach was quivering as I fought a new gust of giggles. My life felt like one of Samuel Beckett’s absurd plays. Tears rolled down my face.

  “Stop it.”

  The harder I tried to stop cackling, the more hilarious it all became. He splashed some water on my face.

  He laid on his horn as a car cut him off, holding it longer than necessary. “What’s so funny? I’m giving you the best option you can have. Who knows how many years you’ll end up waiting in Turkey? I’ve heard of people waiting up to eleven years for asylum. I’ve heard of people with actual torture marks on their bodies being rejected. Meanwhile you won’t be authorized to work or study. Best case scenario it’ll be four years of your life down the drain.”

  The scenery changed as we left Tehran behind us. Undulating hills in shades of brown lined the highway, and cedars flashed by us at a nauseating speed. Karo was right. I’d heard many similar stories, including one shared by a woman I had met in front of the prison. She’d had to work illegally in Turkey while waiting for her asylum application to be processed. Her daughter needed warm shoes, and she started cleaning at a motel while thinking about her next revolutionary essay. The day she was supposed to get paid, her boss came into the room she was cleaning and unbuckled his belt. She barely made it out of the motel, grabbed her daughter, and came back to Iran. She spent eleven years behind bars, released just in time for her teenage daughter to be arrested for protesting.

  “There are no checkpoints, are there?” I asked, suddenly concerned.

  “What?”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To a safe place.”

  “A safe place?”

  “Yes. I promise.”

  We drove down a six-lane highway and passed by a dozen flags dancing in the breeze. Flags! How I hated them, glorified symbols of division and bloodshed. To get out of the country that wasn’t mine, that had killed my brother in cold blood, I had to trust that Karo wouldn’t let me down yet again. How could I?

  “So, seriously, Leila, what do you think about my plan?”

  Karo gripped the steering wheel, white-knuckled, while he waited for my reply.

  I sighed and sat back in my seat. The sky had grown gray and foggy. “My father would never give permission, not in a million years.”

  “That won’t be a problem as long as you’re okay with the plan,” he responded calmly. He was right. In a country so corrupt, forging Baba’s signature wouldn’t be difficult at all.

  “What if Canada finds out we are lying?”

  “About marriage? We won’t be lying. We’ll actually get married. They won’t make you go through a virginity test there.”

  “I’ll go to the Kurdistan Region,” I said. “The autonomous part of Iraq. It’s booming, and I would love to live in a place run by Kurds for a change. Or maybe I’ll even join Shiler.” Karo’s expression had soured in the rearview. “Where is the safe place you’re taking me?”

  “My sister’s cottage in Lavasan. It’s been vacant for a while.”

  “How come? Is she still in Canada too”

  “Awin moved to Toronto years ago on a student visa, but she works in New York now.”

  “When did she leave?”

  “Eighteen years ago. More. Twenty? She hasn’t been back since. At that time studying abroad wasn’t common. You had to look universities up in catalogs, mail them letters asking for application forms, complete and return them, and then wait for a yay or nay for half a year or so. But she made it.”

  “My father did the same thing. He was admitted to a PhD program at UCLA, won a scholarship too, but the revolution happened, and then the American hostages. His story and timing could have been scripted by Chekhov feeling spiteful.” Silence. Karo didn’t want to talk about his father.

  I continued, “What inspired your sister to study abroad? She was single when she left, I suppose.”

  “‘A third-world country is comforting only to a third-world mind.’”

  “That’s what she said?”

  “She sure did. Although now she says it’s not politically correct.”

  “So she thought her brain belonged in a developed country?” I asked.

  “I suppose so. You’ve always reminded me of her.”

  “Well, does she still think that?”

  His light laughter put his perfectly arranged set of good teeth on display, another testament to his comfortable upbringing. “I think so. She seems happy. A top manager. She never got married, though, and lives far away from my parents.”

  “Your parents have lived abroad for over a decade, haven’t they?”

  “Well, they sure take care to look modern despite their traditional beliefs.” Karo winked. “I’m starving.”

  We pulled off the highway and found a small restaurant, where we ordered kebabs that melted in my mouth; it tasted better than anything I had eaten since the day Chia disappeared, when the three of us—Karo, Chia, and I—sat at our table and devoured a whole pot of stew I had made. I realized I hadn’t cooked much in the years since then.

  “I don’t know as much about Kurdish history as Chia and you do, but I remember him saying the Kurdish dream, when fulfilled, was always short-lived. I am sure the Kurdistan Region is much safer than here, and freer, but can you study film there? Wouldn’t you have a better future in Canada?”

  “I need to be with my people.”

  “Let’s face it, Leila. You and I are not revolutionaries. Chia was different. Going to the Kurdistan Region or joining the Peshmerga won’t be any better.”

  He was right. If jailed like Chia and Baba, I would collapse on day one. “But education is expensive in Canada. I can get my bachelor’s in Kurdistan and then go there for graduate school. I’ll save up some money by then.”

  “That will only delay your life for at least four years, and no amount of money you could save in dinar would be enough to pay tuition in dollars. But once you have a residency status in Canada, you can stand on your own two feet, get student loans, apply for grants or find donors for your projects. Chia will live on in your work, and I’ll feel I’ve paid my debt to him.”

  “What debt?”

  Karo put his spoon down, clasped his fingers, and cradled his head in his hands, thumbs pressed to temples. “Chia was a real inspiration in my life. I loved that man. And I’m sure this is what he would do. He’d do a lot more than I have done if our positions were reversed.”

  My chin started quavering. “Ever since he’s been gone, I miss him more every day. Not less. More.”

  “Me too. But we will honor his path—and that would be much more doable in Canada than anywhere else.”

  I needed Chi
a to appear for at least one second and tell me what to do. I had enough reasons to trust Karo and just as many to distrust him.

  “Here’s the plan,” Karo said when dessert arrived. “Sleep at my sister’s tonight, and I will stay with a friend. First thing in the morning, we will register the marriage.”

  I pushed the saffron ice cream around the bowl with my spoon. “Happy people marry for love. You’d be marrying me out of obligation. And I guess I’d be getting married out of desperation, to stay alive.”

  He looked at me. His lips opened. But he swallowed his words.

  We left the restaurant after he paid.

  “So will you do it? Will you marry me? Out of desperation, I mean.” He smiled.

  “No, but I’d like a ring anyway and wouldn’t mind seeing you on your knee.”

  He cackled heartily, the laugh reaching his eyes, and he seemed to relax.

  “We’ll be there in about twenty minutes. I’ll pick you up early tomorrow morning for the paperwork. Don’t forget your birth certificate. I’ll ask the cleaner to take what she wants and sell the rest of your belongings, if that’s cool. After we leave the notary office, I’ll book my flight to Toronto.”

  When we arrived at Karo’s sister’s place, I got out of the car without a word. My joints were stiff from the car ride, and as I stretched I took in this would-be haven. Here in Lavasan, there were gorgeous mountain vistas, crisp air, and winding country roads. The neighborhoods were dotted with luxurious mansions, whose grand architecture made me think they were owned by celebrities or top state authorities. The streets were serene and quiet, a world away from the hubbub and hazards of the city. Karo was right; unless we’d been followed, nobody would think to look for me here. I was safe. But would this change in scenery diminish the pain of loss?

  “Wait, there’s something we must do before I leave.” He unrolled the passenger window. “We’ll need to go to a studio and take some wedding photos. That’s vital to the case.”

  “There is one thing I need to know,” I said. There were, in fact, so many things I wanted to know, I couldn’t choose a single one. I sat back in the passenger seat. “Can we arrange it so your name won’t appear on my birth certificate?”