Daughters of Smoke and Fire

by Ava Homa

  Since cabs were expensive in Toronto, I mapped out the easiest route to move using public transit. My phone vibrated when I closed the door.

  “Are you done at work?” Karo sounded as if he were at the bottom of a well. “Shall we go out for dinner tonight?”

  The handles of the suitcases were heavy in my hand. I let go of them.

  “Can you meet me at Union Station?” he asked. “I am leaving the office now. I should get there by five thirty-ish at the latest.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  When I reached the station in my green summery dress, Karo was sitting on a bench, hands clasped, his baseball cap pulled low on his forehead.

  I applied another coat of lipstick to my already beige lips before approaching him. “Where are we going?”

  He raised his eyebrows and grinned like a schoolboy. “Centre Island. There’s a nice restaurant there.”

  I didn’t object. We’d spent our first fun day together there, and perhaps we should spend the last one there too. I sat by his side on the ferry, seeing with perfect clarity that he was disoriented. People around us chattered and chuckled.

  “The greatest power parents have is in screwing you up, better than what your worst enemy could manage.” Karo’s abrupt comment astounded me, shattered the web of thoughts and puzzles I had knitted together.

  “True. They give you life, then ruin it in a snap.”

  On the wooden bench of the ferry, he held my hand. I turned to him, surprised. He took the other as well. Now we were facing each other. His gaze was intense. “Is this going to be our last meal together?”

  “What are you talking about?” I didn’t know why I lied.

  “Can we at least stay friends?”

  I pressed my lips together. How did he know? “Don’t be silly. I’m going to the deck.” I watched as the engine bore a white tunnel into the blue lake, the way it disturbed the surface’s peace and made water froth and churn against itself. But I couldn’t escape his sorrowful, sagging eyes. The image was burned in my mind, and my stomach tightened with hot pinpricks of guilt. But I had been walking down the path onto which he had led me.

  The ferry arrived at the dock with a jolt, and we walked off and onto the crowded path. Birds bathed in a small puddle, shaking their heads and wings and dipping again into the muddy water.

  At the seafood restaurant, the host showed us to our table on the patio, which wasn’t nearly as chic as the tables inside—dark walnut with flickering candles. A young woman in a low-cut top appeared and took Karo’s order: two shots of Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks. I got “water on the rocks.” The fish and chips we ordered took too long to arrive. Karo ordered another drink. When the waitress returned, she slammed down our glasses and never apologized or cleaned up the spill. After taking such pains to deliver impeccable service myself at the coffee shop, I was taken aback, but I assumed that she was new at her job or having a particularly rough shift.

  “I want to try your special drink.”

  “You should start with something lighter and perhaps fruity.”

  “You of all people tell me that?” I pointed to his drink.

  “I’m more practiced than you.”

  “What’s the point if you can’t loosen up a bit?”

  He ran his fingers across his brows. “You’re right.”

  The sky was gradually turning purple.

  “Look at how politely she’s treating the other customers.” I pointed to the waitress, who was now speaking pleasantly with a couple seated at a nearby table. Their hair was lighter, their skin fairer than Karo’s and mine. “We will never belong here.”

  “Don’t say that. She’s the one who doesn’t belong, not us—Canada isn’t for racists. Watch this.” Karo waved at her and in a very strong Middle Eastern accent asked for “a bomb.”

  She went pale.

  “Car bomb,” he said. Before she ran to call the police, Karo added, “Irish Car Bomb. You never had one? Very good,” pronouncing the r in a theatrical manner.

  We burst into laughter before she was far enough away. Karo went to get the drinks from the bartender directly so she wouldn’t spit in them. He taught me to drop the Baileys shot into the Guinness and drink it immediately. It tasted like a bitter chocolate milk. I let myself soak in the ambient music for a while.

  When the awkward silence lasted too long, I asked, “So, does your father . . . I mean. How is he?” Karo’s mother never mentioned him, a trait her son had inherited.

  “He says he’s away on trading business. Somewhere in Duhok or Dubai. He hasn’t called me for . . . I don’t even know how long . . . over six months. He hasn’t heard about my Kurdish wife yet.” Karo looked straight into my eyes. “Perhaps don’t ask me any more questions about him? I don’t know anything, haven’t seen him in three years. More.”

  I looked at the busy corner of the restaurant. A group of women in their thirties were clinking glasses and laughing. Men in suits gesticulated to their associates as they did business over their meals. A couple sitting at the next table got up, laughing over some shared joke, making me envy their ease and happiness.

  I needed words to fill up the raw gap and wanted to know what it was like to grow up with a rich absent father. But then Karo might ask questions about my own father, and that was painful territory. The plates finally arrived along with a bottle of Shiraz. I had little appetite but kept sipping the wine.

  Karo seemed to enjoy the silence that terrified me. “Are you sure that all this lying was the right thing to do?” I was getting maudlin.

  “Do you think staying in Iran was the right thing? Do you think there is such a thing as ‘the right thing’?”

  “So you don’t want to tell the truth to your parents? Or at least your mother?”

  “Nobody wants the truth, Leila. Everybody wants to hear what gives them the most comfort.”

  We sipped on, mute, immersed in separate thoughts. The weight of our unspoken words was crushing me. Leaning back in my chair, I entwined my fingers behind my head. “Tell me about Chia, everything he said and did the last time you saw him.” If this was to be our last meal together, I wanted the full story.

  He sighed, sucked his teeth. Sighed again. “I . . . I told him to forget about filming, that it was too dangerous, but he wouldn’t give up.”

  I sat up straight. “Wait. What are you saying?” I tipped my wineglass over but ignored the deep red that spread across my napkin like a bloodstain and soaked my plate.

  Karo looked up at me with surprise. “We saw soldiers trying to run over people with a truck. Chia said we had to film the scene and send it to the international media, like they’d give a damn. But he insisted it would shock the world.”

  “I don’t understand.” The drinks muddled my thoughts, and I struggled to process Karo’s words. “Chia was the one filming? Why was it on your phone, then?”

  “Mine had a better camera,” he explained matter-of-factly. “Chia liked to borrow it to film.”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “No what? It wasn’t his first time doing that. All the photos he took when we went out were taken by my camera. You can’t say you don’t remember that.”

  I did. Of course I did. Right at that moment, several clips of Chia asking Karo to use his phone played before my eyes.

  I stood from my chair and took a step backward. “You never told me that.” I grew conscious of the tremble in my voice.

  “You didn’t know that? God himself couldn’t stop your brother when he made up his mind about something.”

  I wanted to run away from the table, but my head swam, and the dizziness made me sit back down. I pressed my throbbing temples.

  He bent forward. “Are you all right?”

  I fidgeted, adjusted the strap of my dress. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t think I needed to. Don’t say you assumed it was my idea all this time.” His fingers gestured to his chest, his face a combination of surprise and defensive
ness.

  “You’re the one who took Chia out that day. You knew how dangerous it was. You showed us some videos yourself!” Spittle foamed at the corner of my mouth, but I didn’t wipe it away.

  “Surely you knew I wouldn’t film a thing like that on my own. It was a suicide mission. There were too many fucking soldiers around us. We were lucky we weren’t shot on the spot!” I had never heard him swear like that.

  My heartbeat wouldn’t slow down. “You can’t assume I know everything if you won’t tell me. I am not a mind reader.”

  He drew his fingertip around the edge of his wine glass, which produced a faint squeal. His gaze was blank. “You keep pushing me to tell the truth to others, for everyone else to face these realities that hurt like hell. Look at yourself. If I tell you the truth, can you handle it?”

  “Yes, I can.” I crossed my arms.

  “All right then . . . I spent a hundred days in a solitary cell. Nobody knew. My parents didn’t know, didn’t want to know. And telling them the truth about it now would only bring more pain.” Karo spoke as if I weren’t there.

  He trailed off. “We had orders to shoot, but how could I . . . ?”

  I squinted, trying to understand. “When you and Chia were arrested?”

  There was a fierce glint in his eye. “No. I was released and conscripted shortly after. A fucker told on me. He said that instead of butchering the protestors, I’d let them run away. I was certain no one would notice. I was a good actor.” His left cheek went up in a half smile, his raven hair covering his eyes.

  Words evaporated from my mind like smoke. Under the pressure of this new truth, I silently lay down my invisible armor and weapons.

  I paid the bill. He didn’t argue. We walked toward the ferry terminal and sat on the green slats of the bench without speaking. I shivered mildly even though the night was warm.

  I’d been wrong the whole time. It was Chia who had gotten Karo into trouble, not the other way around.

  “Was that why you never contacted me all that time Chia was in prison?” I stammered.

  “What did you think? What do you really think of me, Leila?” Karo faced me. He looked as though he’d aged a decade that night. “There’s so much I’ve wanted to tell you . . .”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “The timing was never right. You were always angry, always under all sorts of pressure. I thought sharing my ordeal was either useless or would only increase your burdens.” He turned and looked away. “I can’t believe you didn’t know your brother was the fearless idealist, not me.”

  I looked down in embarrassment. “It seems so obvious now that I hear the words, but things in my head . . . All this time it seemed that you had gotten him arrested, saved yourself, then abandoned me when I needed you most. Can you try and see things from my perspective? After he was killed, you reappeared and started acting like my savior. Even that made you look like you were ticking boxes to eliminate guilt.” I shook my head, unable to continue speaking.

  He held his face in his palms. “Two months after I was freed from prison, I saw that I couldn’t resume my studies. I just couldn’t keep up the charade. Of course, that meant I was conscripted and was assigned to the yegan-e-vizhe. Because I was big, they decided I should become one of the elite guards trained to crack down on protesters. But I wasn’t capable of it. How could I be? I mean, how could anyone attack unarmed people?”

  His voice grew hoarse as he summarized the tale of his torment in as few words as possible. Over his shoulder, a band of moonlight glistened on the water.

  “I ended up being charged with disobeying orders and was put in solitary confinement. For a hundred days my only companion was a starving rat.”

  What did a hundred days in solitary confinement feel like? And that was on top of the three months that he’d spent in the custody of Intelligence for allowing his friend to film the state’s murder scene. His parents knew nothing about Karo’s time in prison, so the cover-up of our “marriage” didn’t seem like such a big lie by comparison.

  As the ferry swung toward the dock, the moonlight brought his profile into sharp relief. The scene kindled a nostalgic feeling in me and a deep kinship, as if I had known him for eternity.

  The ferry arrived at the terminus at the foot of Bay Street. We walked out through the iron gates, hands clasped, leaning close to each other like never before.

  The station walls zipped by quickly as the semi-empty subway train swept through dark tunnels. Karo placed his head on my shoulder, and as I laid mine on his, the plans I had eagerly conceived unraveled, the dream of a stalwart, independent Miss Free.

  Once we got off at the train station, I said that I wanted to walk the rest of the way home. A part of me was still terrified of being alone in the dark, but Yonge Street was busy enough, safe enough to let me clear my head.

  “See you at home,” he said. “Call if you want me to pick you up.” I embraced him, and he placed his lips on my neck, bare for once.

  From an Iranian supermarket I bought an international calling card, entered the codes into my cell phone, and dialed Joanna’s phone number. I needed to share the news, to tell her that Karo hadn’t put Chia in danger or ignored me on purpose. That I’d been so stupid. So blind.

  Her phone rang and rang, but she didn’t pick up.

  I dialed again, entering the code wrong a couple of times, then redialed and redialed. I was desperate to ask Joanna if it was okay to allow myself to love Karo fully, to allow all I had tamped down over the years to finally surface. An angry woman who wasn’t Joanna finally answered, saying Joanna had moved and no one knew where. She then reminded me that it was early morning and hung up.

  I didn’t know what else to do. I needed to speak with someone immediately, so an email to Shiler wouldn’t do. I had to speak what I’d learned aloud, talk it over with somebody so I could believe and digest it.

  I called my parents. The last time I’d called Baba had picked up, but he immediately hung up when he heard my voice. This time Mama answered, telling me about the pomegranate trees in full bloom. Mama went on about herself and forgot to ask how I was getting by in this foreign land or if I’d gotten into a university yet. “How does Baba like being back home?”

  “I don’t think he will ever truly be joyful again. But he looks calm. The happiest I’ve seen him in years. He has friends here, childhood friends.”

  I asked where Joanna was. She said Baba believed she had left Mariwan to join Shiler. I held my phone to my chest. We said goodbye. I kept walking up Yonge Street in vain, looking for a familiar face in the crowd.

  A young man embraced a girl in the alley by a nightclub and kissed her passionately. Her fingers raked his hair as she opened her mouth to his kiss. I hailed a cab.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Karo had crawled under the blue coverlet on his mattress, his white undershirt tight across the muscles of his chest. When he saw me, he looked at my packed suitcases and directed his gaze back at the ceiling.

  I stood by the bed. “Karo, you are a much better person than I am, than I can ever be. I was so absorbed by pain, I couldn’t see anything or anyone else. I’m sorry.”

  He searched my eyes and opened his arms. I leaned in and stroked his chest.

  I wanted to pounce on him open-mouthed, to take him for mine. The sudden yearning threatened to break open my skull.

  “So you’ll stay?”

  I nodded.

  His eyes brightened into a smile. “Will we get married for real?”

  “One day,” I said. “One day. I need some more time.”

  He got up in one fluid motion, a surfer standing on his board, and he sat by my side on the bed.

  “I never wanted you to think that I expected you to fall in love with me because . . .” He shrugged. “In return for helping you. But I certainly hoped that you’d get to know me and like me as I am.” Karo held my hand, gently squeezed it, and seemed to gain confidence and fluency in his speech. “Leila, I always
liked you. You seemed uninterested.”

  “Are you crazy? Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

  “I loved my friendship with you and Chia so much that I was terrified of risking it by asking for more. When I was finally ready to ask you out, one tragedy followed another.”

  “And now your mother does not approve of me.”

  “Nor does yours of me. We can live somewhere else though. We don’t have to live in this basement. I can look for work in Vancouver, St. John’s, anywhere, as long as you . . .”

  “As long as I . . . ?” I had an overwhelming desire to bite his biceps.

  “Can you honestly and truly stop blaming me for Chia . . . ?” He caressed my hair. “I see it in your eyes every day. You must promise not to rub it in my face every time we have a disagreement.”

  “The truth is . . .” I swallowed. “I’m still grieving. But I realize that you aren’t to blame.” And his mother was a lonely woman, deceived and abandoned, who had never learned how to accept herself or other people.

  His palm reached my cheek, and I moved it to my lips, planting a kiss on it. He untied my ribboned pigtail and tangled his fingers in my hair, caressing my scalp. Our foreheads touched, followed by our noses. “May I kiss you?”

  “Wait, Karo. I want to be with you, I really do—but I also want a life for myself. This is my one chance to start over.”

  He waited, his lips still inches from mine.

  “I’ve applied to a few universities, to film programs. I can’t delay my education—I won’t put my dreams on hold any longer.”

  “Of course. Of course.” He cupped the back of my head and pulled it toward him, and I leaned in for a long kiss, tasting his lips between my teeth, their liveliness and sweetness. For once I didn’t fight my powerful attraction to him, and I slid my hands under his shirt, over his hips. He moved his lips to my jawline, down to my clavicle.

  “Slowly,” I whispered. I wanted to savor it.

  “Okay,” he said, smiling into my eyes.