As I drove to the Rhino drop-off point, the IZ felt subdued. There were few other people outside. Those who wanted company had crowded into Baghdaddy’s as soon as office hours were over, some before. Other people stayed in their rooms, calling home or watching TV. No one had gone near the gym.
When I got in the car, there was a CD playing that Anna had made for our drive into work, a test run for a UN party. I thought the music would distract me, but the throb of the bass felt like the thud of mortars. I kept turning the volume down, straining my ears to listen for an attack. Eventually I turned the music off completely and cracked open my window to be sure I would hear the incoming alarm if it sounded.
The vehicle route to the drop-off point was less direct than going by foot. I drove past the rows of concrete blast walls that flanked each road and building. I shifted my hands on the steering wheel. The sweat on my palms caused them to slide against the synthetic material. I am fine.
Although the stillness of the IZ was eerie, it was a beautiful golden evening. The buildings of the International Zone looked like they had been drizzled in honey and sand-coloured bricks glowed in the changing light.
Two Blackhawks moved in unison across the sky, patrolling over the city, making the American presence known. They passed across the large face of the sun as it lowered.
I reached the drop-off point and sat in the car. I took long slow breaths but my heart was still pounding. I wiped my hands on my trousers and checked my watch again. They must be nearly here. They must be fine. The Rhino drives this route all the time.
I waited. Nearby was a large black SUV, a private security vehicle waiting to transport its human cargo to one embassy or another. The driver wore dark glasses, even though the sun was now almost down. I recognised the man in the passenger seat from the bar. He stared at me, perhaps wondering what I was doing out on my own. Especially today. I looked away and checked the lock on the door. I waited.
I felt the Rhino approach before I saw it. The deep rumble of the engine caused the windows of my vehicle to shake.
When the vehicle had juddered to a stop, a tall skinny man got out of the front. I had heard people talk about him before. He came back each deployment to do the same job – a bus driver on Route Irish, which was one of the most dangerous routes in the world at the start of the invasion. He opened the side door of the vehicle and people started to get out.
Two men in crumpled suits emerged first and were quickly ushered into the SUV that had been waiting nearby. The military personnel moved at a more leisurely pace, passing bags between each other and shaking hands with the Rhino driver before finding their ride.
Adam was last out of the vehicle. He climbed easily down the steps and looked around. If he noticed me waiting, he didn’t give any indication. I stayed where I was. There were strict rules about military fraternisation with civilians, or with anyone in fact. Even though everyone knew it went on, I didn’t want to draw attention to either of us.
He took off his helmet and ran a hand through hair damp with sweat. As he did so, he looked up. This time he caught my eye. A smile flickered across his lips and then he looked away. My heart was thudding so loudly I felt sure that even from there he could hear it.
Adam stood and talked to the other soldiers who were waiting. I saw him nod towards the embassy and guessed he said that’s where he was going. A couple of military vehicles turned up and the remaining soldiers clambered in. One of the men he was talking to gestured towards Adam to join them, but Adam smiled and waved a hand in front of him. The man with dark hair looked at him questioningly and glanced around, clearly looking for another military vehicle. His eyes locked on me and understanding flashed across his face. I looked down and pretended to be searching for something in my bag and didn’t raise my eyes until I heard the vehicles drive away.
When I looked up, Adam was walking towards the car. Behind him the sun had almost completed its descent and everything had a deep golden glow. Adam’s shadow stretched out before him, impatient for his body to arrive. For a moment it all melted away. The taste of dust as we pressed ourselves into the floor under our desks. The way the ground had trembled with each impact. The curl of smoke from the cigarette of the man leaning on the wall outside the office as he told us there were casualties. And the name that had circled in my head all afternoon.
All of that was replaced with one thing. One person. Adam, who was walking towards me.
I fumbled with the door handle as I got out of the car. I took a few steps and stood in front of the vehicle while he covered the remaining metres between us. He came to a halt in front of me, standing close. I remember looking down at our feet, almost touching, and thinking how little I would have to move forward for my body to be pressed against his.
“Hi,” I breathed.
“It’s good to see you,” he said.
I didn’t know what to do with my hands so I shoved them in my pockets.
“You too.”
We stood silently for a moment in the fading light, looking at each other. Then, without saying anything else, I turned and climbed back into the vehicle and he did the same.
I turned on the engine and put the vehicle into gear, noticing how close my hand was to his leg. He glanced down too. The air between us was charged.
“So, how was the journey down?” I asked.
“Long,” he said. “It took forever.” I could feel his eyes on my face as he spoke, but I kept my attention on the road that was taking us back to the East End. Back to my room.
“Was there a lot of traffic?” I asked.
“None at all.”
I wondered briefly whether there should be an incoming alarm for this kind of thing. Run, take cover, this can never end well, it should say. But by that point it was already too late.
“So, how are you doing?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said, too quickly, checking my mirror as I took a slow right turn. “I mean, I don’t really know. But okay… I think.”
He nodded. Neither of us spoke for the rest of the journey. It was the kind of silence that filled the space between us like water, seeking out the gaps and expanding to fill them. It was a silence made thick by expectation.
“So, this is home,” I said, pulling into the East End parking area. I closed the car door quietly and prayed we wouldn’t see anyone from the office on the way to my room. The crunch of gravel under our feet was loud in the stillness of the night. In the distance, I heard the voices of people making their way home from the bar and I halted briefly, but they didn’t come in our direction.
I put the key in the lock of the building door and Adam reached over me to take hold of the handle, pulling the door open when I turned the key. The inside of his arm brushed against my shoulder and I felt his body close behind me. I turned my face towards him as he opened the door and his face was so close to mine that I could smell the mint of recently chewed gum.
“Thanks,” I smiled.
He followed me up the stairs and along the corridor.
“It’s like being back in college dorms,” he said.
I pushed open the door to my room. We hesitated awkwardly in the doorway, each insisting that the other go through first.
Once inside I felt strangely exposed. Adam, in his uniform, looked out of place among my few possessions. I became hyperaware of the pink flowery bedspread, the photos of my friends and family, the scented candle that probably wasn’t within regulations. All the details that made my room homely came from a different world to the man standing in the middle of my floor.
“You’ve really, um, personalised the place,” he said.
“Yeah… I thought I’d make it a bit more of a home.”
“It smells nice. Really, well, womanly.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean…” He looked embarrassed and I noticed again the way he rubbed his hand around the back of his neck. “I’ve been living with dudes for a while, so I guess I�
�m just used to everything smelling like ass.”
Adam shifted slightly.
“Do you want to sit down?” I asked, wondering whether he would choose the wheelie chair by my desk or my bed. Both options seemed equally awkward. He considered the question for a moment, then made a decision. He took a step towards me and put a hand on the top of each of my arms. I had to tilt my head back to look up at him and he dipped his chin forwards. Our faces were inches apart.
I examined his face. The striking green of the eyes that had first caught my attention. The small crease on his forehead that soon became a familiar mark of concern. The slight sheen of his lips.
“Emma, are you sure you are okay?” he asked. “Do you want to talk about what happened?”
I raised a hand and put it on his chest, feeling the thick material of his uniform under my fingertips.
I shook my head, but I didn’t know which question I was answering. Then I raised my lips to his. The hands that held my arms now moved around me, drawing my body up towards him. Finally I was able to forget.
13
Last week at night I woke to him sat at the end of our bed, polishing the buttons of his uniform.
I squinted into the light of the bedroom, rubbing at my eyes. His head was bent over and his lips were pressed together in concentration. The flick of a scar on his eyebrow disappeared the way it does when it is swallowed into a furrowed brow.
“Adam, it’s late. What are you doing?” I said.
“Prepping my uniform.”
“For what?”
“Got my hero photo tomorrow.”
My eyes refused to open properly and his words barely penetrated my haze of sleep. I thought I blinked, but when my eyes reopened it was dark. I stirred and sensed his presence in the bed next to me. I moved towards him and pressed my chest against his back, felt the steadiness of his breathing, draped an arm over his body.
I found the photo this morning, tucked away in the filing cabinet with other deployment documentation. He wears a jacket heavy with decorations. The crease in his green beret lines up with his left eye. In the background are the stripes and stars of his flag.
He looks handsome and serious. I know this is the kind of photo that his mother would love to have on the wall, alongside his brothers. But it is not a photo for our home.
When we moved to this house, we decorated with photos and a map on the wall. The map tells our story. It is a story that spans countries and continents and oceans. A story of love that begins in conflict. I call it our love atlas and he teased me for being sentimental, but now he calls it that too.
We attached pieces of string to the map, which reach out to photos. We marked our homes first, our roots. We laughed when the first drawing pin covered up my country and when the second drawing pin got lost in his. Then we put up photos of the places we have been together. Our road trip to Yosemite. My first trip to Virginia to meet his family. He joked that we should put up photos of Skype calls and emails and lengthy waits in arrivals halls at airports too. By telling the story, we made this place ours. We made it home.
Next, I put up photos of my travels alone, before our story began. He laughs at the younger version of me in the photos. A sunburnt teenager in Greece. A backpacker in Peru with a rucksack that is too big, and feet that are either dirty or tanned.
Then we searched for pictures of his travels too. But in this photo he wears a uniform and in that one he holds a gun and eventually we gave up. That is not who he is in this apartment. That version of him is not for here.
On the wall across from the photos and the atlas is a painting, the only painting in our house. It is a painting of an English garden in the summer, with a small pond and a blue sky and flowers in full bloom. It used to be on the wall of my childhood home, opposite my father’s chair. A photo of it was in my bedroom in Baghdad. The garden was ours and the brushstrokes my mother’s.
Looking at the painting, you might imagine that the garden was empty when she painted it, but I know better. I know she preferred painting landscapes to people. I was thirteen the summer of that painting, and my sister was ten. I look at the canvas and I can feel the stickiness of the strawberry ice pop that melted down my arm and onto my book that day. I can hear that barking of the neighbour’s dog, the distant hum of a lawnmower and the buzz of the wasp that stung Rebecca’s arm as she played swingball.
I see my mother stood in front of her easel in cut-off jeans, flip-flops and one of my father’s old white consulting jackets, sleeves rolled up and splattered with colours that are testimony to everything she painted that year. The colours are bright, vivid. So is she.
And now I see my father, coming out of the house and passing her a cool drink, kissing her on the cheek as she works. He comes over and ruffles my hair, then picks up a bat to join Rebecca. He looks relaxed, happy. He always did when we were all together.
I don’t remember many summers after that. After my father died, my mother stopped painting. She tried to start again a couple of times, but the paintings always looked empty – as if they needed the admiring gaze of my father to bring them to life. I emailed Rebecca last week to tell her about Adam’s deployment and in her reply she mentioned that Mum had finally started painting again. She sent me a photo of the most recent piece and in the delicate detail I found an almost forgotten version of my mother. It caused my throat to constrict, but I couldn’t quite tell whether it was from happiness or pain in the knowledge that they are moving on. Even after all this time, I’m not sure that I am.
This evening when Adam got home, I mentioned the photo in the filing cabinet and I asked why he didn’t show it to me.
“It’s my hero photo,” he said. That phrase again. And still I didn’t understand. He began to explain and he chose his words carefully, but there is no comforting way to say it is the photo they will use if he doesn’t come back. It is the photo that will be at the memorial, in the media, on the wall of the Joint Special Operations Medical Training Center. In death he will be a soldier, not my husband.
I look at the photo again and wish I had never found it. I replace the photo. Close the filing cabinet. But the image of his death is burned into my mind.
I walk into the sitting room and stand staring at the painting on the wall, a memorial in its own way to a different part of my life. Except my mother and sister are not gone, it is me who disappeared. It is part of me that can be recovered. I will go to the art shop tomorrow. It is time to open the jar.
14
Ameena came into the office for her asylum application interview almost a month after the day that Sampath died and the first night that Adam stayed over. I saw her name on the schedule and walked into the waiting room to find a young woman, bouncing a baby up and down on her knee. Next to her was an old woman, whose fingers worked their way anxiously through a string of rose-coloured prayer beads. Ameena looked younger than I expected. She was younger than me.
“Sabah al-khair,” I said, greeting them. “You must be Ameena. Would you like to follow me?”
I took them through to one of the small sparse rooms where we conducted interviews. Ameena and her mother sat down on the metal fold-out chairs. The baby on her lap gurgled and grabbed at one of Ameena’s bangles, which was a deep shade of purple that matched her hijab and her handbag. I wondered what she made of me, with my baggy blouse and faded linen trousers.
Ameena passed the little boy to her mother and spoke. Normally we conducted interviews in Arabic, but she addressed me in careful English with a slight American inflection.
“Thank you for seeing us,” she said, smoothing out her long skirt. “It was a relief to be invited in.”
“Thank you for coming,” I replied. “I am sorry to hear about your situation.”
She nodded, holding my gaze. I felt her mother’s eyes watching my mouth as I spoke, with the intense concentration of someone trying to find meaning in unknown sounds.
“Would you like us to switch to Arabic, for your mother?” I a
sked Ameena.
Her mother heard the word “Arabic” and understood the question. She waved her hands hurriedly.
“No, no. English. Please.”
“She likes hearing me speak in English,” said Ameena with an embarrassed smile. “She says she’s glad I paid attention at school. Not like my brother. He was always skipping classes to play football.”
“Your brother?” I asked, flicking through her online application that I had printed out. “Are you including him in your application? You know that you can include all immediate–Oh.”
My eyes found the information on the registration form at the same time as she spoke.
“He is dead,” she said. “He died, with my father, in the Sadriyah market explosion.”
“I’m sorry. Allah yarhamu.” I said, switching to Arabic briefly because English words were awkward on my tongue when invoking God. I had heard of the attack. At least a hundred people had been killed, maybe more.
“My husband is dead too. Not in an explosion though. He was killed while I was pregnant. Now it is just me and my mother and baby Yusuf,” she said, gesturing to the boy on her mother’s lap. “At least we have another man in the family now, even if he is so small.”
“I’m going to have to ask you a lot of questions about all of this today,” I said. “I know that might be difficult for you.” Sometimes I wondered whether I had repeated this script so many times that it sounded insincere. Empty.
“We have been through many difficulties. This will not be worse,” she said. She pulled a folder of documentation from her handbag and placed it on the table resolutely. “Let us begin.”
I started the way I always did.
“First, tell me about your life before the invasion.”
The interview took two hours in all. Ameena was articulate and composed. Some interviews could take much longer as there was so much to get through. As part of the application process, I had to record the applicant family’s history with all its details: biographical information, family tree, education and work history, military service, Ba’ath party membership. Their story. It was especially difficult with older people, and even more so with those who couldn’t read or write. It was also difficult with some of those who had gone through trauma.
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