The Book of Jonas

by Stephen Dau

  He drinks unthinkingly from the beer bottle, and spits out what he suddenly realizes is warm shower water.

  He suspects there are still bigger reasons.

  He loves her only halfway. The half he gives basks in it, soaks it up. The half he gives is covered in light. But he knows that there is a part of himself that must never be shown, that could never be loved, an animal part consumed by violence and rage and survival, a part he keeps locked away behind a heavy door.

  In part, he loves her only halfway for his own protection, his wounded past, his fragile heart. But mostly he holds back because, deep down, underneath everything, below his thoughts and his movements and even his breath, he hears a knock at that door, low and incessant, and he knows that were it ever opened, were it ever to escape, she would be the first to get hurt.

  12

  What if you become convinced that, even though you are there to help them, the locals are not only unappreciative, but might actively hate you? What if you start calling all the locals hajjis? What if you start to see them less and less as human beings and more and more as things to be categorized as either very threatening or less threatening? What if your SAW gunner accidentally pops off a round or two in the general direction of a crowd of hajjis who have gathered for some purpose you don’t fully understand, but don’t like the look of? What if you all start popping off at the slightest provocation? What if you start looking for provocations? What if you start to feel bored when your weapon is silent?

  13

  For a long time after she received the letter, Rose carried on as though it had never arrived. Her two boys still lived at home, and she was still married. She had activities to keep her busy. She attended PTA meetings. She bought groceries. With perhaps the mildest hint of desperation, she hacked at the weeds that seemed always on the verge of overgrowing the wall in the backyard. She drank coffee with friends.

  And when anyone would ask, as they regularly did, whether she had received any news of Christopher, she would smile and say, “Not yet,” as though she had just been asked about her tax refund, or a new pair of jeans she had ordered by mail.

  And then, at some point, she realized that he was not coming back. Perhaps it was when she went into his room and noticed, as if for the first time, the accumulation of dust on the dresser and shelves. Maybe it was when she looked up from the casserole she had just removed from the oven and realized that his chair at the kitchen table had not been used in years. Perhaps it was the day she saw that the stacks of unopened mail she had been saving for him filled three large boxes.

  Not that she accepted his death, per se, merely that she accepted that she would most probably never see him again.

  She had been told that once she arrived at the point of acceptance, she would be able to move forward. It would mark a turning point. And they were correct, whoever it was who told her this. It did mark a turning point. But it was not the kind of turning point she had expected. She had come to think of her life as being on hold. She had an inkling that once she reached the point of acceptance, everything could finally begin again. But looking back on it, she realizes that rather than marking the point her life restarted, the day she finally accepted loss marked the point when it all fell apart.

  14

  You probably know a little bit what it’s like. If you’ve ever shot a gun, even if you’ve ever used a slingshot, or a bow and arrow, anything like that. You see something out there, a bottle, or a tin can, something far away from you, something that looks to be totally unconnected to you, and you aim at it, pull the trigger, let go of the stone, and the thing you aimed at explodes, disappears.

  Now, imagine that times a hundred, times a thousand. We use really big guns. Bombs. Mortars. It’s alluring. That’s power. Real power. You see a car out there, you see a truck, you see a building, you see a whole fucking village.

  Gone.

  15

  Out of the shower at last, he finds a clean pair of his own jeans and a shirt, left on a previous visit, which Shakri has folded and placed on a stand outside the bathroom. He puts them on, then tells Shakri he’s going for a walk.

  “Why don’t you stay here?” she says.

  “I need to think,” he says.

  And then he’s out the door and alone with his thoughts and his footfalls on the rough concrete of the sidewalk.

  He feels a pleasant numb sensation in his arms, and out of habit he plays a game with himself in which he tries not to step on the cracks in the battered pavement. Whether from playing this game or not, he has developed a half fear of the cracks, a sort of ridiculous phobia, as though stepping on a crack will open a chasm in the sidewalk through which he will fall. In his mind, the game assumes larger significance.

  Stupid, he thinks. Silly thoughts.

  And yet he can’t help but notice that he is good at it, that he has always been good at it. Good at avoiding pitfalls, avoiding problems, even imaginary problems, like cracks in the cement.

  The cracked sidewalk leads Jonas to the house on Adams Street in which Hakma rents a tiny bedroom.

  “You look awful,” says Hakma.

  “Thanks,” says Jonas, as he steps into the sparse room that Hakma uses as a bedroom, study, kitchen, and dining room. Over the single bed, Hakma has tacked up a map of the world large enough to take up most of the wall. Large-headed pins protrude from various points on the map’s surface, like tiny mushroom clouds. Jonas had once asked whether they marked places Hakma had visited.

  “No,” Hakma had said. “Each pin is a place where I have a relative.”

  Close to the geographical center of the map is an oblong circle drawn in thick black marker. The circle takes up portions of Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq, and is labeled “Kurdi stan.” Hanging on the wall opposite the map is the Kurdish flag, green-and-white-and-red-striped, a bright yellow sun taking up most of the field.

  “I called you earlier,” says Hakma. “You were out?”

  “Yes,” says Jonas.

  “Where’d you go?”

  “Hey, tell me again about your flag.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, as I may have mentioned to you previously, it is made up of three stripes, which, from bottom to top, are green, white, and red, with a large golden sunburst in the middle.”

  “And tell me again, what do those colors represent?”

  “I’m glad you asked. The green stripe represents the land itself, verdant, fertile, the cradle of…”

  “Is it not mostly desert?”

  “It is not. It is verdant and fertile. The white band represents peace, which is what every Kurd wants, the right to live peacefully within the borders of our ancestral homeland.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And the red band, at the top, represents…”

  “The blood of the people?”

  “The red band represents the blood of the people, their struggle for a homeland free of foreign domination. And the sunburst in the middle is yellow, representing light and power, and it has twenty-one rays, which is important for specific religious reasons.”

  “What sort of religious reasons?”

  “It’s, um, the number, twenty-one, is the number of, um, true purity. I think.”

  “Well, it’s a beautiful flag,” says Jonas.

  “It is beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  They stand and look at the flag for what seems to Jonas to be a long time.

  “Listen,” says Jonas at last, “do you fancy getting a drink?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” says Hakma.

  They grab their jackets and go out the front door, and the cracked cement sidewalk leads them several blocks farther downtown, to Wilson’s, where they find a few more acquaintances already gathered together in a large corner booth.

  Trevor carries a pyramid of pint glasses to the faux-wood table, the top of which is already covered with wet rings.

  “Here’s to Kurdistan,�
�� says Hakma, and out of habit, they all raise their glasses and drink.

  16

  In the photograph’s background is a large, square limestone building with ornately carved columns and a frieze over the entrance. It looks almost classically Greek. It is pockmarked with bullet holes, and parts of it, the sharp corners, the most delicately carved figures, lie crumbled around its base. The building is the least noticeable thing in the image, the foreground of which is dominated by a soldier who may be Christopher. He wears dark sunglasses and a uniform of sand-colored camouflage the exact same hue as the shot-up building behind him. His helmet, same color, is emblazoned with sergeant’s stripes, and he carries a long gun, pointed down, his finger carefully laid along its side, away from the trigger.

  The soldier who may be Christopher looks down at a dark-haired boy who appears to be in his early teens, a tightly wound lugee wrapped around his head, and a billowing white cloth around his shoulders, tied on top of a blue-and-white-striped T-shirt. They are obviously talking, the boy looking off into the middle distance, and his hands seem to be absently twirling the fringe of the cloth. The soldier, who stands well over a head taller than the boy, is looking down at him with an earnest expression barely discernible behind his large, nearly black sunglasses. It is as though he is trying to convince the boy of something.

  “Do not be afraid,” he seems to be saying. “We are here to help.”

  17

  For a time, Rose cursed the sun.

  She stayed awake all night. She went to sleep at sunrise and tried to remain unconscious as long as she could. She stopped showering. She stopped taking care of Roy and the two remaining boys. They were also suffering. She knew it. But they could rot for all she cared. No, she thought, that was far too harsh. She didn’t mean it. She didn’t want to lose them, too. But they required so much, and she simply didn’t have the energy to devote to keeping them. It was, she found, no easier to lose one just because you had others.

  She made occasional, heartfelt efforts to move on. She joined a bowling league. She didn’t know why. A friend had joined, and in a fit of optimism, Rose signed up, too. It was a silly idea. She hadn’t been bowling since she was a girl, when the owner of the local bowling lane hosted all-night bowling parties on the weekend, locking the doors so that parents knew where their children would be. She would stay up all night long with her friends. But she remembered that it wasn’t about the bowling; it was about just being there, surrounded by everyone. She remembered that it was happy.

  She went bowling with the league twice, but couldn’t muster the energy for a third outing. It required, she felt, too much.

  So she stayed in bed for days. She lay in her room with the curtains drawn. And when the sun dared to filter through them, to brighten the room, she pulled the covers over her head, cursing its audacity for shining on a world in which Christopher wasn’t even there to see it.

  18

  At some point, Jonas passes out. The next morning he wakes up and has no idea where he is. He does not remember the previous night, cannot recall leaving Wilson’s, nor what he did afterward.

  He sits up with a start, and finds that he is in his own bed, his own room. Rain rattles against the windowpanes. He does not remember finding his way back to his apartment, does not know how he even managed to dig out his house keys and get in the door. His head roars.

  Through the fog in his head, he realizes that the phone has been ringing.

  He decides he will try something, something he has not tried since he was very young, since he used to go to the mosque, since he happened one day as a child to meet a strange monk in red robes, who taught him how.

  He takes the blanket off the bed, folds it into quarters, and places it on the floor. He remembers that he used to stay in the mosque after prayers, sitting on the prayer rugs. He kneels down on the folded blanket, sits back on his calves, closes his eyes. Everyone else was so eager to leave after prayers that they practically ran to put on their shoes, find a football, or run down the narrow streets. But he sat, waiting.

  He straightens his back, breathes in, breathes out. He concentrates on his breath. But his head throbs with each heartbeat, and before long his legs have fallen asleep and gone numb, and his stomach rumbles.

  Frustrated, he stands up, goes into the bathroom, and takes a shower. He is filled with good intentions. Today will be the day, he thinks. It will be different. He will get some breakfast, and then he will go to the library. There are midterm exams coming up. He will call Shakri, tell her he is all right, tell her where he has been, explain his newfound focus, share with her his determination.

  Out of the shower, he sits down on the edge of the bed. His initial burst of energy has worn off. He is tired. His headache has transformed into a dull weakness in his neck and shoulders. The rain beats against the windows, and he is disheartened at the thought of going out into it. He yawns. Perhaps he will rest his eyes, just for a moment. A short nap, and then he will be able to think clearly.

  He lies down on the bed, and within minutes, he is fast asleep.

  19

  Friday, October 7 (AP)—U.S. officials announced today what they called a “highly successful” raid against insurgent targets. The action, which officials say occurred last night, resulted in the deaths of at least fourteen enemy fighters and the capture of ten others, as well as the acquisition of “valuable intelligence information.” News on American casualties was not immediately available, although at least two American soldiers are thought to be among those injured. A military spokesman promised that further information would be released in the coming days.

  20

  And then Rose was angry. The support group was begun out of anger as much as anything. It felt unjust. Something had been taken from her, and she had not been compensated. She felt as though she had been robbed. She wondered almost seriously whether she could sue.

  It started by accident, when she saw an interview on a local public-access television show with the father of a boy who had gone off to war and been killed. Friendly fire, it had been called. He said he was unable to get the whole story, and was frustrated. He seemed angry, but calm, focused, pointed. When a caller to the program questioned his patriotism, told him that he was denigrating the memory of his son by questioning his mission, he carefully, calmly pointed out that when the caller had sacrificed one of her own loved ones, she would perhaps be entitled to that opinion, although he doubted very much that she would still feel that way, and that, in the meantime, she could go to hell.

  Rose got in touch with him, contacting him through the TV station. They had coffee. He had been trying to organize other families, apply some pressure and learn the truth, and Rose admired that he had given his pain a focus. Roy seemed to want to pretend that it had never happened, that the hole in their lives could be papered over with work and silence. Here was someone who not only faced tragedy, but used it to reach out to others.

  Over dinner, the man explained that he was trying to build a critical mass. “They only respond to pressure,” he said. “If they think there is going to be a big stink about it, if they fear for their careers, they will talk. But if they think you are on your own, they try to dismiss you as unstable, or damaged.”

  Rose made the decision almost without realizing it. It started with a visit to a neighbor, a few blocks over, who had lost a son. The next day she described the visit to the man she had met through the TV show. She described the grief that had filled the room, the overwhelming pain, but also her own sense of pride, of exhilaration at finally doing something.

  Before she knew it, she was writing letters to families in other parts of the state, then to her congressman, her senator, the Defense Department, the White House. Soon she was hosting groups in her home. Soon she had a purpose.

  21

  A few nights later Jonas blacks out again, and when he wakes up he is kneeling on the floor in the hallway outside his apartment, unable to find his keys.

  Another ti
me, he blacks out and wakes up in the park by the river, next to the Fourteenth Street bridge, waves gently lapping the shore under a pink dawn. He wakes up in the back of a strange car, parked outside a blue clapboard house, and he gets out of the car and starts walking. He wakes up in the end zone of a football field. Often, relieved, he wakes up in his own bed. To his mild amazement, he never wakes up in a gutter. Once, he wakes up in the crook of a thick tree, his legs straddling the branches, the pattern of the bark imprinted on his cheek. He wakes up in the firm grasp of a large bouncer, moments before being hurtled out through the back door.

  These awakenings are enumerated, transformed into stories, to be told and retold, as they all sit around a table somewhere, and raise their glasses, and laugh.

  22

  And then maybe they plop you down somewhere, give you a mission, like a bite-size chunk, something you can digest. Patrol this area. Or take over that house. Search this ravine. Something you can get your head around, something that sounds simple. Protect this convoy. For that period of time, all of reality is supposed to fit into that mission; those three or five or ten words sum up the entirety of your existence. Recon that village. And it almost always goes pretty well. Not perfect. Never perfect. But usually, you go out and you do your mission and everyone comes home and then you’re eating a burger in the food hall.

  But let’s say one time it doesn’t go well. Not well at all. Let’s say one time you let your guard down, or your CO gets distracted. Or maybe nobody screws up. Maybe everyone does exactly what they’re supposed to do, exactly the way they’re supposed to do it, but you just get outsmarted this time. They lay a perfect trap. Maybe you’re in a village and everyone’s doing their job the way they’re supposed to, and there are women and children around. (Which is supposed to be a good sign, by the way. They tell you to always look to see what the women and children are doing. They’re smarter than you, and if they suddenly disappear, you know something’s up.)