Take What You Can Carry

the window.
Everything’s emerald green. Verdant. That water-drenched, spring shade, teeming with potential. Even the soil is bold with promise, striped in places with colored veins of minerals. The term Fertile Crescent comes to her, and Olivia remembers Delan telling her that that was where he was from. Meaning, when he said this, was abstract, just a fact on a page or a lesson in a classroom. In no way had it resonated. Until now. Now she feels it. The pulse of ancient civilizations thick and steady. She wants to get out of the car and place her hands upon the ground to sense the life that’s been lived there, the stir of ancient footsteps or the faded roar of a long-ago army. Somehow they’re still here, she thinks. Those worlds. Ghost worlds that exist just beneath what can be seen. The air, if she were still enough, might quiver from a once-spent arrow.
Past another bend, the landscape opens in low hills and fields, contained by massive mountains. In the midst of the range is a jagged gorge, as if in that one spot, the earth had heaved and split and torn. Even farther back, distant in a way that could be a trick of the eyes, there are snow-covered peaks washed in clouds of the same white, an almost disorienting union.
When they pass through a small village of flat-roofed houses, Olivia remembers Delan’s stories of sleeping on the roof during the summer. Too hot inside. But what better way to know the stars? Romantic and exotic, the way he told it. Flowers that bloomed at night. Waking at the time nature intended, folded in its arm. Was it just how he sold it as an adult, to avoid conversations that could hook into any uncomfortable truths, or was that how he actually saw it? Children stand in the opening of a partially destroyed stone wall, and as she watches him wave to them, their faces wide with smiles, she realizes she doesn’t know. Outside her own window, buildings have been razed and cars abandoned. A dog sits in the shadow of a tall pile of rocks. Life seems to emerge from between cracks or sift from rubble.
When they’re stopped at a light, he looks left, searching the street. “The candy store. We used to go to one here. You should see it, stacks of gazo, or shirini. Sweets, like rolled jellies, in every flavor. Pomegranate, apricot. Raisin with walnuts—my favorite.” He taps his cousin on the shoulder, leans forward, and says something in Kurdish. Loudly, despite the silence of the stopped car. In turn, the cousin yells back before hitting the gas.
“Is he mad?” Olivia asks.
“No, we were just talking directions.”
“You were yelling at each other.”
He’s genuinely surprised. “It’s how we talk. But we’ll stop for a break. I haven’t been here since I was fourteen. The old man must be dead, I’m sure. His wife was a beast, but she gave us sweets if we sorted the green rose petals from the yellow for halway gula zerd.”
“Time,” the cousin shouts. “Ba’ath.” With his chin, he motions toward the town.
The Ba’ath party. The ruling political party of Iraq, led by Saddam Hussein, a fearsome man whom many said would become the next president. To go to university, you have to be a Ba’ath member. To do anything, you have to be a member. Everyone has a certificate, Delan has said, even just for show. To be safe.
“No, we’re stopping; it’s fine,” Delan says. “Shirini for your family.”
“The Ba’ath party is here?” she asks Delan.
“And mokhabarat,” his cousin says.
The secret police.
“They’re everywhere,” Delan says. “You want to avoid them, you stay in your house the whole time. But even then, they come to you, so what good is that? Nose to the dirt, we’re fine.” He turns as they pass one of the few street signs they’ve encountered. “Everything’s in Arabic. All of it, changed.” Another turn, and they’re on a street with houses. “Wait, wait. Here. Lera raweste.”
They pull before a house of pale brick, two stories with a gate that straddles the street corner. The windows are narrow and clouded, as if the view is better left unseen, and a tree in the front has lost its leaves. In fact, more bare branches from other trees stretch above the walls, and Olivia motions in their direction. “They’re dead, aren’t they?”
A nod. He looks worried. As if someone might round the corner and catch him where he shouldn’t be. “Those trees were old. Neglect reaches them last. So think of what happened. The whole garden, gone, I’m sure.”
“What is this? Whose house?”
In his nervous silence, she understands: someone he loved lived here. A lost love. She sees it in his eyes, that longing for something gone. Even his cousin, always wanting to be on the move, waits patiently, as if aware of the significance of the stop.
After a moment, Delan sits back. “I know how to get there from here.”
And so he gives his cousin directions and sure enough, within a couple of minutes, they’re in front of a building whose second floor juts into a balcony that hovers precariously above the sidewalk. Below, the first floor is a glass storefront filled with stacks of rolled sweets—green, yellow, pink, white, and orange. Dark centers in some, others coated in seeds or nuts.
“After all this time, it’s here. Maybe it’s a new owner. But it’s here. You have no idea what that’s like.”
“To revisit your childhood?”
He smiles. “Sure. And find it still standing.” As he opens the door, his cousin lights a cigarette and leans against a stone wall. A bell chimes. “I feel like I’ll see myself here. Stage right, from the kitchen.”
Old pendant lights hang from high ceilings, and a fan wobbles in the center. The floor is tile, stained with time. Every inch of every shelf and wall is crammed with jars and posters, baskets and tubs. Rolls of candy in all shades are dusted with powdered sugar