Take What You Can Carry

bright morning.
“What about the car?” she asks. They drove here, she now remembers.
“Tomorrow,” Delan says, taking her hand as they cross a street. “We parked far enough away, but I don’t want to go back now. We won’t make curfew if we do.”
The cab they hail picks them up without question. Exhausted, Olivia leans back into the seat. Her ears ring. And only then, in the buzzing silence of the cab, does she remember the camera that’s been inside her purse.

CHAPTER 8
This past January, a couple of months after they’d started dating, Delan disappeared from bed in a time that seemed more night than morning. When Olivia wandered downstairs, he’d already eaten breakfast, showered, and was sitting at the kitchen table with a newspaper before him. His hair was damp and clumped with curls, and the light through the window was strangely intense, one of those bright Los Angeles winter mornings with no clouds but a cold, devious bite in the air. Deceiving, like a candy lure from a stranger. On the radio, the newscaster’s voice rose with excitement over a freeze warning, and Olivia pictured silvery orange groves and farmers glaring at the sky.
A kiss on his cheek. Then eggs cracked on the edge of a bowl, whisked practically to a froth. As the flame beneath the pan spread, she asked why he’d gotten up so early.
At first he said nothing, just watched the window with the paper in his hand while the radio announced that the Hillside Strangler had been arrested in Washington and a blizzard was pounding Chicago. As she poured the eggs, she realized he might not have heard her question, so she switched the radio off till he looked at her—or, rather, not so much at her as to the absence of sound. There was a vacancy in his eyes, a distraction. “You got up early,” she said again, tracing the spatula in the pan in a figure eight. “How come?”
“Dreams.”
“Of what?”
“Home.” Still he held the paper in his hand and went back to watching the day. “Your eggs are burning.”
By this point, she was used to sparse words when it came to what upset him, but still she tried. “Do you want to tell me about them?” she asked, though it was clear he did not.
He shrugged—not to indicate he might talk about the dreams but to categorize them as not worth the effort of explanation. “I just didn’t want to be asleep anymore.”
She shut off the stove and accepted his response without pushing, then watched him as she made her lunch, waiting to see if he’d offer more. Recently she’d inquired about transferring to the photo department, just as a secretary, an idea that made her boss roll up one sleeve of his shirt as if preparing for a mildly restrained fight. Let’s keep our eyes on our own desk, shall we? Disillusionment had begun to thicken her days, filling and spreading into each minute. Though making a lunch might mean she’d be late, she didn’t care—or so she told herself while her eye was on the clock.
“The Kurds. Fighting,” Delan finally said, motioning to the newspaper in his hands. “That’s what’s happening. Always.”
She sliced an apple. Apples reminded her of her childhood, and with each cut, she smelled their crush in driveways, that lazy bite of fermentation in the air. “You’re worried about your friend?”
“This,” he said, tapping the article with his index finger, one two, one two, “is about Iran. The Kurds in Iran. An uprising coming. Aras, though, him I always worry about. But it’s a given he’ll die.”
She looked up sharply, and he smiled sadly.
“Everyone will. He, sooner rather than later. He’s a Peshmerga; it goes with the territory. His life might be short, but he will make a difference. Kem bizhi kell bizhj: Live short, live proud.”
“Live big and bold and brave. That’s what my dad says. Similar. About impact. Making the most of your blip in time.”
He let go of the paper. With his hand, he went to push back the hair on his forehead but stopped midmotion, pausing as if stunned in the glare of morning. For a while, he said nothing. Then he took a long, deep breath. “And yet here I am.” Hand lowered, he traced his finger on the black of the headline.
“Delan. You do things. The protest at the federal building. The letters to Carter. Hundreds of people know who the Kurds are just because of you.”
“Let’s grill tonight. Make some calls, see who can come over. This weather is too good.”
She looked to the window. “It’s freezing outside. Literally. They just said that.”
“It’s not. It’s fine. And I’m the one at the grill.”
She loved the parties and he knew this and it was true, he would be the one at the grill. And she needed something to look forward to, to get her through the day—as did he, it was clear. So she finished making her lunch, set it next to her camera on the counter, and decided to pick up ground beef that was cheap and could feed a crowd. When she looked back at him, he was lost in the paper once more, side lit by the kitchen window on that biting January day, and she saw there were tears on his face. It took her a moment to spot them. So often had she seen him angry when he talked about home that to see this was as confusing as their Los Angeles day of sun and blue skies and air that stung with cold.
Right at the end of the counter was her camera. Always get the shot, he’d once told her. Art makes a difference. And if someone’s story, their pain or sadness, if that can impact someone else, it’s worth the invasion. She watched him now, knowing that if he could see what she saw, he’d want this as well.
Choices in terms of where to stand were limited without