The Running War

by E. L. Carter

  “Well, lots of people can’t. But for me, I guess love is the center point.”

  “Love. The one word in the English language with a million definitions.” I can hear the accusation in my tone.

  “This is what I was trying to say. If you believe that someone loves you, your life can organize itself around that point.”

  “And if you don’t?”

  “If you don’t, there’s no center. No sun. You end up in a black hole somewhere.”

  I say, “When I was nineteen, I had a daughter, you know. I gave her away.”

  Mrs. Bird’s cup clatters back onto the table. She has missed the saucer. I should tell her or it’ll leave a ring. I’m quiet instead. “Oh, you poor girl,” she says softly. “What happened?”

  “I fell in love. Isn’t that what always happens in these stories? Do you remember Kurt? I brought him to a Christmas party once at Aunt Ade’s?”

  “Yes. A quiet fellow. Withdrawn.”

  “I don’t know why I liked him. He lived in service to himself. And yes, withdrawn. In the face of most challenges. He treated me like I was a little girl, and when I was with him I couldn’t tell sometimes if I was growing backward or forward.

  “Love, your center point, was poison for me. I didn’t know what was real anymore. For him, things were simple. He wanted to have sex. I don’t know what I expected, but there wasn’t romance, really, and no birth control either. Voilà. I was a virgin one month and a pregnant teen the next.

  “It was my first year at the conservatory. I didn’t know what to do. Dad was angry at first, then he wouldn’t talk. He moped around the house with a bottle in his hand like a rejected lover. Mom was all ice. She told me to get rid of it. Period. That was what my boyfriend wanted too. He was like a car salesman. Except I had fallen for the pitch about sex without condoms. I didn’t know what to do. So I left. I dropped out of school, left home, and went to California. Do you remember when I moved?”

  “That was when you disappeared. I remember.”

  “I didn’t want this little pressure in my belly to die. And then I was alone, and broke, and exhausted, and I forgot what I had to look forward to. A single teenage mom. I couldn’t see myself in that life. I couldn’t see how I could ever have a baby and a harp career at the same time. So I gave her up.”

  “And what do you think now?”

  “Maybe working hard and being poor makes you richer than if you try to shake your fate off.”

  “You let her go, but now you still can’t let her go.”

  “I guess. I guess people aren’t meant to be let go of like that.”

  Mrs. Bird looks at me tenderly. “I think it was a big decision for a girl to struggle with alone.”

  I look at my hands. “I’m not sure I want to try to justify myself.”

  “There’s justification, and there’s forgiveness. They’re different.”

  “I’m not ready for that,” I blurt out.

  “Okay,” she says, “what are you ready for?” She’s asking me why I told her. “Perhaps you’re ready to let the story breathe?”

  “Something like that,” I say. “Maybe a tiny bit. A few shallow breaths. I don’t know who to fight with anymore.”

  My hands go reflexively to my belly. My empty belly. Why did I think I had to pick a fight with a baby? You always lose that way.

  BAGHDAD—AUGUST 2005

  Raed says, “Keep your abaya all around your face. Look down. Don’t look around. Even if you hear something, don’t look around.” The back of his car has cloth seats that are hot against my legs and the smell of cigarette smoke almost gags me in the heat.

  We pull out of the secured lot of the hotel, past the barricades of cement slabs piled atop each other. One of my few chances to escape the hotel tower. Rapunzel in Babylon. If Raed has A/C, he never uses it. The air through the cracks in the windows smells dirty and full of exhaust. Everyone is on the move, looking down like Raed said to do, bustling, bristling, high on fear. I try to watch out of the corners of my eyes to see the streaks of people and cars, the approximation of a delivery truck, the buildings blended together like grey-brown paint. We slow down to a crawl and then creep along through traffic so thick it would be faster to walk.

  I can see in my periphery that there’s a car right next to ours with a person in it, a person so close I could reach my arm through the window, she out hers, and we could touch hands. I don’t look up. I train my eyes on the seat in front of me, grey fabric worn at the edges, a burn hole to one side. The journalists’ security people say kidnappers will show up like hawks once a westerner has been identified. Each time he’s taken me out, we’ve woven in a crazy spiral like the flight of a butterfly chased by a bird. I want to ask Raed why all the traffic this time and how long it will last, but he’s told me to keep my mouth shut unless he says so because speaking English is a death sentence.

  Eventually the choking smell in the air, Raed’s relentless smoking, the presence of an unknown person to my left, the pattern of hairs on the upholstery, and the stain that could almost be a silhouette of Elvis Presley, all cease to interest me and I drift off into song, something a little sentimental, full of nice, predictable chord changes. A I-V-vi-IV progression. That’s perfect. A swelling string section. Maybe a cross stick on the snare drum.

  I jump at the sudden sound of the windows rolling up and thudding into the seal at the top of the doors. Raed turns the vent on high and says, almost too quietly for me to hear, “We are in the neighborhood now.”

  I look out the window, forgetting myself, and see a glimpse of run-down houses in rows and beyond them date palms. And as if to punish me for my transgression, I hear the sound of gunfire so close it’s like an electrical storm, lightning hitting a tree in the yard, but different, and Raed slams on the brakes, flips a U-ey in the middle of the street, and guns it so hard I’m flung back against the cigarette-reeking seat.

  More shots. A whizzing, whining sound. Bullets really do whine. The crack of the gun is quieter now.

  “Oh my God,” I say. “Was that at us?”

  “I don’t think so. But it doesn’t really matter.”

  “It does if they come after us.”

  “They were on foot, Miss.”

  Who were the shots aimed at? What drama did we drive through, what was the story line, the grudge, the holy urge, the hatred? Who lived and who died? Who, like us, ended up in the middle for no good reason? I forget to be disappointed until we’re back in traffic, and then somewhere in the eye-stinging fog of Raed’s next cigarette I realize there’s no way in heaven or hell I’m ever going to get to Dora alive and see them and live up to Kris’s gift.

  I can’t even talk. I can’t even ask Raed what we are going to do now. Because silence has proven once again to be the best of all security measures.

  February 25, 2004

  Siren song siren shriek silence whistle stop you don’t know where it will fall then the boom glass breaking earth-shake a soundtrack apocalypse now? I don’t know which movie I’m in

  Silence

  Night re-forms itself. Who got hurt? How bad is it? The only end is morning and the only action is to go on

  February 26

  Soldier down inside my eyelids falling apart he goes blood red paint a leg a leg by itself I never looked twice when it was attached the sleep why the sleep all I know is I can’t do it

  February 28

  When I visit they attack me with untold stories.

  Their little silver-colored teapot is always boiling and they make that strong sweet tea. The room is bathed in a browned sun glow through the curtains. The older man,

  Isra’s grandfather named Abdul Adl, has a face drawn down on itself, not long by nature but long looking in the light from the brown curtains. He must have lived through the time when Ba’ath was the rebirth of spiritual freedom, the revolution against colonialism. And now look, it’s the dirty face everyone is trying to hide. Whom does he trust now? Who’s the enemy today?

/>   His hands, hairy at the knuckles, are too big for his thin arms, as if meant for a task bigger than his ancestors could imagine, or maybe there are no hands big enough to hold revolution, war, sanctions, children dying for causes no longer believed in, a granddaughter trying to run out into the light but no safe place to play.

  Isra’s uncle, Raheem, can hardly talk without crying. He says, “Laith was a good man, do you know that? He loved his wife and his daughter. He was a better man than I.” He shows me a picture of his brother the day he got his engineering degree, ready to build a stronger Iraq. He says, “I understand why they pick up a gun.”

  The aunt, Azhar, her face demonized by rage, says,

  “You must have been sent to redeem the man who killed my brother.” She’s the same age as Isra’s mother, Fatima, but she won’t say what happened to her. I don’t know why no one will tell me anything.

  Azhar is almost as beautiful as Maddy. I never thought I’d get the hots for someone in an abaya. I sit politely on the floor with my gun and my cup of tea, wondering what she looks like under her dress. I don’t mean to be a prick. I’ll never convert to Islam and she doesn’t even know how much she hates me.

  By the way, this isn’t the Garden of Eden. This is hell.

  March 2

  Maddy sent me the milkweed Asclepias Currasavica. Bloodflower. I pulled them out today and planted them in the corner of the base to welcome Danaus Chrysippus, or better yet, one stray Plexippus on a westerly windstorm.

  NEW JERSEY—JULY 2005

  The elementary school court has everything Avi and I need: privacy, warm air, a net, countless insects seeking our blood for their own soiree. Like last time, we don’t say much, just give in to the rhythmless sound of sneakers on tar. The air pours over us like a hot shower, soaking our clothes. The trees are bright early summer green, fragrant. Everything is full. The gnats swirl at the corners of our game, waiting their turn. It’s like last time except a song composes itself inside my head, and instead of making the shot I find myself listening to it. He beats me this way. I grab the ball, dodge his defense, shoot. But the song won’t let me go, and finally the rhythm of the ball on the backboard works its way in, incessant, exhausting.

  I throw the ball to him and walk off the court, cursing.

  He comes my way. “Have you been working out?” I accuse.

  “Is that against the rules?”

  I’m being a terrible loser. I high-five him and say, “Your free throw was gorgeous.”

  “Thanks.” He seems to know better than to gloat.

  We’re both quiet for a while, catching our breaths and swatting at the gnats that now come in on us like fans after an autograph. Avi walks to his car and returns holding two cold bottles of Gatorade. He hands me one without speaking, and I take it without reply. Finally he comes close again and picks up a pace matching my stride.

  He begins to hum a tune and air-dribbles with his hand as he sings, making a pretend shot.

  I duck and pretend to dribble behind my back. Close my eyes, open them in time to catch him faking me out and shoot over his right shoulder. He stops suddenly, takes a swig of his Gatorade, and asks, “Do you like my song?”

  “It’s pure genius,” I say, beginning to walk again.

  “That was more fun than the real thing.”

  “It always is, isn’t it?” I look over at him and he looks down, studying the gravel. His hair, wet at the edges, tumbles curl over curl toward his forehead.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he says. He looks up at me. “About your brother. You know, I support a group that helps Iraqi families. Victims of war. It’s funny. I don’t know if that makes us enemies.”

  “Do you mean my brother was their enemy?”

  “That’s the thing I’m still trying to figure out.”

  “Do you think someone could play both sides? Like kill one day and save the next?”

  “If they were unpredictable enough, I guess.”

  “Well then, that’s what you can call my brother. Good-hearted but unpredictable. And me too, while we’re at it.”

  “Well—I’m not sure then. If we’re enemies. You’re not out saving orphans, but at least we’re not in the way of each other’s agendas. And anyway, there’s something else I’ve been thinking about.” He looks down at the ground again. “Having you serve me food is getting a little bit—I don’t know. Repetitious. Single sided. I wondered if maybe, sometime, after a shower or before a game, I could take you somewhere and we could both eat, and talk, and be served by someone else?”

  “You mean like a date.”

  He shakes his head. “Yeah. I guess that’s what I mean.”

  I sigh. I might sound exasperated, I don’t know. There’s this funny little cyclone, the kind that kicks up leaves, and before I know it I ask, “Have you gotten any more songs in the mail?”

  Now he looks up, straight at me. “Yes, as a matter of fact. They’re fucking amazing.” He laughs. “You’d never see a harpist in army shorts. I mean, you’re just not weird enough.”

  He’s trying to be funny. “Maybe the mystery harpist is a man,” I say.

  “No, it’s a woman. I can tell by the writing. She wears billowy silk things and hats and she lives by herself in an apartment with ten cats.”

  The words begin to rise up—there’s no silk, no cats, no orphans being rescued, just a stupid girl with army shorts and her hands over her face. The words taste like parsley when I swallow them. I say, “Where do you want to go out?”

  March 16, 2004

  America is a joke, an illusion. What does America have to do with this war? The idea of what this war is goes back and back, from me to my CO to some fucking general and then all the way over the ocean to Washington. It’s like the game of telephone—by then it has nothing to do with where it started anymore. There’s Bush saying “Bring ’em on!” and then there’s the dead mother lying over her baby in the back of a pickup. There’s her family trying to find her, and Raheem’s cousin’s body lying on a pile of trash, and people with nothing to eat and people getting shot and kidnapped and tortured and no one to do anything about it, and there’s William’s body in pieces and Jason who lost his eyes, and three other guys I never even knew back in the states in wheelchairs. And then there’s me, somewhere in-between. If I make it home, I’m done paying my taxes.

  March 21

  Isra has already stained the pink Disney princess outfit I bought her, right on Ariel’s face. Mermaids look better here with mud on their cheeks. And now I got her a pen with sparkles floating inside it that says, “reach for the stars.” This time when she reached for the toy she looked at me. Does she know who I am? Her hands are so small that her splayed fingers would take up only a portion of my palm. I stalk the shopette looking for things she might like. A plastic key chain. A bag of chips. I should just get it over with and rip into my chest and hand her my slimy red heart but that’s not for her either, is it? I need to think about something besides guilt and beauty. She will grow up. She will be a grown woman someday, with two arms and two legs and no burns and I want her to have something else too. I can’t get it at the shopette but like the moron I am I just keep trying.

  “He asked me out.”

  “The man from the restaurant.”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “I said—” What did I say? “I said yes. But I hated it.”

  Mrs. Bird, wearing a crinkly mauve blouse, sits like a little sphinx in her chair and says nothing.

  I say, “I don’t want him.”

  “For daring to find you beautiful.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are you disgusted with yourself?”

  Finally I say, “Yes, I’m disgusted.”

  A scene pops into my head. I’m fourteen, the recent survivor of a limo ride into New York with seven giggling girls in gowns. Now boys and girls whose great-great-grandparents shot at Brits with muskets swagger around in front of each other, slip each other J
ack Daniel’s, smooch in the shadows, sneak down to the street to soak in the soot and thrill of the city. I sit alone at a round table for two covered in a white tablecloth with white napkins. My sleeveless blue Laura Ashley gown will slowly soak through as the night wears on, because there’s no spell and I’m still a frog. A kiss from one of these cocky blue-eyed princes would have no effect. It’s a week after my mother proclaimed, in response to my questions about Grandma, “Gypsies are the scum of the earth.”

  I turn to Mrs. Bird, and before I can stop myself I say, “God, I’m so mad at my mom.”

  Mrs. Bird leans forward. “What is it? What’s there between you?”

  I put my head in my hands. “I tiptoe around the house. No one ever knows when Dad will be glad, or sad, or mad. Whether he’ll sing a made-up tune and laugh, or storm out of the dining room because she overcooked his peas. Dad was throwing grenades all my life—but Mom’s in the factory with a hankie in her hair. She’s the home front. The perfect wife. And the question ‘What about me?’ is forbidden. That’s why I didn’t eat. Starving, you could say. And then I ran.” I shake my head. “Who’s the baby in the family anyway?”

  Mrs. Bird says, “I’ll tell you what. Men create their worlds, all full of self-importance. And we women pick up the pieces. The little, tiny pieces. You don’t have to be on the front lines to lose the one you love. To hurt too much. To cling onto your dead uncle’s face reflected in the face of your son. To lose track of your daughter, to forget there are options other than loss. You know, I couldn’t see my husband, Nels, at all. One man dies and the other gets no chance at life. You will tell yourself the same story over and over, even when the war is done. Finally you hear yourself telling it. Then it can rest.”

  I look up at her from my hands. “You mean it’s my job to fix it now.”

  “Stop that,” she says. “I mean that knowing a child is the job of its mother. Like milk, like blankets. To see her child and not her superimposed reflection. But how can you see her when you were never seen? It’s not all your fault. But you can break it, you can get your sight back.”