Elliot Ackerman - Dark at the Crossing

Slowly, Daphne began to shake her head. “No, my daughter is alive.” She closed the one journal and opened another. Pressed between its pages was the Polaroid. She held it by the tab on its bottom. “I don’t know whose grave this is,” she said, looking at the photo and the journals stacked about her. “You didn’t believe that nonsense about Latia staying in Aleppo for her cats, did you? She stayed because she couldn’t afford to leave. Amir paid for her to bring me this photo. This wasn’t the first time. Two months ago one of our old neighbors came to Antep claiming the same about Kifa but with no proof except rumors. Amir had paid for his journey, too. My husband does this because he loves me, but he’s lost hope for our daughter. What type of marriage can we have when he’s abandoned her? He wants me to do the same, so that I will leave with him. Whether you help me or not, I will never abandon my daughter.”

“You said nothing to Latia?” asked Haris.

“She’s suffered enough. Why make her feel guilty about a photograph?”

“The journey across the border is dangerous.”

“It’s more dangerous to stay,” replied Daphne. She spoke with clarity. Possessing one option unburdened her of choice. Haris recognized the freedom she found in this.

Daphne gathered up her journals and returned them to her bedroom. Haris stood by the window, looking out toward Antep City Park. He thought of the sleeping bundles around the elms, the boy Daoud, Saied. With such little control over their circumstances, their lives also contained but one option — they couldn’t simplify themselves further. Haris wondered if he had reached that point of reduction.

Daphne padded back to the living room in her socks. She tidied up the sofa bed, throwing away the rest of their dinner. She stepped into the kitchen, taking out a saucepan, some milk from the fridge, and plugging in the hot plate. From the back of a high cabinet, she pulled down a brick of chocolate. She banged it once loudly on the counter, knocking off a fist-size chunk.

Daphne seemed to feel Haris watching her and turned around. “I’m making you a treat,” she said. “I used to do this for Kifa.” She poured a splash of milk into the saucepan, heating it. With a dull table knife, she hacked off shavings of the chocolate, mixing them with the now-steaming milk. Bit by bit, she added more milk and more chocolate. Haris stayed by the window, his eyes fixed outside. The room filled with the warm, sweet smell.

“I killed my friend Jim,” said Haris. “That’s why I’m here.”

He turned to gauge Daphne’s reaction. She offered none, continuing her work in silence. His confession seemed unremarkable to her. Perhaps Daphne felt she’d lost Kifa by remaining in Aleppo with Amir, just as Saied felt he’d lost his wife by working with the rebels. They could all explain themselves in this way.

Haris began his story from the beginning. He told Daphne about his home in Nasiriya, and his sister, Samia, and Shoshana Johnson, and the Allman Brothers and “Jessica.” Daphne laughed about “Jessica.” “I know that tune,” she said, humming a few bars over the steaming chocolate. This embarrassed Haris, but then, as she hit a certain riff played by dueling guitars, she kept repeating the melody, over and over, stirring the chocolate. Haris smiled, the first time he’d ever smiled hearing that song.

He told her about being an interpreter for the Americans, about the bomber, the baby monitor triggers, and the raid on Kareem Tamad’s house. By now they had returned to the sofa bed, where they sat drinking from their mugs. “Jim would’ve broken the boy’s arm, and I would’ve done nothing but watch,” he confessed to Daphne. “If the boy still hadn’t talked, I would’ve watched while Jim broke his other arm.”

“How do you like it?” she asked.

“Fine,” said Haris, wondering if she’d heard him, wondering why she cared so much about the hot chocolate.

He continued, describing the night when Jim came to his room with the bottle of rum. “He wanted us to be friends,” explained Haris, “but more than that, I think he wanted me to understand that I was like him.”

“And are you?”

“I worry I’ve become like him,” answered Haris.

“In what way?”

“He believed in the war but not as a cause. He believed in it as an impulse, the way a painter paints, or a musician plays, a necessary impulse.”

Daphne glanced at Haris’s mug of hot chocolate. “Some more?” she asked.

He looked down, noticing he’d just about finished. He handed over his mug.

Daphne crossed the room and poured more hot chocolate from the saucepan. As she did, Haris spoke to her back and described Kareem Tamad’s interrogation. “I hadn’t planned on striking a bargain with him,” said Haris. “I did it on impulse.”

He held his eyes on Daphne, waiting for her to deliver some judgment. Instead, she sipped from her mug, listening patiently.

“Two nights after the interrogation, Jim came by my room. When I opened the door, he stood in his board shorts, flip-flops and tank top. Tucked under his arm was the bottle of rum. It was nearly empty. ‘Must be your birthday again,’ I said. He laughed and, without asking, came inside. Just as before, he sat on my chair and I sat on the bed. He offered me the rum. I took a sip. Then he did. We quietly passed the bottle between us. By the time we started talking, I was already a little drunk. He told me we’d go after Kareem’s uncle the next night. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You’re probably right — his uncle probably isn’t the guy. After a while, though, the wrong guy or right guy matters less.’ He stopped talking and handed me the rum. He didn’t want me to say anything. He just wanted me to drink with him. Once we’d almost emptied the bottle, he told me: ‘Everyone has their purpose, Abadi. A hammer’s made for nails, a screwdriver for screws, cars for the road. You can’t fight it. You just sorta wind up there. This is my purpose, bud. I know you don’t like it, but it’s where I’ve wound up.’

“Jim looked at the tattoo on his stomach, the growing rim of fat around it. He grabbed the bottle’s neck and took another pull. ‘You haven’t seemed to find your purpose yet,’ he said, leaning close enough so I could smell his warm, stale breath. ‘That makes you interesting. That’s why the rest of these booger-eating terps don’t like you. They only want to get to the States. You already been. Found there ain’t much there, huh? It’s why I like drinking with you — even more than the rest of the guys on the team. They’re boring, destined to do this forever, like me.’

“Back then, I didn’t understand him: nails, screwdrivers, purpose. I thought I’d done plenty to map out my life — I’d decided to leave Iraq once I earned enough to support Samia, and I’d decided to help Kareem’s uncle avoid our raid. But these were all things I’d chosen not to be a part of. I’d yet to set my mind on something I would be a part of.

“Eventually we finished talking and a single sip was left in the bottle. Jim stood, heading toward the door. Before he left, he handed me the last splash of rum as a sort of toast. ‘Abadi,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you’re gonna do, but someday this war is gonna end. I want to know how you wind up. Deal?’ I didn’t say anything, or nod, but I looked at him and he looked at me. And I drank.”

Both Daphne and Haris had finished their hot chocolate. “There’s more in the pan,” she said. Without asking if he wanted a third cup, she went to the kitchen and refilled their mugs. With her back to Haris, she called over her shoulder, carefully pouring out the last of the saucepan. “You were a good friend to sit with him like that.”