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Elliot Ackerman: Dark at the Crossing

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Elliot Ackerman Dark at the Crossing

Dark at the Crossing: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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From the author of the acclaimed , a timely new novel of stunning humanity and tension: a contemporary love story set on the Turkish border with Syria. Haris Abadi is a man in search of a cause. An Arab American with a conflicted past, he is now in Turkey, attempting to cross into Syria and join the fight against Bashar al-Assad’s regime. But he is robbed before he can make it, and is taken in by Amir, a charismatic Syrian refugee and former revolutionary, and Amir’s wife, Daphne, a sophisticated beauty haunted by grief. As it becomes clear that Daphne is also desperate to return to Syria, Haris’s choices become ever more wrenching: Whose side is he really on? Is he a true radical or simply an idealist? And will he be able to bring meaning to a life of increasing frustration and helplessness? Told with compassion and a deft hand, Dark at the Crossing is an exploration of loss, of second chances, and of why we choose to believe — a trenchantly observed novel of raw urgency and power.

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He remembered three a.m., too, the hour when he had returned home after his drink at the hotel. That night, he had assumed Samia would be asleep but found her sitting on his sofa bed, her face in her hands. He hadn’t even slipped the door shut when she threw a pillow at him, then another, until a barricade of pillows stacked at his feet. Before he could devise a story of where he’d been, his sister demanded to know why he would sneak out, whether he planned to abandon her, whether he had brought her here for his new life instead of both of theirs.

To assuage his guilt about leaving Samia that night, or perhaps to assuage his homesickness, which itself felt like a form of unquenchable guilt, Haris walked his sister to the university every day that week, waiting outside her classroom in the Michigan winter. The faculty soon asked about the man loitering around campus in a thin camouflage rain jacket, and shortly thereafter offered Haris the charity of a job, which came with a discount in Samia’s tuition. His hours now began earlier than Samia’s and finished later, so they began to walk separately to the university. He noticed how she started to avoid him, how when he saw her, pushing his mop in the navy slacks and the powder blue shirt that were his new uniform, she would speak to him with her eyes downcast and explain that she was late to her next class.

The spring of Samia’s second year she began dating an Emirati boy whom Haris had no reason to disapprove of, whose passport came soused with oil money and stamped with a student visa, and who had a car of his own. Samia had told her brother it was a BMW. Haris made a point of often forgetting the Emirati’s name, of lecturing his sister about the poverty and indignity some Arabs (Iraqis, Syrians, Yemenis) faced while others (Saudis, Kuwaitis, Emiratis) indulged in luxury. He also made a point of never being around to see the car.

He took another look at his watch. Sitting on the side of the path, waiting for Athid to return across the field, Haris stared to the south, toward the border, and into the perfect blackness. All he could do was listen, and wait.

The air cooled. Haris strained to hear over the wind. Then Athid surprised him, flopping down on the trailside. He brought his face close to Haris’s, speaking in a whisper: “It is unlocked.”

Sweat beaded on Athid’s forehead, running in rivulets over each temple. Haris felt afraid and nodded once.

Running in a crouch, they moved quickly across the broken field. Haris’s footing felt uncertain and mud caked to his boots, his feet becoming heavier with each step. He couldn’t see a thing, whereas Athid moved with total certainty, never slowing. Then Athid collapsed to his knees. Haris toppled into him in the darkness. After untangling himself, Haris also stood on his knees. Athid bent over the manhole cover that sealed the culvert. With a jerk from his legs and back, he lifted and tossed it aside.

A warm, decomposing smell belched up from the earth. Athid lowered himself underground. When he stood in the culvert’s bottom, its mouth came up to his chest. He glanced back, looking for some assurance Haris would follow. Haris took off his heavy pack and stood at the opening’s lip. Athid dipped below, and Haris trailed after him, ducking underground.

On their hands and knees, and at times on their stomachs, the two crept toward the border, dragging their packs behind them. The sloshing of stagnant water and the scampering of subterranean creatures were the only sounds. Athid cursed as the sharp smells became unbearable or as a rat or something else brushed by his leg or over his arm. Haris reached up and touched the sides of the culvert. They felt cool and hard, like cement. Beneath his palms it was all mud.

Haris crawled on his left side. Soaked from the waist down, he did his best to protect his right pocket, which carried his fold of cash, passport and map. Miserable as the passage was, he felt glad for it. To cross into a war should be difficult, he thought. To fight in a war should be even more difficult. When he’d been in Ramadi, that most violent of cities, the war had felt easy. The American soldiers he had translated for would tape a half pound of explosives to a door, blow it in, find the person they were looking for, maybe kill that person, maybe capture him and then return to their firebase at Hurricane Point, a peninsula jutting into the Euphrates River. They’d leave after dinner. They’d return before dawn and have breakfast, watching television and lounging on La-Z-Boy recliners flown in from the States, the sweat still on their uniforms. They would kill someone and in the morning they’d eat cornflakes together.

Traveling through filth and darkness, Haris thought he might find what he was looking for on the other side. And he was happy.

Haris tugged his pack by the handle, grunting, becoming short of breath. Every few minutes, he’d tap Athid on the back, needing to rest a bit. Then they’d continue to plow through the water and filth. The culvert was several hundred meters long, and progress became difficult to measure. They moved in a straight line, but Haris wondered if it was possible to get lost on a straight line. Again he glanced at his watch, knowing he wouldn’t be able to see its face.

A hoop of light sliced into the culvert from a sealed manhole cover above. Had they been traveling for that long? Haris couldn’t believe morning had already broken. Athid stopped, his neck craning toward the light. He gazed back at Haris. Both their faces were layered in sweat and grime. Haris glanced upward. Athid had kept his word, taking him this far. Haris returned his look with clear, wide-open eyes. Athid’s eyes had become heavy-lidded with fatigue. Composting earth flecked the growth of his spongy beard, and it seemed as if a liquid filth might be wrung from it. He considered Haris for a moment further, then frowned. Coming to a squat, Athid bounced on his haunches and then exploded upward, lifting the manhole cover.

Light rushed in.

Not looking back, Athid vaulted from the culvert.

Before Haris could follow, a pair of blue-sleeved arms reached beneath the earth and grabbed him under the shoulders. Haris flailed against their grip, lunging belowground. He struggled to free himself and almost broke loose. Then another set of longer arms clutched after him, joining the first. Haris grabbed the drag handle on his pack, hoping its weight might anchor him inside the culvert. It didn’t work. As he was lifted up, light washed against his face, blinding him. But it wasn’t daytime. The glare didn’t come from above but from the side. Headlights.

The blue-sleeved arms pinned him down. Haris glimpsed the two chain-link fences of no-man’s-land. He called out for Athid. No reply. Framed in the glare, two silhouettes moved swiftly against him — one short, the other tall. They cursed at him in Turkish. The headlights caught the stubbled faces of the gendarmes.

Haris offered his hands so they might cuff his wrists, but they didn’t. The taller gendarme knelt on his chest. Haris now faced the sky and the night above. The short gendarme groped at his pockets, grabbing after his valuables. Haris bucked wildly. “Don’t!”

“Stay still, you damn fool!” the gendarme shouted in Arabic.

Haris got an arm free. He struck the taller gendarme across the face. It wasn’t enough to knock him from Haris’s chest. Instead, the gendarme rolled his jaw and unholstered a strange-looking pistol. Haris glimpsed the plastic barrel. It fired with a click instead of a bang. A fanged bite sunk into Haris’s skin, just beneath the ear. He felt the puncture, then his whole body seized, the Taser’s ten thousand volts pulsing through him. His eyelids cramped shut. He smelled his burning flesh, felt his skin turning hotter than his blood.

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