(no subject)

[kayip]

July 15, 2012
2:55 PM


Behrooz arrives for work early that morning, working quickly through a list of chores and opening the store by himself. Very few come in during the first few hours, and Behrooz doesn't have a lot to do besides restacking boxes and flipping through newspapers, the latter of which all carried the same news – still nothing, a slight sense of relief was falling collectively, though it was hardly holding. Sareh came in at noon, bringing a box of lunch for him, and took his place behind the counter as he started sorting things out in the storeroom.

"How's your mother doing?" he asked as he brought in a box of canned soup to put on the shelves. She didn't look up from ringing up a woman who was buying a few boxes of cereal.

"She's fine. Farid just makes a big deal out of everything, she's fine." Her answer is calm enough, so Behrooz doesn't question it. The woman leaves with her plastic bag and the store is empty except for the two of them again. Behrooz pauses while stacking up the cans, and walks over to the counter.

"You should leave."

Her eyes meet his steadily, looking away from the paper he'd been reading earlier.

"Why? We're apparently all safe now."

"You know that's not true – just because the attacks have stopped, it's not changing anything –"

"Orhan," she snaps it, and her eyes go down to the paper again. Once it's clear he's shut up, though, she continues without looking at him, "- we can't leave. They won't let anyone with a suspicious arrest out of the country – we'd have to leave my Dad behind."

Behrooz stares at her for a long moment – and there are a lot of things he wants to do – like push something over or tell her to try to get out anyway, or at least away from there, but he knows he can't. Instead, he just goes to the storeroom, to carry out another box.

It's when he's inside, looking through the shelves, that there's the sudden sound of broken glass –





- he's coughing before he realizes why, it's a mingle of smoke and gasoline and it hurts to inhale it, and there's crackling and screaming and –

Screaming.

He pushes himself away from the shelves, running back into the store, but it takes him a moment to see through the fire –

(burns up all the – small flame - )

- that's climbed onto the cardboard boxes and paper products and shelves and the desk and –

(you promised you wouldn't -)

- she's struggling on the ground – the gasoline smell comes from her shirt, her hijab is burning, and he forces her up by one loose arm, ignoring her coughing, the disgusting smell of burnt hair, and pushes them both through the broken glass of the front door.

There's screeching tires, and a man yelling out, dialing numbers, but all he can see is that she's still burning when she hits the concrete outside.


*


Behrooz went in the ambulance with her – he felt bad about it, like he shouldn't have been the one, but he was the one there. He numbly dialed for Farid, for her parents, but the lines were all busy and he didn't know why.

And he's forced into a hall, not a waiting room – he can't use his cell phone, can't hear anything except for someone yelling orders about her, and the nurse who brings him a cold, wet cloth to put over the minor burns on his hands. She gives him a small, uncertain look he doesn't understand before rushing away. He holds the cloth for thirty minutes before a doctor emerges from the room Sareh had disappeared into.

Third degree burns on her torso and left arm, some second degree on her neck and face. He reads it out gently, and tells Behrooz to go to the room they'd transferred her to on a different floor. It's when he's finally passing through a waiting room that he just stops.

Somewhere, he knows it before the reporter's stunned, breaking voice says it, before the (light) image hits the screen.

Behrooz can pinpoint the last time he'd actually cried to the moment, around two years before, impossibly far from here, alone and starving and just - too afraid. And now he realizes he's fallen against the wall, barely taking into account the others in the room, barely smelling their fear over everything – all of it, so much of it that isn't even his. He's slid onto the floor, his face is in his hands.

And his phone rings. He doesn't answer it, not until the voicemail sounds, and he fishes it out of his pocket, not thinking, ignoring that he's not supposed to use it –

"Outside, five minutes. Orhan –
ثلاثة زوار"


And it all –
( And what will happen when you can't, any longer?)
– goes quiet.

He opens the phone again, dials a few numbers, and closes it. Then, he stands, and walks to the room the doctor had given him. She's already there, covered, asleep, her dark hair he'd never seen before falling out over the pillow. His bag, rescued easily from the storeroom as the ambulance arrived, sits at the base of her bed. Behrooz opens it, shifts through it, and finds something silvery. He takes it out, and puts it on her bedside table.

"I know where I'm going."

He leaves, taking the bag with him, making it to the front entrance in under five minutes, and when Malik pulls up, Behrooz gets in without speaking.