Page 98 of If This is Love

Emma switched to Arabic again, and I heard my name in the mix, so I obediently and politely waved. My introduction was a lot longer, and whatever Emma was saying caused Arwa to blink herself into rapt attention.

Arwa pointed at the screen, demanding something in her native tongue, and it really seemed like she was pointing atme. I also couldn’t tell if she was upset or just being intense. The anxiety that came from worrying that you may have triggered another person was a special kind of hellish mental gymnastics, and my pulse was already on the uptick.

Bahar picked up for Emma and spoke for a little while. At one point, Arwa’s bushy, salt-and-pepper brows did a little jump as her pale blue eyes widened.

“Ya Allah,” she mumbled under her breath, her tone more astonished than anything else.

Emma said a few more things, basic stuff like,are you good, and Arwa nodded again.

“Salaam, Gabe,” Bahar spoke up, waving again. “Thank you for the work you will do. We have gratitude.”

“Salaam.Happy to do it,” I said plainly, and even though this call seemed pleasant enough, it was that eggshell feeling that I couldn’t shake. I slid a legal pad and a pen across the table toward me and wished Ruth was here. Gunner rested his head in my lap. “Go ahead and tell me about it.”

She exchanged a few words with Arwa and then nodded a couple times before folding her hands on the table in front of her, and she drifted her gaze above her line of sight like she was processing her thoughts.

“Our faith is ancient,” Bahar began. “At one point, there were more than forty temples throughout Sinjar. A number of years ago, they were stormed by people who came to eliminate us. Emma says you fought them. She says you were a soldier before you became an architect.”

Something about the way she said that made my mouth go dry. It wasn’t that she called me asoldier—even though I fucking hated that—or that she called me an architect—I’d never been so full of myself to say I was an actualarchitect. It was the way her collection of words made it sound like a righteous battle between good and evil, in which I was fighting for the side ofgoodand came out triumphant.

It wasn’t anything like that. It was desperation and trying to figure out the least evil of ten thousand evils.

I swallowed. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you remember the temple?”

I was staring at her little square on my screen, but I saw my old boots, taupe and dusty and nearly camouflaged against the packed-dirt path below them. They collided with the first pebbles and small stones of rubble, the pile scaling higher with larger, irregular chunks of the pale, smooth rock; pieces of building façade. Nevertheless, the broken pieces featured finely-carved facets that could be traced from stone to stone. In the pile of rubble, I could decipher the beautiful structure it once was.

“I remember the remains,” I said, keeping my voice even and my feelings undetectable, but my palms were starting to tingle, and they were getting clammy. Gunner pushed his snout under my hand in my lap. “Some of the original structures were still visible. Looked like fine craftsmanship.”

“They were beautiful,” she said wistfully. “Now they are rubble, like you say. Our people are dead or enslaved or displaced across the world. We have not been in a temple in years.” She paused and sighed. “When we go through hardship, we look to our faith. We have been through a terrible hardship, but we have nowhere to practice our faith… as in… as in…” She paused for a second and then said Emma’s name and question in Arabic.

“Like, they haven’t been able toproperlypractice their faith,” Emma clarified. “The temple has features that enrich their worship and meditation.”

I nodded, sweat pricking my forehead, and I anxiously twirled the pen in my hand before hunching over the legal pad like I was ready to furiously take notes. In reality, this was the other reason I preferred video conferences. I could easily hide how much I might be triggered by something by pretending to take notes. And if it got too bad, I could just disconnect and blame the Wi-Fi. “Got it. Y’all just go ahead and tell me all about it, and I’ll make notes.”

“The most important thing,” Arwa suddenly cut in using slow, careful words, “is gopura.” She gestured in an upward diagonal line with her index fingers. “You say pyramid. It go on top of the temple,or…” she said, staring directly at me through the camera and sweeping her finger to point at me. “You make smaller, and it go outside on pedestal. Use white stone. Theshape…” She paused and raised her open palms to the sky. “Likesun.” She gestured at the camera with both hands, cupping the space between them like she was outlining a circle. “As though you look down upon gopura from sky.” She hunched over her lap, lowering her hands but keeping the circular position of them. “You look down upon gopura, and it is the shape.” She looked up again, holding up her hands to wiggle her bony fingers. “Shape is like sun. Twenty-one rays on thissun.”

“As in, if you were looking down at the pyramid from the sky, it would look like a sun with twenty-one rays,” I repeated robotically as a cold film surfaced all over my face. I hunched over the legal pad and just started scrawling.

“Yes, it is this,” Arwa said. “Look down on gopura, it is sun. Twenty-one rays. Like circle.”

“Like acone,” Bahar inserted. “It is not gopura, it is a cone.”

“But gopura is…” Arwa tossed her hands in the air and huffed loudly, then switched to her native language and unleashed a pretty standard and universally-feared little-old-lady reprimand on her granddaughter.

The two women went back and forth in Arabic, and I continued to scrawl. I looked at the notepad, but I only saw my dusty boots again, crunching over large chunks of rubble and rock. Pieces of ancient stones that had been reverently adorned with the façade of a sun reduced to merely an extension of the dusty desert landscape. Ruins that had been ruined.

“Good man,” Arwa said, her voice now sounding like she was in my kitchen with me, but I wasn’t in my kitchen. This was now the dry, gritty ruins of a village nestled in the foothills of Mount Sinjar. “Good man, you have weapon. You are soldier. You are good man.”

I looked behind me and saw her through the broken window of what might’ve been a primary school before the forces of hell swept in and razed everything that mattered to the people who called this valley home.

“You are good man. You have weapon. You are soldier,” she kept saying. “You protect. You defend. You can help.”

I didn’t know how to explain that there was no clear mission, and I was justhere. It was just me. I didn’t have resources tohelp.

I brought them what I had, but there wereso manyof them, and there was barely enough for one person. They pleaded with me to help them, but I was alone. I didn’t even know how to get myself out of there, let alone a dozen or so terrorized women with eyes that told the horrors of what they’d already seen, knowing worse was still waiting for them.

“You are good man. You have weapon. You are soldier. You can help.”

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