LITMIR.BIZ

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under an arm, his dark glasses dangling from his fingers.

      His hands streaked with dirt, his jacket smeared with blood.

      Whose blood?

      My breathing came thick and fast, my chest burning, my eyes stinging. I glanced up to his face, so far above me, and into his eyes for just a second before he looked away.

      I knew, then, but I didn’t want to know.

      The American soldier ran his fingers through his dirty blonde hair, and I saw his chest heave as he sighed. I didn’t want to know why he was there, I didn’t want him to speak, didn’t want to hear anything that he might have to say to me.

      I turned to walk away.

      “Lina, please,” Aziz whispered, taking my hand in his. “He’s come here to talk to you. He wanted to. He asked to.”

      And with a sigh, knowing I had no choice, I did what Aziz asked of me; I sat at the table and the enemy sat down to face me. Aziz poured coffee for us and as the steam lifted into the air between us, I wished this soldier would disappear into it, along with whatever it was he had to say.

      But my wish went unanswered.

      I could hear his heavy breathing. I could smell his uniform and his war.

      I waited for him to speak, for his mouth to open and the words that I was dreading to come out. The brightness of my fear exploded in front of my eyes and burned inside my chest.

      I watched his rough, dusty fingers and his clumsy hands that pulled triggers gently brush the edge of his cup. I watched his eyes flicker from the table, to me, to Aziz, to the door, to the window, resting nowhere.

      And at last, but with barely a whisper, the silence was broken. “I worked with Joe, your dad,” he said.

      No, I thought. No, no, no.

      I wanted to put my hands over my ears, close my eyes and make it all go away. My chest was red hot, my hands were shaking. I looked to Aziz, sitting next to me, fear and dread and panic shooting through my body, my fingertips burning with it, my cheeks flushing. I wanted his face to split into that familiar smile or his booming laugh to fill the room. I wanted him to tell me not to worry. That everything was fine.

      But he said nothing, and he did not laugh. And as the soldier, this stranger in my home, in my country, began talking again, I felt Aziz squeeze my hand and although my ears didn’t want me to, I listened to the words, listened to him tell me Papa was dead.

      And my tears fell and everything else faded away.

      I felt everything yet nothing. Anger and loneliness. Hatred and emptiness. Confusion and heartache and shock and denial. My head was in chaos, but my body was numb.

      I stood up. I had to get away. Had to get away from this man, this soldier.

      My legs buckled underneath me, my strength gone, and I fell to the ground. And I laid there, for a long time, on the kitchen floor, Aziz next to me, rocking me back and forth. Sobbing.

      I wished I was dead.

      I wished I’d died before I’d been told about Papa. Before it had happened even. My head didn’t want to be filled with those images, and my heart didn’t want to think of life without him; it was barely imaginable. Was I now truly an orphan?

      The air drained from me as I sobbed, my lungs burning, and although I wanted to die, my body still sucked in breath.

      Could they do any more to me? my head screamed. Could they take any more? What have I done for this to happen?

      And I felt myself lifted up.

      Aziz held me to his chest, sat with me on the sofa, and rocked me like the baby I was in his arms. He stroked my hair and dried my tears and when finally I looked up to him, I saw tears running down his face too. I wanted to run out into the street, shout at it, shout at the city and the country and all the people in it. All the people that made up this stupid war. I wanted to shout and scream at the stupid Americans and their lapdogs, the British, the Spanish, the Australians, the Polish, the Danish. There was so much anger pouring down my veins I didn’t know what to do with it.

      It was like when Mama disappeared. I felt useless and weak and pathetic.

      “It was a dangerous job your Papa had, Lina. In a city that’s dangerous just to live in.” Aziz sighed.

      I dragged myself up and I launched myself at the soldier, arms and legs flailing at him, kicking, screaming, punching and scratching at him. In that split second I wanted to kill him. I wanted to tear his tongue out for telling me, tear his eyes out for watching Papa die, for not helping him, tear him apart for just being there. My anger, my blame focused on the soldier, not the person, in front of me.

      But he gently, carefully, held me at arm’s length while my tirade battered him. He lifted his eyes to mine muttering apology after apology as Aziz tried to pull me away. I felt his hands shaking and I thought I saw tears on his face.

      I stopped and hung my head in shame.

      “I’m sorry,” he whispered again.

      I wanted to say I was, but couldn’t speak, whatever emotion, whether grief, confusion, hatred, fear or sorrow, held back the words.

      I couldn’t think, didn’t know what to think.

      Papa, my papa, was dead?

      “I…” began the American soldier. “I… ah… I wanted to tell you about it myself. So you’d know. I wanted you to know… how it happened.”

      I stared at him.

      “Would you like to know?”

      I took a deep breath. “Yes.”

      The soldier looked down at his hands. He didn’t look up again, as the words came tumbling out of him, like if he looked at me, he would not be able to continue.

      “When Joe arrived this morning, the place was a little different, everyone was busy… some of the soldiers were agitated and nervous, a couple excited. There was like an edge about the place, adrenalin pumping round, y’know? We were being sent to check out the house of some suspected weapons dealer, Joe was to come with us, to interpret, and talk to the guys, keep them calm and stuff. It wasn’t a good district we were heading to, and y’know, I’d worked with Joe for a good while, and I knew when he looked nervous. Hell, I was nervous. We gave him a bulletproof vest. It had an American flag on it, on his chest.”

      He paused, tapping his chest to show where it was. He ran his over-sized fingers through his hair, and scratched the back of his neck.

      “He didn’t like it. He’d said it before and on the way, in the back of the truck he moaned about it some more. ‘I’m not an American,’ he said. ‘What’ll my people think? It’s like an advertisement on my chest.’

      “I told him to pick it off and one of the other soldiers gave him a pin they had stuck in their uniform. Anyhow, they got chatting. Joe was interested in people, y’know? He liked to hear their stories, where they were from, and that. So he sat chatting with Eric. He was from Texas and spoke with such a drawl, you wanted to put a cowboy hat on his head and ask him where his horse was tethered.

      “Eric was in a better mood than anyone else, he was heading home in the morning, told Joe he was hanging near the back, taking it easy and looking after him. I listened to them chat like old buddies, about family back home, Eric’s mom and dad, his sister and his little brother, about Joe’s wife, your mom, about you. Eric showed him a photo of his little brother playing in the Texan desert with a toy rifle. Wanted to be a soldier just like Eric.

      “Anyhow, when we got there, some of them went inside, I stayed out, marking the doorway, Eric went further back with Joe waiting ’til someone was brought out to be questioned. We didn’t want to take him in, it was too dangerous.

      “There was a load of shouting and banging from inside. I looked back to Eric. He looked worried, he lifted his gun to his shoulder, stopped

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