Just dealing with the women in my life gives me all the drama I can possibly stand. Work stress is unacceptable.
This L.A. job, however, took some time and patience to put together. I was on a short list of photographers Time and the senator were willing to contract with for the photo; now the pressure is on for me to deliver the goods.
Shoot is scheduled for Friday, today is Tuesday. I need to book a flight and get my ass out to L.A. I also remind myself to get Time’s West Coast editor on the line and work out the details. We need to find a mutually agreeable location for the shoot, although I am already planning to be flexible on this. Let this bonehead choose the location. I inject my terms of the deal when I steady my gaze through the lens and summon forth his soul. It won’t be my fault that it’s dark and sinewy, like the snake he is.
Hey, it’s not like I haven’t done my fair share of sowing oats, because I have. The foul-mouthed hottie who just hoofed it out of my house isn’t the first casual fling I’ve enjoyed. Women are appealing to me, but I make no promises. I am who I am, and at this point in my life, I can’t imagine having the intestinal fortitude to wake up to the same face day after day, year after year. I enjoy knowing I can watch them come and go with few complications and limited expectations. Bridget is an exception, I let her get a little too close and I got burned. Usually, I can keep them at enough of an emotional distance to make sure they don’t start in on the demanding girlfriend routine. I am all about the fun, not the strings attached. Even though I have nothing against those tied down, so-called happily married couples who manage to smirk out a smile during Christmas dinner as long as they’re deep into their wine by then, I don’t want to have what they’re having.
I want more.
I want to travel the globe, documenting the bizarre and wonderful things I find in faraway places. I want to capture the Amazon at sunrise, shoot along the Serengeti as wild gazelles dart by, and lift the door tarps of huts deep inside an African village to expose the world of starving families who can’t fill their rice bowls more than three times a week.
I want my camera to be a searchlight, to seek out the guilty and the innocent, the powerful and the meek. I want to honor nature and humankind with each click of my shutter. Then maybe I will think about finding just the right girl who is enough like me to make it work.
For now, I’ll focus on a philandering fuck-up who might have been president.
Chapter Three: Ahmed
It will be hard to leave the boy. He is as gentle and sweet as a newborn lamb. His intentions are pure; his need is great. There are moments I find myself lost in his half moon eyes. Their color is liquid velvet. A brown so deep and translucent it can resemble ebony, then catch the morning sun and appear almost like spun gold. My heart aches with pride, and sadness that I will never see him become a man, or a father.
I know I must sacrifice in the name of my mission. This path has been awaiting my sure foot for many years, brought to me long before my child’s mother became my mate, and many years before I would hear his rapid-fire heartbeat in those first few weeks of life in-utero. At times, I must remind myself to remain resolute in purpose, because there is a portion of this that has left me unsettled. The boy will not know my reasons. He will know my name, he will know my actions, but he will never know the thoughts that have kept my mind focused and my vision clear for all this time.
I have thought about writing to him. Putting this all down in words that he will read one day when he is old enough to wonder who I was. I often whisper to him, using verse he cannot yet understand to explain how I became who I am. I describe to him the life I used to have. I try to speak deeply into his tiny ear, to send my words directly into his developing brain as if I can leave my own personal imprint on his earliest memories. These will become the days that will undoubtedly haunt him. When his father was close, and he was good, and he loved him with gentle hands and a full heart.
There will be those who will tell him I was evil. His mother may curse my very existence and work to erase me from his life entirely. I shall not blame her for that will be a natural reaction to what is about to unfold. She does not share my desire to punish the one who started all of this; she does not even know of it. The woman has no power over me, but I will regret hurting her and abandoning our shared responsibility with the child. But she was chosen for such a purpose. She had shown she had the adequate skills to recover from tragedy and move on to raise our boy. At least I will leave with a sense of peace knowing they will make a strong life. That he will have all he needs to learn and grow. The child in no way resembles me. He is the image of his mother, and that will make it even easier for me to fade entirely from his life.
My memories are like tidal waves. They rise, fall, and leave me breathless with renewed energy, or soundly defeated with sadness. They mostly come at night and take me right back to the blackened city as it exploded into chaos. The day it all changed plays out behind my closed eyes. In my mind, I can see the red sky so vividly I feel like I am still there. I can smell the fire in the air; I can hear explosions so loud they rattle my brain. I let the present go. I allow myself to go back in time, to feel her again. Her hand was shockingly strong as it grabbed me with an urgency I had never felt before. It had always been so soft, gentle as it stroked my cheek or brushed back my hair. She had hands that were trained to save lives, just not her own.
She was beautiful and kind, and taken from me in the blink of an eye. My mother had become a doctor when few women had the courage to try. She left her home at eighteen, disappearing into the night sky never to return to her family. Her father was a traditional Iraqi man, with a heavy hand. Her mother and sisters were much like the other females in the village, largely illiterate and expected to serve their men and keep the home. After the invasion, many of these women were left to raise their families all by themselves. The men simply vanished into the dust of the desert. From what I have heard, I doubt many of them were missed.
I knew of my mother’s family only from stories. She was aware that by leaving her home, she would never be welcomed back. At the heart of the role of an Iraqi woman is a belief that her family’s honor is tied to her modesty and faithfulness. She had violated both.
My mother told me the public shame my grandfather felt by her sudden departure must have burned inside him for years. She knew even her mother would struggle to accept her daughter’s choices. It was not as she was raised, and not as they had planned. There was much repair work to do following my mother’s exit. Her second cousin had already selected her for marriage, and the family had been building her dowry and the alimony they would provide against the chance her future husband abandoned the union. He would go on to receive the money, of course, as a means of payment for his suffering by her abandonment.
It had been an excruciatingly difficult decision for her to leave, and extremely dangerous. She had explained to me the risks involved with being a woman alone on the streets of Iraq. Often times, they vanished, only to suffer horrible, inhumane fates. She told me of one friend she had known from the early days at her neighborhood village school. She had defied her father, going to the town square by herself without the protection of her brothers. In the days following her disappearance, news began to trickle back to her family that she was dead. One night, my mother told me she had awoken to hear her father speaking to her friend’s father outside the front door. He told him his daughter had been found, her body stuffed under the bleachers at a nearby sporting field, bloodied, battered, and riddled with bullets. They began to talk of vengeance and retribution but the conversation was tempered by the realization that she had violated her family’s code of honor. There would be no need to seek the perpetrators of such horrific violence. The girl had brought it upon herself by leaving without permission and not allowing a male family member to accompany her into town.
The next day my mother and her sisters were brought before their red-faced father. Invigorated by his neighbor’s disgrace, he