Wounded

I dig deep for strength and swing my fist, knock him back against the seat. Then I lean up and snatch Benny’s pistol from its holster on his hip before he can react. Tension fills the Humvee as I press the barrel to Derek’s forehead.

  “Turn. Around. ” The words are low, grated, filled with whispering death. “I swear to f**king Christ I will kill you if you don’t. ”

  Derek pales. “Fuck, man, okay. Okay. Turn around, Dusty. We’re going back. ”

  No one says a word as Dusty slews the vehicle into a skidding, fishtailing U-turn. He drives recklessly fast now. The men grip weapons, slam fresh clips home.

  “She’s important to you, huh, bud?” Derek says, after I lower the pistol.

  “You have no idea. ” She’s alone. Her brother is dead by now. The other locals will be scared and angry. She’ll be an easy target.

  “She was pretty fine, wasn’t she?” Derek is trying to cajole me into a better mood. “Did you tap that ass, Hunt?”

  I snarl at him, a feral sound. “Shut your goddamn mouth about her, Derek. You have no f**king idea about her. None. So shut the f**k up. ”

  Derek slumps back, confused; I’ve never acted like this before. “Jesus, dude. Take a pill. It was a joke. We’ll get her back, bro. We’re almost there. We’ll get her. Stay in the f**kin’ truck. ”

  I hear shouts in Arabic, and then the Hummer slides to a stop and the boys pile out. I’m out with them somehow, moving on pure panicked rage and protective instinct. The pistol is gripped in my fist. I see red. A crowd is gathered in a semicircle, and now that the battle seems to be over, they don’t pay us much mind. I shove through them.

  A knot of Iraqi men are clustered around a prone figure. Kicks fly. I see skin, blood, ripped cloth, a flash of blonde.

  I fire, unthinking. A head bursts pink and a body thumps. The men turn from Rania, but I’m too enraged. I fire again, and then the pistol is stripped from me and arms wrap around me, but I fling them off and I’m attacking hand and foot. I feel no pain. Punch, kick, head butt, knee. Bodies scatter, curses in Arabic and English boil loud around me. The crowd is angry, restless, but the guys are holding them back, playing the familiar role of crowd control.

  I slump to my knees next to Rania, who has split lips, puffy, bruising eyes, blood running from her mouth. Her clothes are ripped, and I can see bruises on her skin.

  I scoop her up into my arms. Tears prick my eyes, and I blink them away. And then she rolls her head to look at me, and she smiles.

  “You came. ” Arabic, but simple enough that I understand, even through my adrenaline and rage and pain and panic and fear. And love.

  “I came. I’m here. ” I think some of that was Arabic, some was English. Don’t know, don’t care.

  “Come on, man, move it. ” Chink, bumping into me from behind, his back to mine. “These folks are pissed. Go. ”

  I stumble, move with Rania’s precious form to the Humvee. My legs betray me, and I falter, shuffle. Derek is there, catches me, takes Rania from me, cradling her carefully, and climbs into the truck.

  I’m empty now, past empty. Agony washes white over my vision, and I vomit into the dust, collapsing.

  Hands haul me into the Humvee, and I can’t see anything, but I smell Rania, sense her, hear her. I’m sitting and I feel her move, collapse on top of my legs. I nearly pass out again, but manage to hang on.

  The rest climb in, and we’re moving, Dusty driving insanely fast, skidding around corners. Shots ring out, ping off the sides, spider-web the glass, and then we’re out of range there’s only the rumble of tires and silence and breathing.

  Rania’s head is on my lap, her soft brown eyes looking up at me. Her head sways with the bumping of the road, and darkness encroaches on me, numbness spreading through me. I’ve pushed myself past the limit, but she’s safe now, okay now.

  I can stop.

  The last thing I see before blackness takes me is Rania’s sweet smile, blonde hair stuck to her lips and forehead and chin and splayed across her finely sculpted cheeks.

  RANIA

  Hunter sleeps for a long time, healing. He took another bullet, I am told. His friend, Derek, says that the American doctors are amazed that he is alive at all. He should not have been able to do the things he did. Derek speaks to me through the translator, who is a Kurd named Suran, a short, squat man with a thin and wispy black beard, gap-toothed, intelligent enough to speak his native Kurdish, plus Arabic, Urdu, English, and several other dialects.

  My Hunter is strong. I feel pride for him. He endured much, and still came back for me. I get to know Derek in the days of Hunter’s long sleep. Suran spends many hours translating for us. Derek wants to know about me, about how I saved Hunter, and why, what happened.

  I tell him, strangely. I did not expect to like him at first, this friend of Hunter’s. But I do. He has kindness, but it is buried deep. He risked his life, and that of three other men, to save his friend. He is courageous. And so I tell him. The words pour out, and Suran translates it all faithfully. It is easier to say it all in Arabic and let Suran translate. I speak enough English to know he tells it true. I speak of the photographer, the man I killed so long ago. Hassan becoming a soldier as a boy of only twelve. Starvation. Desperation. I tell him, haltingly, of Malik. The strange sort of not-quite kindness he showed me in giving me food, making me pay for it with my body, and in the process showing me a way to survive when I would have surely starved otherwise. I hate being a whore, but it kept me alive. Malik saved me, but at a high cost. I am not sure if I would thank him, if I saw him again.

  Then I look down at Hunter’s slack face, handsome in repose, and I know I would. I survived so I might know Hunter, and he saved me.

  One day, past noon, Hunter wakes up. I am next to him, as I always am, unless eating or sleeping.

  “Rania?” He looks around, finds me. “Are you okay?”

  I nod. “I am well. ” I move my chair closer and brush a strand of hair from his face. “How do you feel?”

  “Better. It’ll be a while before I’m back at a hundred percent, but I’ll live. ”

  I have to guess at much of that, as it is in quick English. I cannot help but lean down and kiss him, and at first it is gentle, tender, but then it turns hungry, desperate.

  Page 44

 

  I think of that night in my house, lying in the dim gray dark with his hands on me and the incredible ecstasy he showed me, the gift of pleasure he gave me, all without taking anything for himself.

  I want him. I need him. I want to kiss him until I am breathless, until I melt into him. Now, I have felt desire, and I have known what my body can feel under the tutelage of his hand and his lips, and I want it. I am not afraid. I want to know his love, his touch. I want…

  I want to be bare to him. My skin layered over his, moving against his, my body whispering above his. I want this, this thing, this act.

  For once in my life, I want to have sex. To make love. I need it with Hunter. It would bind us, bring our odd journey to completion.

  Hunter pulls away when Derek clears his throat behind us.

  “Sorry to break it up, you two, but we gotta talk. ” I catch most of this from Derek.

  Hunter struggles to sit up, takes my hand. He has an expression on his face which I take to mean he knows what is coming, although I do not.

  Suran appears from nowhere, sidling up next to me. He reeks of cigarettes. He whispers a translation into my ear.

  Derek pulls a chair up next me on the other side of Suran, facing it away so he straddles it. “She can’t stay here indefinitely, Hunt. You know that. ”

  Hunter nods. Fear hits me. He will send me away now. “Yeah. Sarge told you that?”

  “No. Comes straight from the Colonel. Our little…escapade didn’t go unnoticed, you know. People are pissed. She’s a local, but she’s not connected to anything here. She’s just…here. Now that you’re awake, they want her g
one, or something done. ”

  Hunter pinches the thin sheet between his fingers, rolls it. “I’m not letting her go, D. I’m not. ”

  “I know, bro. I talked to her while you were asleep. She told me her story, and man, she’s been through hell. And she loves you. You love her. It’s plain as day. ” Derek glances at me, knowing I’m understanding and that Suran is translating. “There’s really only one solution. ”

  Hunter nods. “Yeah. I know. Go get the chaplain and some witnesses. Your team. Dusty and the boys. ”

  Derek nods. “You got it. ” He rises, glances at me again, and then at Hunter. “You sure about this?”

  Hunter just nods, staring at the blanket. “Sure as shit, D. Give us a minute. ” The last part was aimed at Suran, who bobs his head and vanishes.

  Hunter takes my hand in his, rubs a knuckle with his thumb. “Do you know what’s happening?”

  I shrug. “I think yes. I cannot stay. I am not American, not worker, not translator. So I go. ”

  Hunter frowns, brow wrinkling. “No, Rania. I mean, yes. You can’t stay since you’re not. . . well, they want you go back to…to go back. But there’s a way you can stay. ”

  I glance up at him. Hope hits me like pain. I do not want to hope, but it is hard not to. “What way is this? You will not send me away?”

  He pulls me down to perch on the edge of the bed, wraps his arm around my waist. “No, Rania. No. You can stay if you marry me. Come back to the States with me. ”

  Shock rocks me. “Marry?” I am not sure I heard him right. I switch to Arabic. “Be your wife?”

  He nods. “I…don’t have a ring,” he says in English. “But…I’ll give you one, as soon as I can. It’s not just a way for you to stay, though. It’s what—I want you to be mine. ”

  I shake my head, disbelieving. “You…you want me, always? I have nothing. No one. If you take me to America and then do not love me, where will I go? Back to whoring?”

  Hunter touches my cheek, kisses my chin. “I will always love you. You saved me, Rania. ”

  I shake my head. “No, you have saved me. ”

  “We saved each other, then,” he says.

  I smile my agreement.

  “So you’ll marry me?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say, shedding a tear. “Yes. I will. ”

  Derek returns with the other soldiers I recognize from Hunter’s rescue, and another man, older, with the soft, gentle face of a religious person, not a killer’s eyes, but peaceful ones. He is a priest, or an imam. Something. A holy man, but I do not know the English word. I think, make myself remember. Chaplain, Hunter said. That is the word. The chaplain holds a thick black book, a religious book. Not the Q’uran, but the Christian book. The Bible.

  Hunter struggles to his feet, stands facing me, takes my hands in his, with the chaplain in front of us. We are in the hospital in the American base. Camp Fallujah, I think it is called. They referred to it as something else, three letters. M-E-K, or something like that. My knowledge of the English letters is next to nothing, and it does not matter. Hunter’s eyes are soft on mine, blue as the ocean in the photographs I have seen in the magazines and stores, blue as the sky on a hot day. He is smiling, calm and confident and reassuring me.

  Fears pulse through me. Marriage is for always. To marry is to belong to that man. I have never belonged to anyone. I have never wanted to belong to anyone. I am my own. I survive. And now this American whom I have known for only a few weeks has swept me away from the only life I know, and I am marrying him. It seems mad, foolish, rash. But…it is right. It is what I want. I want to belong to him. He will not hit me, as I know many husbands do their wives. He will not make me take the hijab, I do not think. He will not make me continue to be a whore. He will not let me continue to be a whore, I think is more true. He wants me all for himself. I do not know why, but he does.

  I swallow hard, my throat thick and tight and dry.

  The chaplain speaks, and Suran translates.

  “We are gathered to witness the marriage of this man, Hunter Lee, to this woman, Rania…” He pauses and glances at me, then Hunter, and I realize he wants my last name.

  I hesitate. I have not thought of my family name in a very long time. In the end, it does not matter.

  “Only Rania,” I say.

  “To this woman, Rania,” the chaplain continues, “in the bonds of holy matrimony…”

  He says many other things, regarding the sanctity of marriage and the bride of Christ—which I do not understand, since Hunter is Hunter, not Christ—and then he asks Hunter to repeat after him, and there is an embarrassing moment in which the chaplain is made to understand there are no rings, but I do not care for such things. I have never owned jewelry, and have never expected to. And then the chaplain asks me to repeat after him.

  Page 45

 

  “I, Rania, take you, Hunter Lee, to be my lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part. ”

  I repeat the words, and I mean them with all my soul. I will be all I can for Hunter for as long he will have me, through anything.

  And then we have both said “I do,” and Hunter kisses me, a short but passionate kiss, and something clicks inside me. My fear abates, my fear that Hunter will not want me, my fear that this is all some kind of game, or trick.

  I find myself weeping again, quiet tears, soft tears. Hunter brushes them away with his finger.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  I nod. “It is just…much. So fast. Is it real?” I am whispering for some reason. The other men have left, and Hunter and I are alone, but my fears must be voiced, but not too loud lest they come true. “I am afraid this is not real. I am afraid that you will not love me until death parts us. I do not know what to do. I do not know what will happen to me. ”

  “It’s real,” Hunter says, pulling me down onto the narrow hospital cot with him. I lie next to him, cuddled into his arms. “I promise it’s real. It’s fast for me, too, but…I can’t let you go. I can’t…I won’t let you go back there, go back to being a whore. I love you. You belong with me. ”

  “I belong to you. ”

  Hunter frowns. “I hope you understand something, Rania. You are your own person. When you come home with me, you’ll be…free. You can do anything you want. You can learn. You’re smart. You don’t belong to me, like a dog or a car. I don’t own you, and I won’t try to control you. ”

  I nod. “But I am only yours. You will not…share me. ”

  Hunter’s eyes blaze. “Never! You’re mine. ” He takes my face in his hands. “You’re not a whore anymore, Rania. Never again. ”

  “Then…what will I do, for food?”

  Hunter frowns as if confused. “I will take care of you. ”

  “But…then…” I do not know how to say what I am thinking. I start over. “Nothing is free, Hunter. If I am not a whore, and you feed me and clothe me and give a home, then I must work to earn it. I cannot do nothing. You will be simply paying me in food, rather than with money. ”

  “Paying? Paying for what?”

  “Sex. ”

  Hunter drags his hand through his hair. “Rania, listen. I don’t expect anything in that way. I’ll never demand or expect anything from you. I’ll take care of you, feed you and give you clothes and share my bed with you—or give you your own, if that’s what you want—because I love you. I’ll take care of you, and I will never ask you anything in return. You don’t owe me sex. You don’t have to obey me. You don’t…” He trails off, staring out the window at a big truck with soldiers in the back as it rumbles by. He seems to be searching for words to make me understand something. “Some things are free, Rania. My love for you is free. All you have to do is take it. Accept it. If you want to work, I’ll help you find a job. But not because you have to earn your keep. You’re my wife. What’s mine is yours now. ”


  I shake my head. “I have never…I do not—” I stand up and pace away, turn back and stand in front of him. He wraps his arms around my waist, gazing up at me. I try again, this time in Arabic, slowly so he can follow. “This is a new way to think. I have survived by doing what I must to earn food. I have never known anything else. I am a whore because it is the way I could get money for food. You say you will take care of me. I will have to learn how to let you do this. I do not know how. No one has ever taken care of me. I take care of me. ”

  Hunter’s gaze hardens. “You are not a whore anymore, Rania. ” He pulls me closer and rests his head on my body just beneath my br**sts. I cannot help my fingers from tangling in his hair, and realize that now, I do not have to help it. “Everything is going to change for you now, Rania. ”

  I whisper my next words, because I am not sure if they are meant for him or for myself. “That is what I am afraid of. ”

  HUNTER

  I can’t sleep. I’m feeling better, but the docs tell me I’m stuck in the hospital for observation for another few days. I just want to go home. I want to get Rania alone. I’m f**king married to her, but I can’t get a single hour of privacy with her, damn doctors coming and going all the time.

  I’m not even sure if she wants me like that. She’s skittish still. Hesitant to touch me, like she’s not sure she’s allowed to. I’m basically alone in this part of the hospital, so she’s been bunking in the bed next to mine, the curtain between us drawn back. Not a lot of privacy, but then, we haven’t needed it.

  It’s odd being back here, back among Americans, in the base. Rania is clearly unsure of herself here. She used the Sabah mask to get by, I think, but deep down, she’s still a scared little girl. Now, without Sabah’s fake confidence, she doesn’t know who to be. She’s been so alone for so long, and she doesn’t know anything different. She doesn’t even know what happiness is, I think.

  I’ll have to teach her.

  She’s asleep, curled on top of the blankets, wearing a pair of BDU pants and a T-shirt drawn from supply. Her feet are bare, the socks and boots I got for her set neatly at the foot of the bed. The hospital lights are dimmed, moonlight filtering in through the window. It’s air-conditioned in here, cold. I can see her skin prickling with goose bumps.

  “Fuck it,” I whisper to myself.

  I slip out of bed, dragging my blanket with me, and lie on the edge of the bed behind Rania. She rustles in her sleep but doesn’t move. I drape the blanket over both of us and wrap my arm over her waist, intimate but not sexual. I want to touch her, want to kiss her and slip my hand underneath her shirt.

  Damn it.

  That one night was such a f**king tease. I can’t get her voice out of my head, the insanely erotic way she writhed and moaned as she came, the hot silk of her skin…I’m teasing myself thinking about it. I’m getting hard, and I can’t help it. I should be sleeping. I should’ve stayed in my bed because this is just going to make things more difficult on me.