I step from the train, unfolding the worn photo ripped from Time magazine, where I finally learned her name. The three decades since Desert Storm have been unkind to Fatimah, but her unforgettable eyes still bore into my chest.
The savory aroma of sambuseh permeates the sweltering Iranian afternoon as I thread the streets of Dorud. Gahar Avenue snakes the Sazar River, dropping me in Cheshmeh Sarnajeh as the sun meets the western hills.
These mud-brick buildings haunt my nightmares. Sweep and secure. Gunfire rattling. Doors kicked in on moonless nights. The glowing streak of RPGs under starlit skies. The thrum of artillery.
Out of habit, I scan the rooftops, evoking still darker phantoms.
The Abdali firefight had raged for hours, leaving only two survivors: me and the enemy I’d pinned into a second-floor apartment. Out of ammo, I dashed upstairs with my bayonet, determined to avenge my fallen brothers.
I found the first corpse slumped on the steps — an adolescent — his Tabuk hugged tightly against his body, gunsmoke still drifting from the barrel. I pushed open the door, recoiling from the salty copper stench of blood.
Stepping over the eighth lifeless child, I confronted the reaper who’d annihilated my squad, an AK-47 quaking in her hands.
The girl couldn’t have been thirteen, but her eyes had seen more than mine ever will. Her faded hijab, encircling a face whose trauma belied her youth, had probably once been red as the blood that soaked her thawb. She babbled something I couldn’t understand, trigger finger twitching.
I dropped my blade, raised my palms, braced.
Then, inexplicably, she glared at me, lowered her weapon, and retreated into shadow.
Spared.
“Pardon.” A young man patiently steers a wheelbarrow around me in the street. “You are needing help?”
Shaken from the past, I muster a smile. “Salam aleikum.” Cringing at my appalling Farsi, I retrieve the picture from my pocket. “Is she here?”
His brow furrows as he studies the photo.
“Please.” I press my hands together as if in prayer. “I must find her.”
He nods toward the homes to my left. “Fatimah.”
Beyond a vegetable garden, familiar eyes peek at me from a doorway.
Our jaws fall open together as she and I both utter, “You.”
Time and distance have starved my apology. Through tears, my words seem emaciated, inadequate. Our encounter surely haunts her as it does me. “We didn’t know it was an orphanage. I … I can’t shake the nightmares.”
Fatimah pours us glasses of chai, and we drop onto low stools beside a potbelly stove. Sunset bathes the room orange, much like the glow from Abdali, set ablaze after my extraction.
“Be not burdened.” Her smile buoys my heart. “All is forgiven. Drink.”
The chai is earthen and spicy. I swallow greedily.
Then my vision doubles, the room spins, and my stomach knots.
As the light goes out of the world, I glance at my tea and silently thank Fatimah for her second act of mercy.