How Green Becomes Wood

Hearing the gasp, Dark turned to look at his children instinctively and his heart dropped in his chest. The look on their faces was exactly what worried him. "I am sorry," he mumbled. He swallowed, wanting to make things right, but also knowing all he was saying was the truth. But it was a hard, hard truth, and he wanted so desperately to comfort them.
 
"Don't be sorry," Xander said calmly, proud of the fact that his voice was only a little rough. It was steady. "Don't be sorry of the truth. Of who you are. It's okay."

Alec took a deep breath and tried to force his voice to be steady. He wasn't as successful as Xander. He still couldn't look at Dark, but he was earnest when he said, "Keep going, Ba."
 
He nodded, despite having his doubts, took a deep breath, and looked back at Madeline while Daizi turned her head towards the twins and gave them the most supportive smile she could manage. It was clear on her face it was difficult for her to hear too, but they were all surviving it together. All she could think was how for them, this was just a story. It wasn't for him.

Madeline gave the questions a few moments of pause for them all to gather themselves somewhat and then she asked, "And the war? What was that like?"

"It was strange." Dark answered, "It was overnight. There was just one day bombs and fighting. And American soldiers on the streets I knew. And Khudair, he was older than me, so he went off, he joined the Fedayeen. I did not seem him after that, I think probably after it was disbanded later in 2003, he joined the military proper, or joined with a group of insurgents. Everything was unsteady." He rubbed his thumb along his wedding ring, feeling the stone. Remembering what it was like to be hit with it. "The soldiers, the Americans, they were interesting. I was thirteen, when the war began, many of them were not too much older than me, eighteen-year-olds, right? And I was there, I was watching. Some kids loved to go up to them, sometimes they would give them candy. Some kids got in trouble for it by their parents. Not all of the soldiers were good people. Sometimes, if we tried to approach them, they would think we were dangerous. I know there are some instances of them throwing rocks at people who got too close, or..." He waved one hand, "I saw it, once, but I never... I tried to avoid them. I didn't trust anybody, so I certainly did not trust the people who were bombing my country. And I am sure the Lion Cub propaganda did not help but... My neighborhood changed. There was the fighting, you could hear. Sometimes smell it. I would still be kicked out, and sometimes I would walk down the streets I used to walk but sometimes you could feel something, the hairs on your neck would stand, and I knew I had to get out of there quickly. And most of all I remember the sirens." He fell silent, still hearing the sound in his mind clearly, the way people could remember music.
 
War. Bloodshed. Things he could not comprehend, things he had only seen in movies. That helped a little, to have no idea of the realities of the horror, but at the same time, it was his father. He, too, knew the feeling of the hairs standing on end and the knowledge that it was time to leave. Time to hide. They'd brushed near death sometimes, but it was never to close. But face to face with death? To walk with it? What must that have been like? He didn't want to know. Didn't want to think.

Xander kept his grip on Alec's arm, his expression stone. For others, he would process what he felt later. For now, it was hidden. For their sakes.
 
At Madeline's questions, Dark explained both the fear and the ways life had to gone on. He described the displacement of his neighbors, he described seeing buildings he knew reduced to rubble, he recalled placing duct tape over windows so the glass would not turn into shrapnel, his family struggling to access food because of disrupted supply chains.

"And I was not safe at home," He said, a distant look in his eyes as he was right back in all of the memories, "When I was scared, I couldn't turn to my mother for comfort. I would be outside hearing the sirens going off but not allowed back inside, or I thought the risk of the bombs was smaller than how my father would react if he saw me. I remember my school was shut down not long after the invasion began. So I could not go to school anymore, during the whole war I never went to school."
 
As the twins listened, they finally understood more of Dark's insistence on their schooling. They had sort of understood before, but it was one thing to be told facts, another entirely to hear the story.
 
"Tell me about what happened that led you to meeting Belinda," Madeline prompted, "You were living through the war, then you were brought to the United States. What happened in between?"

This question made Dark stiffen again, and much of the anxiety he had been able to set back came rushing back in. He swallowed, shifting uneasily, and finally simply said, "The bomb."

"The bomb?"

"There was..." He swallowed, looking away, "A night in November. My mother was telling me that I disgusted her. Like she would. She told me to get out of her sight, like she would. Earlier that day my father had... done the things he would do. I had just wanted to lie there but my mother was upset that I was so old, but not helping with anything. They both deemed me lazy and pointless, and she wanted me out of her sight. So, I picked myself up and I left the house. It was a bit cold that night---for Baghdad, it was like early Spring weather here--and I could not go home. I just wandered the neighborhood after dark. And there were the sirens, and I forget where I slept that night, not that I think I slept much, and I felt the ground shake and the sounds of it all. We lived near to a military base, and when I came back in the morning... It was gone."

"What was gone?" Madeline asked, resting her notebook on her knee.

Dark forced himself to take a deep breath so he could speak, although his voice remained tight, "Everything. My home. Some of the other houses on my street. And I looked at this pile of rubble which used to be my home, and I thought... they might still be alive. And I stared at it as the sun was coming up and I walked off, because I thought if I came back later they would not be. Everything was so silent. I do not know what I expected, but that morning everything was silent. When I returned later, the rubble had shifted. And I, I saw..." He swallowed again, squeezing his right hand tightly around his left, "My father's hand. And he always wore this ring, and I wear it now. I moved a bit of rubble, nearly thinking I wanted to uncover him, or to find my mother, but I stopped. His hand at least was stiff, and I did not move enough to know if it was still attached. And I stared at this ring, and I took it, and I left. I did not have a bag, not that I owned much to put in it. I turned my back on my neighborhood and I walked away."

"What did you do then?"

"Walked." His breathing shuddered although he was not crying, and Daizi gently rubbed his back, "That was in the beginning of November. I wandered like I always had done. I did not have anywhere to go at night, anymore. And there were the sirens, and the bombs, and the gunfire. That was when I began to interact with the soldiers, they had good food, so I tried to get some of their scraps, but it was difficult because I was not cute. I was fourteen, then, and that meant I made them wary. I spoke very little English, so it was difficult to explain. One day I did, there was this fighting, and a bit of shrapnel cut my cheek. It was before I was shaving. I had nothing, I did not know how to treat it, and it was then I was able to be directed to the refugee camp. I thought I would have to walk, but they were able to take me. There was an interpreter, so I knew what was happening."
 
He'd walked away? He'd left them for dead? To die? Having had a house drop on them like that, the odds that they were alive were small, and if they were alive that anything would have kept them that way, but he'd walked away? Deliberately? The words drove spikes into Alec's heart. How could he do that? That just... that wouldn't compute. Alec squeezed his eyes shut and put his hands over his ears, hunching slightly. No. This wasn't his Ba! His Ba wouldn't do something like this! This wasn't what he would do! He didn't want to believe this. He couldn't believe this. He needed to not believe it!

Xander's breath caught in his throat at the sheer horror of what Dark had done pressed down on him. He swallowed hard. He remembered then what Dark had already told him back when he'd been working through his own trauma. He'd... not forgotten, more like ignored that knowledge, but here it was again, front and center. He still didn't want to believe it of Dark, but that didn't make it any less true. Dark had been younger than they were now. He'd been just a kid. A bruised, beaten, battered child living in a metaphorical and literal war-torn home. How could Xander blame him for doing what he'd done? Xander would likely have done the same... In a way, Xander had done the same thing, but in Xander's eyes, Dark at his lowest was still better than he was. Logically, he knew that couldn't always be true, but Dark was always larger than life. It was hard to see him any other way, even with the romanticism stripped away.
 
Last edited:
Dark didn't notice how his twins were reacting to the things he was saying. All of his memories were swirling around him, the smell and taste of gunpowder, of blood, the sirens, the silence, the screams. His eyes were open but he saw it all, and was only held down to earth by his wife's gentle hand on his back.

"I want to know... Why keep the ring?" Madeline asked curiously, eyeing it on his finger, "If it was your father's, and he abused you so heavily... What made you decide to keep it?"

Dark half shrugged, his face a bit pale, "I do not know. At the time, I did not know. I just saw it and pocketed it. I was not thinking with my mind, my body was acting on its own. I suppose in a way, it was a memory of home." He swallowed, his mask cracking at the edges, "I had nothing. And it was a horrible home but at least I knew it. Overnight, as I slept outside and bombs fell down around us all, everything was different. In two months I was in a different country. I think I kept it because I had something which was mine, which I had held onto for so long. And I was angry, and I was scared, and lost. I kept it to remember. I kept it because I felt so much hatred for myself when I looked at it I could still be berated by ghosts. I kept it so I could show the world what was done to us." He breathed heavily, passing one hand over his face, "I was always told it was an heirloom. That every man in my family had worn it. I suppose I kept it for that."

"Why do you wear it now?" Madeline asked, being as gentle as she had been the whole interview.

"It reminds me of what I have survived," He said distantly, "and of who I am not. It being my wedding ring allows me to be connected to my country, and to my ancestors, and allows me to demonstrate who I have not become. Every day I get to see it and think of the love I have now." He squeezed Daizi's hand tightly, "and that I did not carry on whatever cycle led to my father being the man he was. I get to wear it and make it not an instrument of fear."
 
Alec was too caught up in what had been said about Dark's family and their demise to pay attention to the discussion about the ring. He missed most of it, lost in his own mental whirlwind.

Xander, for his part, had often wondered about the ring, himself. It took some effort, but he pulled his thoughts away from his own ponderings to pay attention to the story. So. That was why he kept it. That made some sense. Xander didn't think he would have kept it, but it wasn't his call, for which he was very happy. He would have preferred to bury the thing, he thought, but keeping it almost as a badge also made sense.
 
"Tell me about life in the refugee camp," Madeline said, after asking a few more minor questions about the ring, making a note they should get a photograph of it later. "What was that like?"

Dark thought about it for a little while before answering, still pale and trembling slightly, "Lonely. And I was safe, for the first time in... Maybe forever. But I could not enjoy the safety. Everything was so cramped. I had this one mattress in a tent, and I was filthy. Everybody was hungry and stressed. Everybody was trying to get out, I did not even know how to plan. So many people around me were wounded. There was always somebody crying, or screaming in their sleep, and everybody got sick. I came down with tuberculosis while I was there. I thought I was going to die, and I was all alone. I kept wishing there was someone to at least sit near me. That is how Belinda found me. I had a fever, so I only remember flashes, but someone did alert the medics, and it was when I was being treated in the field hospital and finally recovering they spoke to me. It is when they started to make a plan to help me."

"What did that plan involve?"

"Once I was more recovered, they took me to my old neighborhood. They took me to the morgue so I could officially identify my parents." Dark said, shutting his eyes tightly, "Everybody in Baghdad eventually went to that morgue. There was too much, they could not fit all of the people. They were in garbage bags, and the smell. I was fortunate it was December. It would have been much worse in the summer. They... they did not look..."

"You do not have to say," Madeline gently reminded him and Dark only gently shook his head.

"I was able to identify them, and it was the last I saw them. I did not learn where they were buried."

Madeline slowly reached into her bag and pulled out a few printed pictures, "The IRC had some photographs in their record. Not of your parents, but of the camp, your neighborhood... They were taking pictures to document your case, do you recall that?" When Dark shook his head no, she asked, "Would you like to see them?"

Without thinking much about it, Dark agreed to look at the pictures, and found himself seeing what was likely the oldest known photograph of him in existence. His hair was short and his skin was more tanned than it was now. He was too thin, but at only fourteen he still retained some of his adolescent features, there was still softness in his face. He had a healing line along his cheek and he just wore an old t-shirt and basketball shorts. But he had the same intense, unyielding eyes he had now. Flipping through them, his breathing and heart rate quickened as he saw for the first time in a quarter of a decade exactly what he had seen, his memories sharpening at the sights.

All at once he dropped them clumsily onto the coffee table and scrambled up to his feet, "I am sorry," he breathed, "I need, I want... I..."

"You can take a break," Madeline said quickly, wishing she hadn't mentioned the pictures because she definitely hadn't anticipated this reaction.

"I can come with you," Daizi offered, but Dark slipped out of her grasp.

"No, thank you, I---" Dark stammered before quickly leaving the room and shutting the bathroom door behind him. Struggling to catch his breath while his stomach twisted, he flipped open the toilet lid and wilted down to the floor beside it, realizing he wasn't going to be sick after all. Squeezing his eyes shut, he attempted to feel the cool tile and the hum of the heater, but he could not focus.
 
Last edited:
The twins jumped at Darks' sudden reaction. They'd been lulled into an almost calmness despite the haunting descriptions of what had happened. Now they leaned toward each other, tense and silent, their eyes on where Dark had been.

Finally, Alec stood. "I need to go," he said quietly. He didn't wait for any dismissal, wasn't even certain who might have heard him. He slipped away silently and went upstairs to his room. He couldn't do this anymore. He couldn't take the tension, the savagry, and the trauma. It was all too much! He shust the door and sat on his bed, pulling a blanket up around his shoulders. Guiltily, he wondered if he should have stayed, but Dark had left. Maybe... maybe he could go back. But he just needed silence. He needed to hide. Just for a little while.

Xander stood as well, but he went into the kitchen. He tried not to think as he went about making a calming tea. Instead, he focused on making a full pot and collecting the teacups. Who knew if anyone even wanted to drink tea. He didn't care. He needed something to do, and the scent was calming whether or not anyone actually drank it. He brought out the tea and set it out on the coffee table without a word.
 
"I am so sorry," Madeline said, eyes wide, "I wouldn't have offered if I thought..."

Daizi took a breath to steady herself as she tried to think of a response to that. Finally she said, "I want to be angry about that."

"It is my fault," Belinda said, "I found them."

In the bathroom, Dark gradually gathered hold of himself, and taking a few deep breaths he got up, splashed water on his face, and then gently dried it. It was too much all at once. If he had known seeing old pictures of himself would have shaken him so deeply, he wouldn't have agreed to look. Now he knew. He shuddered one last time and then returned to the room. "There is tea now." He said flatly. Once again, Madeline turned to him and apologized, but he shook his head, "No, you need not apologize to me. I did not know I would have such a strong reaction, had I known I would have decided not to look. All you did was give me the option."
 
Everyone murmured thanks to Xander in their own way, and gradually, they all took a cup. Dark in particular really felt like he needed it and felt extremely grateful he had scheduled an appointment with his therapist tomorrow. It was over zoom, which wasn't his preference, but his therapist wasn't even supposed to be in the office this week and only made time because he understood the grave nature of this.

"We don't have to continue if you don't want to," Madeline reminded him but Dark shook his head.

"I have made it this far," he said, taking a long sip of tea.
 
How much more could be left that would be relevant to a reporter? Xander wondered. He kept his mouth shut, though, and helped himself to tea. They hadn't even gotten to the boarding school and all of that, and that had to be important. He hoped this wasn't going to last too much longer. He didn't think Dark or Daizi could take it.
 
As they got back into the interview, Dark was asked to explain how he received money from the US government. He didn't really feel like the five thousand dollars--total, not each--was sufficient, especially considering the property damage alone, but then again, he supposed he was fortunate, because plenty of Iraqis were never compensated at all. In a way, he was lucky. He explained to the reporter much of what Xander already knew, that he changed his surname (he omitted the detail Ghalib was not always his first name. One of his terms when he agreed to the interview explicitly stated he wanted there to be no mention of how he had changed it), that when he came to the US he was put in a room with Cooger, the man who was upstairs keeping an eye on his daughter for this.

"It was so strange," He said, running his thumb along the edge of his cup, staring at the ground, "I suddenly found myself in this environment where everybody seemed... okay. It was 2004 New York, so there was still grief and fear, but I was in a stage of my life where I heard screaming constantly. All I could hear was screams, any time a door shut too forcefully I thought it was a gunshot. If someone raised their hand too quickly or in the wrong way it terrified me. I could not sleep at night, I still struggle to sleep at night, because I was still so deeply in it all. And I looked around at my classmates who were excited about the football team and reality television, or who were stressed about homework or preparing for university. I had entered this entirely different world and I do not believe I had the support I needed to navigate any of it."
 
They were in more familiar territory now. Things that Dark had been more open about in the past, but Xander wondered if they would learn something new here, as well. Probably.

Alec finally regained his courage and tiptoes back downstairs. He did his best not to catch any attention as he slipped into his seat, still trembling a little, but trying very hard to be there for Dark.
 
Over the next set of questions, Dark laid bare the bullying he endured, how he still often felt alone, and how even though, yes, the refugee program brought him to an excellent school, it still didn't do enough to support his mental health. All at once he was grieving, coping with trauma, trying to learn a language, and being forced to adjust to a million cultural differences, while in a location where strangers viewed him as an evil terrorist.

"I learned English as a survival tool more than anything else," He said, thinking about it carefully, "It is why I learned it so quickly, I had no choice. It was dangerous for me to speak Arabic in the wrong place, it was difficult enough looking as I did."
 
Ah, yes. America! Land of the off-brand British racists. Lovely. It was hard enough when you did look "right," let alone looking like anything other than vaguely Christian British. There were a lot of good people in the world, but they never seemed to be in boarding schools.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top