Reunion

“I’m not sure I can,” Alec said. “What does she see in me?”

“A lot of what you see in her, but with a mustache.”

Alec laughed. “And speaking of facial hair …”

“I know,” Julian said, rubbing his beard. “I needed to shave three months ago.”

“And a haircut wouldn’t have hurt, in honor of your best friend’s wedding day.”

“Love me or leave me,” Julian said.

As Noor joined them Alec said, “I’m afraid it’s gonna be both.”

“What will be both?”

“Loving Julian, and leaving him—it’s what we have to do as soon as the sun comes up again.” He kissed Noor, looking at her in a way that made Julian’s belly feel empty. Alec turned back to Julian and said, “But you’re still planning to ship out soon, right?”

Julian nodded. “Back to Chicago for a couple weeks, then I’m doing that troop embed in Iraq—should be interesting,” he said, “assuming they don’t stick me with a bunch of paper pushers. This administration …” He sighed. “It’s harder to get access, you know? I was born in the wrong era—I should’ve been working in ’Nam.”

Alec said, “With that hair and the way you worship Hendrix, you’d fit right in. Hey, so maybe you’ll join us again after Iraq?”

“Not that I wouldn’t like to, but I’m doing the thing with my dad.” Noor tilted her head, a question. He explained, “Shooting the pilot episode of a biopic series, which he hopes he can sell for television. He wants to be a TV star.”

“Me too,” she said, smiling.

“Nah, you’re too beautiful for that,” he told her. “And too smart.”

“And you’re too sweet. But seriously, if I could get on TV and get people motivated to sacrifice a little of their Starbucks money for the greater good, trust me, I would.”

Alec said, “So hurry up and become a star, what are you waiting for?”

They were joined by more friends, and then the dancing started, with music coming from an old boom box they’d bought at a Gereshk market. Julian stood off to the side and snapped more photographs while couples stood pressed together, shuffling their feet on the gritty plywood floor. For this first dance Alec and Noor had chosen the Nickel-back ballad, “If Everyone Cared.”

Julian hummed along as he aimed his camera at one swaying couple, then the next, then the next.

Love, tolerance, salvation – it was a theme song for the bunch of them, wasn’t it? A little somber, maybe—better, though, than the usual Shania Twain selection you often got at this kind of thing.

The minister walked over and put a beer in Julian’s hand. “Good party,” he said. He was not much older than Julian—mid-thirties, an Army officer assigned to the camp nearby. “Did I hear right, they’re honeymooning in Africa someplace?”

Julian nodded. “Noor’s going to save some elephants for a change.”

“Me, I’d head for someplace wet. Hawaii would be good, but I’ll take anything with a coastline.”

“I hear you. My grandparents, they live in Key West. It’s great. I’ll be there in September.” The thought was a trigger, reminding him that he was due to call.

He and his grandparents had an unusual relationship. He’d seen little of them when he was very young; his mother had been possessive of him, and bitter about the divorce. Often he’d overheard her talking about Daniel and Lynn, her tone derisive or wounded, depending. When he’d thought of them, it was in her manner—they were either your grandparents, very formal, not at all the familiar Grandma and Grandpa his mother’s parents were to him—or they were Daniel and Lynn. He’d been imprinted like a duckling, so that even as he got older and his father wrested back some control, when he saw them they were still Daniel and Lynn.

Over the past several years, his contact with everyone outside his daily circle had become sporadic—until his grandfather had a stroke. It was eerie how in the space of a few words (Honey, listen, I don’t want to alarm you,but Daniel’s in ICU …) his world had been frozen in place. With different, unluckier words, it would have been altered forever. Funny how he’d witnessed just these kinds of disruptions to other people’s lives for so many years, never fully appreciating how impactful they could be until he’d gotten that call. Now he made sure to talk with his grandparents regularly, and with his mother. She had nightmares if she didn’t hear from him, she said. She had nightmares anyway.

He took his BlackBerry from his pocket, saying, “Excuse me just a minute,” before stepping out into the cooling night. With laughter and music spilling out behind him, he called his grandparents.

“Hi, it’s Julian,” he said when his grandfather answered.

“Oh, you just caught me on my way out—good timing! How’s our boy? Steering clear of scorpions, I hope?”

“So far, so good.”

“Let me get your grandmother. Lynn!” he called. “She’s chopping … something. We’ve got your dad here, and Brenda. And the neighbors coming over for dinner later. A regular fiesta.”

Julian imagined his grandfather was dressed for one. “Is Brenda the woman from his department?”

“Yep. They’re definitely simpatico now.”

“Oh? That’s good. I guess.”

“I guess, too. He’ll get it right sooner or later. Maybe sooner. Here’s something interesting: an old flame of his is in town this week.”

“That so?” Julian had no idea who this might refer to. The specifics of his father’s life and his father’s history were even now hardly real to him. They were reports; they were anecdotes about a man whose identity had once been so confusing to him that he’d had to stop caring. Was Dr Mitch Forrester, PhD, the callous skirt-chasing liar of his mother Renee’s recollection? Was he the ardent tries-too-hard sometime-father of his own? Maybe he really was the well-meaning but overwhelmed nice guy his grandparents had spoken of in voices thick with sympathy. Back then, he’d had no way of telling who was right.

The reports and anecdotes he’d heard in more recent years had for a very long time been sufficient. Was his dad alive, healthy, still teaching literature? Good enough. Remarried, divorced again, what difference? He, Julian, had gotten busy living life while his dad was apparently treading water. He, Julian, had been experiencing the world his father accessed only through TV and books and newspapers. Who had time to read when there were lives to be saved? Or if not saved, documented, and that was something.

Admittedly this had been a skewed attitude, aggressive, defensive, and he’d gotten his upbraiding for it in Bangladesh last year, one night after he’d just spent eighteen hours documenting the Cyclone Sidr damage for Newsweek.

Image after image, thousands of frames of devastation, a few of which would be used so that the folks at home could say, Aw, that’s awful, then turn on the TV and cry over some lost-dog story. After he finally finished, he’d tried to sleep, but the day replayed in his mind in a continuous loop. He was aware, not for the first time, that it was getting harder to believe in the value of his work. There was no end to suffering, no end to disaster. His efforts were the equivalent of a cup of water thrown on a forest fire.

He’d gotten up and gone in search of rum. Rounding the corner of the mess tent, he stumbled when a hand tried to grasp his leg.

“Please,” he heard from the shadows. He turned to see a thin man struggling to stand, arms wrapped around his middle—broken ribs, most likely. The man stepped into the security light’s circle and Julian saw a gash in his cheekbone, blood and dirt thick on his skin and in his hair.

“Please,” the man said again, this time pointing.

“What is it?” Julian asked. No comprehension. He tried one of the few Bengali expressions he knew. “Kemomachhen?” How are you. A feeble effort when the answer was apparent.

“Please,” the man urged.

Julian went for an interpreter, a flashlight, and a medic. The man’s father, he soon learned, had gone missing in the storm, and the son had just located him after days of searching through soggy rubble. The pair had made it to a spot about a half-mile from the Red Cross camp, where they found the father missing most of one leg and surely half his blood supply as a result. He was propped against a log, barely breathing, pulse thready—but he was savable, thanks to the son’s lamp-cord tourniquet and willingness to carry him who knew how far to get help.