A Brighter Fear by Kerry Drewery Page B

was, couldn’t last. I knew what he was suggesting could never happen; that mouths would gossip and fingers would wag. Decent Iraqi girls do not fraternise with American soldiers, and just talking to him was risking bringing shame on the family, and making a name for myself. It was thoughtless and it was dangerous and I knew I must remember what happened with Papa, and how his relationship with the soldiers was seen, that maybe he was killed for it. I knew I couldn’t go anywhere with Steve. Yet I longed for a friend to be with, to speak with, to share things with.
    Was that so wrong?
    At the house there was no one to talk to. Hana hated me. Aziz was never there, and when he was, he was tired, or worried, or wanting to be with his wife and children. He always had a smile for me, and I knew he cared, but where before Aziz had always been the epitome of fun and laughter, slowly it seemed to be leaving him. I missed his booming laugh and his huge smile.
    So many smiles were lost in the war, and so many tears were found.
    I thought about what I had found, what had found me. This American soldier. This strange thing appearing from out of nothing but anguish and turmoil and destruction and fear and hatred. He gave me something different. He was a breath of fresh air to me.
    But he was dangerous. Or would be, if I kept seeing him. And his suggestion? It frightened me. I knew I couldn’t go anywhere with him. That it could never happen. Then why, why did the mere idea of it keep coming to my head? Why, when I closed my eyes, did I still see him?
    Why did I think of him when everything to do with him was impossible?

Whatever happened to Sacha? Part III
    What hell is this ? Sacha thought.
    She kept count of the days as November, December and January disappeared inside the cell. She knew it was February 16th when she was called out for the last time; day number one hundred and ten. She had been beaten, raped and tortured.
    The same clothes still hung off her, stained with food and vomit, sweat and urine. But she wasn’t ashamed of how she looked and smelled. She was ashamed of her weakness when she cried for her husband to rescue her, her mother to hold her tight, and her daughter to cuddle in her arms. She was ashamed of the screams which ripped through her when she could take the pain no longer.
    And when the torture finished, she would think, Am I lucky for being alive? Lucky is making it to the house a second before the rain comes. Lucky is dropping your car keys near a grate and them not falling in. Lucky is finding a 250-dinar note lying motionless on the dusty ground.
    Being alive is not luck. Being alive is a right.
    As she walked barefoot from the cell that last time, she wondered if this would be the time she would die. Wouldn’t that be better? she thought. For death to release me from this? She accepted what would happen next, she prayed for it to end and with her eyes low, she watched her feet shuffle towards that room.
    But when the guard led her past it, she woke a little, felt her breath quicken, her face flush, her palms sweat.
    He paused to unlock a door, and Sacha struggled to keep the idea out of her head that she might be being released. His fingers squeezed into the purple bruises around the top of her arm and dragged her forward. Another guard joined them, keys spinning around his finger, and another set of boots walked their way. She heard a key click in a lock, the heavy creak of a door.
    And sunlight drenched the room. She screwed her eyes up, a greeny orangey hue dancing behind her eyelids. The heat hit her as she was dragged outside, her toes scuffing on the concrete, loose gravel pressing into her heels. She breathed in, sucking in the fresh air, new smells coming to her nose, new sounds to her ears. She eased one eye open a crack, desperate to see more than concrete and walls.
    A man barked at her, ordering her on to the back of a truck. But with her wrists tied together and her body weak, she could