when that same sun, heavy now on the western horizon, was lighting their faces so beautifully it was as if their marriage really was being sanctioned by God. They gazed at each other as though they shared a delightful secret. He pressed the shutter release, capturing their look if not their thoughts.
“Wow,” Brandy whispered, close to Julian’s ear. Her warm breath gave him a shiver. “They are so in love.”
Love. He’d seen the look on other faces: mothers in Darfur whose children were finally getting a nutritious meal; fathers, as they watched a child finally grown strong enough to kick a soccer ball across a dusty yard … That made sense to him. What Alec and Noor had, though, was for the most part beyond him. If not for his grandparents’ enduring, happy marriage of fifty-four years, he wasn’t sure he would buy it at all.
A minister, his camouflage uniform somehow neatly pressed despite the heat, spoke sincerely about the obligations Julian’s friends now faced. Trust, intimacy, and devotion, every day, forever. What an incredible ideal. Who could meet such obligations, especially these days? He approved of trying—ask anyone, they’d say he was willing to give most things a try. Fried caterpillar. Lamb’s brains. Cliff diving in Croatia in the dark. Marriage, however, was almost certain to have a much worse and more enduring outcome than any of those stunts; he would leave that to the truly courageous.
He focused the Nikon, pressed the button as Alec pulled Noor close, pressed it as Noor tipped her face upward, pressed it as Alec’s lips met hers, pressed it as the kiss became two wide smiles and the couple turned to face the crowd.
The forty or so guests inside the tent applauded. It was done. Noor and Alec were now a single entity where before they had just been a great guy and a smart woman who did the kind of stuff he did: ramble around the planet trying, in their meager ways, to undo the undoable. What little they did manage to accomplish—provide water and food and medical care and sanitation, give the people a presence, a face, a voice—had to be enough.
Today his efforts were being made in Afghanistan, just as they had been for the last seven months, while tent camps for refugees continued to multiply and spread across the south desert like a plague. Before here he’d worked in Bangladesh, Malawi, Croatia, Darfur, Mississippi, Indonesia, Bosnia … all beginning with Chechnya in early 1995. His history was a blur of turbulent flights and iffy food, desperate children and chaos. He felt like thirty-two going on sixty.
His collection of photos and video and the documentaries he’d shot all preserved the stories that had begun to merge in his memory. One tent camp after another. One starving family, one mother dead of AIDS, one village torched, one empty-eyed girl working as a sex slave, one boy with hands lost to a machete—his memory was overflowing with the atrocities he’d documented with a succession of cameras that had, so far, seemed to protect him from any serious harm. He’d gone to sleep hungry countless nights. He’d been shot at, he’d been cursed—literally, if not effectively. In Bosnia three years back, a disgruntled Mafia type had cut off his left hand’s little finger and threatened his thumb if he didn’t leave Sarajevo that day (which, as soon as he was bandaged, he did). That was the worst of it for him, though. He was lucky.
Interspersed with all that were moments like the ones now unfolding in this tent. Weddings, and births; lives begun and lives saved; hope restored. Events like these kept him going. A person could be only so skeptical when they’d witnessed the expressions he was seeing on his friends’ faces right now. He didn’t, however, hold out much hope of wearing such expressions himself. Just before he’d packed out from his previous assignment, in Kabul, his now-ex-girlfriend announced that he was “congenitally incapable of permanent connection.” He hadn’t told her much about his parents, so she had no idea how accurate a statement that was.
The wind kicked up, flapping the tent’s walls and roof, blowing in the fine grit no one much noticed anymore, though it was murder on his camera equipment. He spent nearly as much time huddled over his stuff, cleaning it with tiny brushes and ear swabs, as he did putting it to use.
Alec walked over and clapped him on the shoulder. “Can you believe she actually went through with the wedding?”
“Hell, if I was a woman, I would’ve locked you down myself a long time ago—so yeah, I can believe it.”
“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