Breadcrumbs

By Baharestan, past Valiasr Street, the alley with the box tree on the north corner is where she dropped the doll. I know the sun shines bright there. And the wind still wanders. I don't know if that crooked tree is still standing. Or if Valiasr Street is still paved with anything more than ragged craters, jumbled rubble, and dark unlabeled splashes. Like many streets around here.

I don't know who runs Baharestan now. I don't know who is scheming to run it next. When she dropped the doll, I think—that's when I think I stopped caring about all that. That's when I realized none of that ever mattered.

I can still see it there, the doll in the dust. Patched crooked and worn-in soft, with that...that sour-sweet smell of honey and kid sweat and too much snotty teary love.

The scene blurs.

I'm submerged, drowning in the image now every time my focus goes blurry. Limp and puny. A little star of empty rags in the dry and bitter empty desert of street. Left behind like one more teardrop along a trail of sorrow, one more hopeless breadcrumb dropped in the wake of our slow march toward uncertain death.
Dropped, I saw, not even face up, not even with one last view of the sky before the tank treads—

Her grandmother gave her the doll—I should say, gave us the doll, about a month before she was born. It was a charm, to confound any bad luck that might be hovering around waiting for her birth; a little something to hold and embrace and develop her little loving heart; a dear possession to take hostage when discipline and reasoning bow out. And...well...the meanings don't really translate. It was all of those things, and more. An image splashed in my memory like looking into the sun long enough to wonder why.

"Papa, where's Scarlett?"
I jumped so high my knees banged the desk.
"Amal!" I laughed, swallowing against my pounding heart.
She tiptoed into my study. I scooped her up, tickling. "Why are you awake, little miss?"
She squirmed and fought the giggles. "Dowwowwown!"
I obeyed at once.

She looked up and put on a serious face. Composed herself. Took a breath. Suddenly her eyes melted somber, and her face twisted with real woe. "I can't find her."

She waggled a finger in her ear in that funny way of hers, perplexed and anxious, chin wrinkled and trembling.

"Well, where have you looked?"
"Everywhere!"
I reminded her: "Amal, can your pretty little head even imagine everywhere?"

"Um, no," she said, remembering. She had just discovered counting past ten by touching her chin to each additional finger. When I'd curbed her smugness by demonstrating there was a whole universe of numbers beyond her grasp, she climbed up in her fig tree and didn't come down until supper.

  "Let's go have a look around your room."

She took my hand as we walked down the hall. We checked her closets, dresser drawers, in the toy chest. We checked among her other stuffed animals, knelt and peered under the bed, behind the bedroom door; methodically overturning every stone. The search was a formality though, really. As soon as Amal had led me through the doorway, I'd seen the doll stuffed down between bed and wall, one soft hand reaching for help above the bedspread. But it was a teaching opportunity.

When we left, the doll was the only thing she wanted to take.

My fatal flaw, in the country of my fathers, has always been prideful optimism. I see the way it should be, the way it could be, if people just would take a moment to share perspectives, to let go and open up, back and forth a bit to join together for the common purpose of advancing themselves through advancing everyone all...

But then my indignation takes over my mouth, and so I talk and I challenge and I get myself in trouble. Even now—even as tears roll down my face and salt my steaming tea, even now I can't help but scheme how best to wield that image for maximum pathos.

The little pitter-patter of her sandaled little feet. Her hand in her mother's; their dresses billowing.

Dust in the air, and roiling smoke. The doll clutched under her arm, her little red racecar duffel slung over her father's.

A heart-racing symphony of sounds: sudden low rumbles, muffled sharp shouts, demonic fast hisses, clanking, screaming, thumping, gunshots.

The doll tumbles in slow motion.
Its shadow on the wall behind.
The dust splashes pock! with bullet impacts, slow staccato like rain.
A little girl running.
Stops.
Turns back with a shrill little screech. Scarlett!
The doll.
The father looks back.
The mother stoops and scoops up the daughter.
The doll hits the ground.
An ominous rocket hiss.
Fade to black.
A soft white caption glows into being.
It says: This man was not ready.

A stretched moment while that sinks in.
The tea tastes bitter. I can't help but work and fight.
A teardrop blurs my notes. What else do I have left?

Then it says: Don't be too late.
Fade to a call-to-action. Click here and get prepared now. 

Link to a portal webpage for sifting out the apps and the jokers. Process those who make it that far, and clear out the spies and the crazies. Get in touch with those who remain. Begin the weeding which becomes the training which becomes the method.

And using the image brings her back every time I think of it.

"Will we come back, papa?" she'd asked.
"Probably not, my heart's beat."
"Probably means no," she pouted.
"Probably means it's in God's hands."
"But what if God smiles on the Others?"
"Then there's not much hope, is there."
"So where will we be?"
I thought about that.
I still think about it.
I told her: "Wherever we are, my girl."