Burning Distance by Joanne Leedom-Ackerman

Author:Joanne Leedom-Ackerman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oceanview Publishing
Published: 2023-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

When Julie and Mahela return, we take extra precautions, double-locking our apartment door as we come and go, making sure no one follows us into the building. We feel danger in the air. Maybe we’re imagining it, but the feeling is amplified by the war with Iraq, which has finally begun with a thundering of bombs around Baghdad and at air command and control centers, an assault that lights up the sky in color on TV screens around the world. Along with everyone else, we watch the war unfold each day as bombers knock out the air defense systems then blow up the electric grid and send smart bombs into buildings.

In the evening I watch the war with my heart in my throat as explosions light the night halfway around the globe. I wonder if Adil is nearby. There is no good answer to that question. If he isn’t there, that means he’s chosen not to be in touch with me, and if he is, he is in peril. I don’t know where he might be, but I know that casualties on the other side are devastating.

I try to concentrate on my courses to get as far ahead as I can before the baby is born. Mother suggested that maybe I should take the semester off, but I don’t want to fall behind in college. I don’t want to step off the path I’m on even though I don’t know where it’s taking me. I wake up most nights, often after dreams about my father. He hovers in the back of my consciousness watching over me, that is until he’s eaten by a crocodile, or drowned or blown up. He never stays the course of a dream. Some nights Adil enters my dreams, running across a wide green field—is it Hyde Park?—to get to me. I wake up with such a longing for him, his presence is almost palpable. I feel as if he is standing in the shadows looking at me, but when I turn on the light, no one is there.

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