Page 64 of Nights Without Night
These are windows into the lives of people who refuse to give up.
Each picture depicts a moment of such intense intimacy you are instantly taken there. You can walk around the room and suddenly know people you’ve never met. You look at a painting and are suddenly standing in a kitchen, watching a small, skinny girl point a wind-up flashlight at where her mother is cooking dinner. The girl is leaning forward, face delighted as she accepts a piece of the food to try. You can smell the spices and the meat, the scent of the sizzling vegetables. You can hear the laughter of the rest of the family working around the house.
You walk forwards and find yourself outside. The stars are bright in the sky, but your attention is fixed on the people sitting on a home’s porch, spilling onto the garden. This house is one of the few with electricity, and the owners have wheeled their TV out to share with their neighbours. Kids crowd against it, illuminated by the screen, each expression vivid with life as they stare transfixed or turn to talk to the person next to them, sharing snacks and laughter.
You take another step and see two neighbours talking, their gestures and expressions speaking of a deep familiarity as they exchange goods, each willing to give what the other needs.
The paintings may be filled with shattered houses and sprawled debris, but they are filled with colour. The bright dresses of women. The green that flourishes even after the storm. The façades that remain are red, yellow, orange, pink. The sky above is cloudless and blue.
I’d seen all these pictures before individually, but seeing them together like a story takes my breath away.
“Iva…” I say when I reach her. Joaquin and Ezra are off to the side, looking at a picture depicting them. They’re working on a house, having flown to Puerto Rico during Christmas to help Joaquin and Iva’s extended family, who couldn’t all fly out of the island.
“Iva, these are so amazing. I’m just…wow,” I say. She grins at me and looks uncharacteristically embarrassed.
“Thanks, I…they mean a lot to me.”
“I can tell. They’re just…”
“Fucking amazing,” Joaquin says, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing her tight. I grin at the slightly out of character show of enthusiasm.
“They’re so good.Sogood,” Ezra says, practically vibrating with happy energy.
“So good,” I agree. Iva makes a happy noise and we all crowd in to hug her, laughing.
I leave them to it, moving towards my own showroom when someone calls my name. I grin as I spot Jack, walking toward her.
“Hey! You made it!”
“Duh, like I would miss this,” she says, hugging me. “I just came from your room. Iván…Jesus. Like, I knew you were talented but I’m…I’m kind of speechless,” she says.
I feel myself blushing.
“Thanks,” I say a little awkwardly. She laughs.
“Are they for sale? There’s one I fucking love. Well, there’s a few, but one I have to take home.”
“You don’t have to buy them! You get the friend special, which is 100% off.”
“No way. First rule of business. No, first rule of life; know your worth, and charge accordingly,” Jack says, pointing her finger at me.
“Whatever,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“Don’t whatever me, young man. Anyway, did you come with Isadoro? Where’s he at?”
“No, I had to come early to set stuff up. He probably thought I’d be in my room and headed straight there,” I say.
“And why aren’tyouin your showroom?” she asks as we start walking towards it.
“I’mgoing!”
My collection is not unlike Iva’s. It is a series of moments. A series of scenes in someone’s life. They are free of context, but they are meant to transport you. Not only to a place but to a time in someone’s life. Isadoro’s life. The life of a soldier, through a veteran’s eyes.
The scenes are chiaroscuro. They are the blinding heat of Afghan days casting long, deep shadows in the still forms of waiting soldiers. It is standing in the sun, exposed, as a group of men peer at you from the gloom of a mosque entrance. It is a scene at night, a confusion of movement, cut through with a beam of light filled with the swirling moondust of the Pakistani border.
It is people. The small muscles on their faces rearranging themselves to tell you something, or to hide the truth. There is so much you don’t know, looking at these pictures. Your mind cannot catch up to what the feeling in your gut is telling you at being so suddenly in this foreign land. One moment you are safe in the smile of a fellow soldier, the next vulnerable to the bright beam of suspicion from the people waiting for you on the other side of the wire.
There is one single picture which is different. My throat squeezes for a moment as I recognize Isadoro standing before it, back stiff and straight, shoulders a perfect line as he looks at himself drawn by my hand, by my eyes.
