Maybe Tomorrow

Chapter 1

I’m not sure if the flight from Sulaymaniyah to Doha passes over the Zagros Mountains, but in this fantasy it does.

I looked out the window, down upon the peaks of the sprawling mountains, each reaching toward something but only grazing the occasional cloud. I’d crossed through them twice. Once going into Syria from Iraq and once leaving it. On both occasions our Kurdish guerrilla contacts were on tensely friendly terms with the right-wing Kurdish party controlling the border area in Iraqi Kurdistan.In reality, it was a nauseating drive through winding mountain roads while I sat cramped in the back seat between other “journalists” also experiencing car sickness for the first time.

As we got deeper into the mountains, the roads narrowed and turned to dirt. The driver pointed out some kind of stick arrangement among the trees, the shape of which now escapes me. “See,” he said. “Guerrilla. That’s their marker.” He pulled off into a hidden clearing where we stumbled out to stretch our legs and settle our stomachs. A few women, unarmed in military fatigues, came down and enthusiastically greeted us with a hug and a kiss on the left cheek, then the right. They double-checked that our phones were off and the SIMs removed before leading us to their camp, where tea was already prepared. We smoked cheap cigarettes and fumbled through each other’s languages while I swatted away the flies that somehow didn’t bother them. At nightfall we walked quietly down to the river, then took a not-so-stealthy boat ride across the Tigris.

The way back was the same, except I spent four months waiting to leave with no end in sight. I didn’t even bother to keep my things packed. Maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow they’d tell me, and then finally one day, it was. I had to scramble to shove everything into my bag before rushing off to wait somewhere near the border.

The mountains drifted from my periphery but I continued gazing out with absent expectation, as if they forgot to tell me something on my way out. I fantasized about that moment for years. I envisioned some revelation waiting for me there, a perfect image, but nothing came. Just the creeping awareness of the mess I’d be returning to.

I didn’t expect to make it home, and the longer I waited the less likely it felt, so my plans never developed. I sure as fuck didn’t want to die in Syria and there were many moments when I wanted nothing more than a perfectly foldable New York slice, crisp and burned in all the right places just one more time. Still, a violent death seemed possible and I figured it was probably something to consider before signing up as a foreign volunteer in a civil war.

Abroad things were simpler. You either lived or you didn’t and either way no one was going to bother you for rent.

As we approached Doha, I remembered the backpack under the seat in front of me. Sewn into the bottom, beneath the padding, was my humble collection of contraband: dozens of patches and a smorgasbord of militant flags that would seriously confuse and concern the Qatari authorities. I looked like an indecisive yet prepared terrorist. I’d seen enough episodes of Locked Up Abroad to feel uneasy, but I was less worried than I should have been.

I also had about a hundred Valium pills that I’d been snacking on since six a.m. They were intended to taper me off the liquid diazepam I’d been shooting the past couple months. I rationalized that I had put in my time sober so cracking open tramadol and benzodiazipine ampules to mix together was a reasonable way to pass the wait. I stuck to my self-delusion even after I blew out a vein and got a blood clot where I’d been injecting the syrupy concoction. I’d dig around in my arm, poking and prodding like I was still unsure about the idea, but when I caught a vein and pushed down, the metallic taste that flooded my mouth meant it was going to be a good day, even if it wasn’t.

Ben nearly jumped out of his seat beside me, his gruff, spasmodic voice rattling off his convoluted travel itinerary. He insisted on getting back to his wife at once so he could promptly impregnate her. Anytime he had so much as a sip of coffee, he’d explain, choking out each sentence as rapidly as possible, that when he got home he was going to hang up his well-worn boots as an anarchist and settle down to raise a family.

“I can only spend one night in Athens,” he reminded me.

I tried to coax him into one more but I knew he was dead set on getting the fuck home and I couldn’t blame him. I wasn’t envious of what he had, exactly, but that he had something to go back to, someone to go back to. All I had was an unfuckable forty-hour work week in a kitchen for poverty wages. A life I thought I’d finally escaped. But the idea of returning to some shit job that barely paid enough to drink at night began to creep in, dulled only by my compulsive gobbling of Syrian pharmaceuticals

I thought about my friend Renzo’s solution. He took every chance he could to go to the front and would wear down anyone who protested like a kid begging to stop at McDonald’s. A month before I left, he was killed during the final ISIS counteroffensive. Daesh’s territory had been reduced to a single tent village where they lived off snakes and whatever else they could scavenge, but underneath it was a tunnel network where Salafists in sandals scurried around like rats dripped out in suicide belts. In retrospect the army should have at least considered the possibility of tunnels. They didn’t and were attacked from behind.

I argued with him about going to the front that final time, but he had already gotten the idea in his head. He didn’t even bother to wake me up when he left. So I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t hear from him for the first few days. Then a week went by.I tried reaching another international who had gone with him, but got no response. Shortly after, photos of his ashen corpse began appearing on ISIS Telegram channels. For months, whenever his name was searched, those were the first results. I managed to avoid seeing the memes but the image of his desecrated corpse lingered in my mind. The photos were a cowardly attempt at humiliation, but all they proved was that he died fighting with no entrance wounds in his back.

Renzo would slyly joke about becoming the first Italian martyr. We’d play along with his morbid humor but knew there was some truth to it. He never expressed any interest in returning and the more time I spent home the more I understood why.

The intercom came on, announcing our descent first in Arabic and then English. We shifted around, untwisting our seatbelts and clicking them into place. With mine secured and my sketchy backpack properly stowed, I resigned myself to imagining the taste of crisp white wine served in a glass carafe slick with condensation. I felt guilty for how badly I wanted to drink but knew I’d manage to get a few days’ head start before my Greek friends caught on.

I had a month in Athens before I went to see my ex, Selena, in Mexico City. She’d probably breathalyze me if I took a shit for too long and in all fairness I couldn’t blame her. I had put her through so much but for some reason she continued to light candles for me.

When she was worried the candles weren’t enough, she visited a tarot reader who foretold, in appropriately vague fashion, that someone from her past might soon reenter her life, or… they may not. When I was desperate for something to hold on to, the superstitions of her pay-by-the-hour soothsayer were good enough for me.

I leaned back and rested my head against the window while the pilot gave the weather in Doha, as if anyone would be venturing outside the air-conditioning for a second longer than necessary.

I did my best to look like some NYU kid on his way to Abu Dhabi and walked briskly, but not frantically, through the Doha terminal. I avoided eye contact with anyone wearing a uniform and was surprised by how smoothly it went. Or maybe I just got lucky. A few months later, a friend was detained in the same airport.

As we left Qatari airspace, that familiar hum of anxiety returned, pulling me toward Athens, where it had spent the past year checking its phone and pacing around arrivals.

At least I could get a drink there. What the fuck else could I do?

I hope you enjoyed Chapter 1 and will consider supporting my work. The remaining chapters will be published for paid subs only. I’m absurdly behind on every single bill and despise pity but would appreciate any contribution. I know everyone prefers throwing money at internet nitwits but it would be nice if there was a real patronage of actual lit.

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