Flash Nonfiction by Roxanne Noor
OF REFUSAL
In Antalya, we lived on a half-abandoned farm on the outskirts of the city. Pomegranates grew like ruby ornaments on the trees, heavy until they fell to the earth and shrank into a muddy brown. Olive trees lined the driveway like stout comrades, protectors of our little land. We had no neighbors. The aloneness felt wide.
For the month of October, my Russian lover Dmitry and I remained in a bubble of purposeful isolation. Me, with a curiosity toward Turkey, Orhan Pamuk, and the Mediterranean Sea. Him, with the need to flee mobilization from his homeland’s war, which he had protested against.
Dmitry spun conversations quickly into silence and evaded any emotional questions with dexterity. I felt the war inside him. It was in the rigid set of his jaw when he checked his phone for news every other hour. It was the sweating, tossing, and turning at night when he watched his childhood classmates blown into smithereens on the battlefield. It was the absence of money since the ruble collapsed and his bank account was frozen. It was the stress of trying to smuggle his mother out of St. Petersburg and into Turkey safely.
We didn’t talk much about the war. We talked about trivial, passing moments: the anteater we’d seen on the side of the road, the blond field behind our cottage, our growing chubbiness from eating too much künefe and pistachio ice cream. We babbled about the fleeting small moments; the existential despair of the war was too large to find words for.
This particular Sunday afternoon was molasses-slow. The air smelled like summer, full of bounty and bloom, though it was fall. Bright ribbons of light sashayed across the front lawn. A long curve of wind petted my back reassuringly.
A four-legged visitor slunk onto our property with a guarded demeanor. He was a ruffled dog with sad, seed-like eyes and a pronounced ribcage. He padded up to our front porch with a limp, unwagging tail.
Dmitry rubbed the dog’s underside and pulled at his downturned ears. “Too skinny,” he mumbled. Dmitry marched into the kitchen and, in quick, precise motions, prepared a dish of scrambled eggs with leftover scraps of simit. The eggs were steaming hot, and he put beyaz peynir in a clump of white on top of them. Dmitry placed the dish of warm food in front of the scruffy dog.
The dog stared at the plate. “Eat!” Dmitry demanded, pressing its black button nose into the eggs. The dog grimaced. Dmitry frowned, a deep line set in his forehead. “You’re a stray. You have no choice.”
The dog recoiled from his touch. He turned on his heels and began a slow, deliberate walk back to nowhere. The hills in the distance were crowned by large, looming clouds, and the sunset took the color of clotting blood.
The dog’s walk said: There’s always a choice.
Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #55.
Submit to Cleaver!
