A Brighter Fear by Kerry Drewery

when I left, I felt eyes upon me, frowns glaring at me, and heard whispers of gahob, whore, of feaky-feaky, sex .
    “Come and entertain us,” a different soldier shouted.
    “How much?” another asked.
    And I felt my face flush and wished I could hide it.
    But I haven’t done anything wrong , I kept thinking. Why should I deny myself this small piece of happiness? But still the echo of what Steve was bounced in my head; he was an American, he was a soldier; America bombed my country, destroyed my city, occupied my home. But, and there were so many buts, Saddam was gone, the man who took my mama from me, and so much had been promised for our futures: freedom, democracy, a better life.
    By the end of our week, it felt as if we’d known each other for years, yet we had barely spoken for half an hour each day. I felt I was becoming myself again, felt my heart smile and my body lighten.
    “Meet me tomorrow?” he said as I emptied out the dregs from the flask I was carrying.
    I stopped and stared at him.
    “I’ve got some time. Couple of hours in the afternoon,” he whispered. “Think I know where we can go.”
    I didn’t reply.
    “Meet me up there.” He nodded down the road. “Near the liquor store.”
    Still I struggled for words. Thinking. Could I do this? Really? I shook my head. “No,” I said, my voice quavering, “not there, someone will see me.”
    Another soldier walked past him, patting him on the back. “C’mon,” he said.
    Steve looked at me. “Lina, I’ve got to go.”
    “Come to the house,” I muttered. “But wait for me a little way up.” I tore some paper from my sketchbook and scribbled my address on it. “Don’t come to the door,” I pleaded, shaking my head.
    “C’mon Steve!” someone else yelled.
    “OK,” he nodded. And he took the paper from me and I watched him tuck it into his pocket. “Tomorrow,” he said. “About three.”
    He turned and I watched him go. Watched him laugh with his colleagues, watched him climb into the truck, waited for him to look back, caught his eye when he did.
    Questions pounded in my head as I walked home: What was I doing? What would people think of me? What would Papa think? What would Layla think? But I couldn’t answer myself, because I tried to convince myself it was irrelevant. Because nothing was happening. Because nothing was going to happen.
    But I knew that was a lie, because something was happening, very slowly, very subtly, yet never spoken of or acknowledged.
    And as I walked, I didn’t see the rubbish piled at the side of the roads, didn’t see the shops and schools that were falling down, didn’t hear the moan of the generators, the crackle of gunfire two streets away, or feel the heat beating down on me and the dust swirling around me.
    Because the hope of what tomorrow could bring had obscured the fear living in my head. If only briefly.
    I kept it all from Hana, not purposefully, but it never arose in conversation; that I happened to see the same soldier every day, that we talked, that we were becoming friends, that we were going somewhere together. Not a date, of course, although I could think of no other word to give it. A meeting? An outing? In my eyes, we were just friends going out together. Weren’t we?
    But in the dark of the night, my worries came back. I laid in my bed, my eyes reaching through the blackness for something to rest on, but there was no light or shade. It was as if I had fallen into a hole; I could see nothing. And I thought of those stories, stories of what happened to girls who associated with the occupiers, girls who just spoke to them, or gave a smile. Only a smile. And stories of girls selling sex to the Americans, then killed by their own families; other families forcing daughters into it, desperate for money to survive.
    I heard of these girls shot, their houses burned to the ground, their families forced to leave. I knew they weren’t gossip and I had added to the danger I was in, and my