Austyn saw her chin quiver slightly. She looked out the window for a minute or two, obviously trying to compose herself.
"Rahaf was fifteen and I was sixteen. We packed our bags and made our way with some of our cousins across the mountains to Iran. We stayed in one of the camps where Rahaf is working right now."
This explained why Rahaf went across the border. Austyn had been a couple of years older than Fahimah back in 1988. He remembered when the news of the killing of the Kurdish civilians hit U.S. newspapers and television screens. The aftermath of the massacres had been photographed and reported, and he'd studied the events in his training as an epidemiologist. Still, none of that affected him as much as sitting next to Fahimah, a victim of that tragedy… right here, right now.
"We both got our high school degrees while going to school at Paveh. That is a city in Kermanshah province in western Iran."
"Did you go back and forth between the camp and the city while you were going to school?" he asked.
"No, an Iranian Kurdish family took us in. They were wonderful people. They had three girls about our age." She smiled, obviously remembering their kindness. "Paveh is a great ancient city that dates back three thousand years. They say the name of the city has something to do with Zo-roastrianism, the past religion of its people. In fact, there is still a fire temple that tourists can visit."
Austyn thought that it was sad that so much of the history of that region was lost to Westerners because of politics.
"One of the most amazing things about Paveh is the housing. The homes of the people are built in the shape of many long, wide stairs climbing the foothills of the mountain."
"Stairs?"
She smiled. "The buildings have been built in such a way that the roof of one house actually serves as the balcony of another house, built just a few meters above it."
"I wish someday I could see it," he said.
"So do I," she told him. "I would love to go back there. Anyway, after 1991 — the First Gulf War, I understand you call it…"
He nodded.
"After the U.S. and its allies established the no-fly zone to protect the Kurds, many of us felt much safer about returning to Iraq. So Rahaf and I, with our high school degrees in hand, went back to Kurdistan."
"Did you go to Halabja?" Austyn asked. He looked at the two men in the front seat who were laughing. They were paying no attention whatsoever to the discussion in the backseat.
"No, that was far too painful for us. It was just too soon to return there. We went to Erbil. We needed jobs to make a living."
"Did you have anyone to stay with in Erbil?" he asked.
"We did. That is the wonderful thing about the Kurds. They help one another. They are generous in their hearts. They throw open their doors to others," she said proudly. "The word went around that Rahaf and I were in Erbil, and we had dozens of offers from people who either knew our parents or considered themselves related… something like fifth cousins thrice removed or perhaps a little more distant. We stayed with a family whom we knew from Halabja."
"Now I really understand how inappropriate my joke would have sounded to these guys," Austyn said.
The driver must have been in the middle of another joke, because the passenger was again steering the car. Austyn turned his attention back to her.
"So what happened after that?"
"We were in Erbil for only a few weeks when a cousin who lived in Baghdad contacted us about a fund the Iraqi government had set up to educate promising Iraqi women overseas. Rahaf applied for it and took the tests. Despite being Kurdish, she was accepted. Three months later, in the fall, she was on her way to America."
"What about you? How come you didn't apply for it?"
"I was a year older than my sister. As soon as we arrived in Erbil, I found a job working in the office for a British organization. I was their translator."
"You could speak English?"
She nodded. "I wasn't as fluent as I am now, but I could do the job they were asking me to do."
"What was the organization?"
"The Kurdistan Children's Fund. They were one of many volunteer organizations that came to the region then. They were trying to somehow help all these parent-less children. There were so many children," she explained. 'They were truly good-hearted people that I worked for."
"Do you know who was funding the organization?"
"I didn't know then, but later I found out that the donations came from individuals and some large annual funding from the British government."
Austyn knew there were many programs like this that flew under the media radar. Sometimes they were fronts for funding resistance groups — like the Peshmerga — and sometimes they were legitimate.
"The man I was working for — Dr. Whittaker — was a retired British government official," she continued. "He was extremely kind to me. It was with his encouragement and recommendations that I applied to continue my education in England."
"But not to just any university," he teased. "You went to Oxford."
"Yes. To this day, I believe he had a lot to do with that. He was very proud to call himself an Oxford man."
"He paid for your education?"
"No. The Kurdistan Children's Fund paid. Somehow they convinced me that even as a nineteen-year-old, I qualified for their grants. They paid all of my traveling and living expenses, and my first four years of education. Beyond that, I became fairly self-sufficient."
Until she stepped in and took the rap for her sister.
"Can I ask you something?"
She shrugged. "I don't think there is very much I haven't told you yet."
"What were you doing in Rahaf s laboratory the day of the bombardment? Why exactly were you wearing her badge?"
Chapter Twenty-Nine
First tell me how this thing works," Josh told his dad.
There was no let's do it and get it done with Josh. Tests and medications had become part of the twelve-year-old's life. He was curious and worried about every X-ray, every needle, every microgram of drugs injected into him. He wanted to be part of every decision. David and Sally encouraged their son's curiosity. They wanted him to be involved with his own care. They both knew that cancer was a chronic disease, so Josh would have to be aware of what was going on with his body for his entire life.
David sat down next to him on the bunk.
Their room was in the bow of the boat, on the starboard side. They shared the cabin with two other boys, their fathers, and two Sea Grant lab instructors. The port cabin was occupied by the females on the trip. The skipper and the mate shared a cabin farther aft. The large galley where everyone took their meals was also used as a lab, and David knew a couple of the men from the research center had berths there. The whole experience made for close quarters, but no one complained.
Josh and David were the only ones who'd come below deck. Everyone else was hanging around above, either waiting for the video feed from the divers or hanging over the railing in anticipation of the samples that the two men would send up.
"You put on that sweatshirt and I'll tell you," David said.
Josh tugged a hooded sweatshirt out of his bag and pulled it on. It was a new one that he'd gotten as part of the cost of the trip, and David smiled at the words on it. I've gone off the deep end. Cape Henlopen Ocean Research Experience.
"This is not like one of those giant Q-tips that they stick in your throat and make you gag, is it?" Josh asked.
"No, nothing like that." David opened his briefcase and grabbed the medicine bag out of it. "This is very simple. In fact, anybody can do it themselves."