aunt, and cousin found in that nose the son, brother, nephew, and cousin that had been, would have been, could have been, and they might race after that possibility like cartoon characters dashing off a cliff, held by the certainty of the road until they looked down—and plummeted is the word used by the youngest brother who, at the age of sixteen, is tired of being the youngest and hopes his older brother will return for many reasons, not least so he will marry and have a child and the youngest brother will no longer be youngest; that youngest brother, the one who has nothing to say about the nose because he remembers his older brother’s nose and doesn’t need the nose to mean what his parents need it to mean, is the one who six months later would be disappeared in the back of a truck, as his older brother was, who would know the Landfill through his blindfold and gag by the rich scent of clay, as his older brother had known, whose fingers would be wound with the electrical wires that had welded to his older brother’s bones, who would stand above a mass grave his brother had dug and would fall in it as his older brother had, though taking six more minutes and four more bullets to die, who would be buried an arm’s length of dirt above his brother and whose bones would find over time those of his older brother, and so, at that indeterminate point in the future, answer his mother’s prayer that her boys find each other, wherever they go; that younger brother would have a smile on his face and the silliest thought in his skull a minute before the first bullet would break it, thinking of how that day six months earlier, when they all went to have his older brother’s portrait made, he should have had his made, too, because now his parents would have to make another trip, and he hoped they would, hoped they would because even if he knew his older brother’s nose, he hadn’t been prepared to see it, and seeing that nose, there, on the page, the density of loss it engendered, the unbelievable ache of loving and not having surrounded him, strong enough to toss him, as his brother had, into the summer lake, but there was nothing but air, and he’d believed that plummet was as close as they would ever come again, and with the first gunshot one brother fell within arm’s reach of the other, and with the fifth shot the blindfold dissolved and the light it blocked became forever, and on the kitchen wall of his parents’ house his portrait hangs within arm’s reach of his older brother’s, and his mother spends whole afternoons staring at them, praying that they find each other, wherever they go.
Every other Sunday Akhmed and Ramzan came to play chess with her father. Ramzan arrived first, knocking with his forehead, his arms hugging a stew pot; sometimes he brought self-awarded gratuities from the shipments he transported to and from the mountains, pickled trout or plum jelly, cured lamb, candied nuts. Then came Akhmed, entering without knocking, grabbing Havaa and hoisting her over his shoulder and threatening to marry her to a toad. In the living room Havaa would serve them tea, and rather than a chore it felt like her own modest contribution to the afternoon. In her eyes, the three men formed a family to whom she wasn’t a daughter but a very young sister. This changed when Khassan joined them, once every few months, as the invisible structure built between them failed to support the weight of another man. In his presence the luster of Ramzan’s laugh dulled and resentment built beneath his quiet face. Akhmed and Khassan monopolized the conversation and Ramzan observed, searching for an opening, but when one came he never knew what to say.
While the men ate she and her mother remained in the kitchen. The custom seemed so unfair, and she didn’t understand why her mother, usually as stubborn as a sleepy ox, submitted to it. Her father allowed her to join them when they finished, provided she didn’t bite her nails, and the ottoman provided the perfect perch from which to watch the chess game. It was a beautiful set of lacquered beech bordered with mother-of-pearl. The board had to have been carved from magical wood, since for all the time she spent in the