Whisper

by Tal Bauer

Kris was both the mission and a distraction, a man David was obligated to protect, to defend, and a man who called to him.

Like a wave trying to curl up the sandy shore, beating against the earth ceaselessly, always trying again, parts of David reached for Kris.

“Nothing. Nothing is going on. You’re so focused on Caldera and worrying about him, you haven’t even realized that he and I are exactly the same.”

“And you need to think about why it took me barging in here to make you see reason. Why couldn’t Caldera himself tell you this? Why don’t you see his accomplishments? Why did you only listen to me?”

“Never let anyone else define your life, Kris. Never let anyone else define who you are. They will always get it wrong. Never settle for that.”

“I see a man I care about,” David whispered. “Someone I—” His lips clamped shut. His thumbs stroked over Kris’s cheekbones, wiping away tears. “I see you. I see someone exceptional.”

David’s smile, the way it crinkled his eyes, carved furrows into his face, made Kris’s bones weak. Out of everyone in the room, David burned the brightest, laughed the loudest, transfixed Kris in ways he couldn’t describe. He almost couldn’t breathe, watching David. The thin air of Kabul seemed too weak, too light, to contain all that David was. He was exhausted—they all were, worn through from six weeks of war—but there David was, hamming it up with his team.

He didn’t want to be apart from David. Not in the quiet mornings, sharing terrible coffee, and not in the heat of combat, the electric chaos of battle. What did that say about him?

Like he was the ocean, coming in for Kris’s shore.

“When I am with you, I feel parts of myself come together. Parts I thought couldn’t ever mix. You make me want to be everything I am. For you.”

“You’re like a part of me I didn’t know was missing. Part of my mind, or my soul. Like you have the thoughts I haven’t thought yet, feelings I haven’t felt yet, waiting for me. Inside you. You feel like a part of me I’ve been craving.” David’s voice was a whisper, a breath.

They’d exchanged long looks when they’d seen David and Kris’s metal beds pushed together to make one large bed. Oops.

“I know what it’s like to be hated for who you are. To have your life dictated by others, your choices made for you. To have that rage in your chest, all the time. That scream, that says you are more than this. The desire to prove everyone wrong.”

“Why do you guys always think the gays are hosting sex parties in dungeons, or about to blow a clown car of dick? Why do you straights always think it’s some wild insanity? Can’t we just be eating dinner? I mean, fabulously, of course—”

And of everything, We created pairs. Heaven and Earth. Night and day. Sun and moon. Sea and Shore. Light and darkness. David gazed at Kris. You, for me.

They’d never had to fight each other. They were survivors together, them against the world. The whole world seemed to be dividing into lines, into demarcations, into us versus them versus the other.

But not between him and Kris. They were the same, as if half of David had been split off and put into Kris, like the Quran said about the souls of lovers. That soulmates had known each other before life, before time, and once on the earth, they were searching for each other again. Kris was that, to him.

He tried to care for Kris the best he way could, repay Kris for the peace his presence brought to David’s existence. He made love to Kris until Kris screamed his name, until he was limp and spent and grinning ear to ear. He rubbed his shoulders every day, tried to relieve the strain of carrying the weight of the CIA’s hopes and the White House’s fears on his shoulders. He held him every night, whispered I love you into Kris’s hair before he fell asleep. If he could have, he would have bottled those days and nights, kept them hidden away, able to be lived in and remembered, like slipping into a dream as easily as one could slip into a lake.

“I can’t unfuck what’s been fucked, George.” Kris stilled, but didn’t turn around.

David wanted to crawl inside Kris, press their souls together. Reunite with Kris in the way they were meant to be, before time, when Allah had made them as one. He believed that, to the marrow of his bones, the center of the atoms that made his being.

A thousand million stars in the sky would not be enough to count the ways I love you. Or grains of sand on the beach, even if you split every grain in half.

“The Quran says all souls were created in pairs. One soul, one life, that was meant for two people. In this world, we’re supposed to find the other half of our souls and join together with them. Rejoin, and find the house of peace that we once knew before time.” David moved closer. “I feel that with you. I always have. From the moment we met, it’s been like I’ve known you for forever. Like everything in me is supposed to belong to everything in you.”

“Oh Beloved, take me. Liberate my soul. Fill me with your love and release me from the two worlds. If I set my heart on anything but you let fire burn me from inside. Oh Beloved, take away what I want. Take away what I do. Take away what I need. Take away everything that takes me from you.”

Wherever you are, be happy. Be with your father. Find the peace you longed for in this world. I’m so sorry you met me. I’m sorry you loved me. I’m sorry I killed you.

My love, you are the stars and moon of my life. You are the peace my soul has always sought. You were the last gift of a vengeful God, and the only thing that kept my faith alive. Because of our love. Because you loved me. If you exist, Allah must have created you. Nature could not shape someone so perfect as you are for me. My soul, my love, I will always watch over you.

“I didn’t deserve to get all the blame for what happened. I didn’t deserve to be thrown out in the cold. I didn’t deserve to lose my husband, the love of my life. I didn’t deserve how the CIA treated us, after. You ripped everything, absolutely everything, away from me. You never let me say goodbye to my husband. To my husband, George. You knew, you knew how much we loved each other, and you let them take David away from me in Afghanistan. Did you want to make it hurt? Did you want me to suffer?”

My love. Wherever you are, I hope you have found the peace that this world never was able to give you. I will always love you.

My love, I stitched little Behroze’s arm today. He makes me think of what you must have been like as a child. Always impetuous, never listening. Always trying to have fun and go his own way. He will leave these mountains when he grows up. I can feel it. I dreamed about you again. The same dream, the one I always have. Your smile. Your happiness. Ya rouhi, I hope you are happy. Somehow, somewhere. I pray to Allah that you are happy, with every one of my prayers. Your name is always on my lips. Your soul is always in my heart. There is not a moment that passes where I do not think of you. You are the moon that rose in my darkness, ya rouhi. And I know that I will see you again, my love. I know it, in my soul. The moon took his words silently every night. Somewhere, Kris was beneath that same moon. Alive or dead, in this life or the next. They saw the same moon every night, and he imagined it was their one connection, a tether that ran from his heart to Kris’s, circling around the moon. I will see you again.

If you are gone, my love, then I will follow you. I won’t let you go again. Never, ever, again. If you breathe your last breath, the very next will be my last as well.

‘you are the moon that rises in my darkness’