Home > Veil(4)

Veil(4)
Author: Eliot Peper

Zia accepted the coconut. Drank. Tried and failed to appreciate the cool, sweet water in the sweltering afternoon heat. Outside the station the air was thick with dust and humidity—it felt oily on the skin, more liquid than gas. Buses, trucks, taxis, bicycles, scooters, and rickshaws roared by in a haphazard mass migration. The smell of rubber, melting asphalt, and VOCs went to her head like so much champagne. Was this what her mom had felt like just before the Heat Wave had claimed her and twenty million other souls?

“What’s wrong?” said Himmat, his gaze sharpening.

There was something inside Zia peeling away like the paint on the wall of that sad little room, but it was too early to see what color lay beneath. And just because Himmat was onto something didn’t mean she wanted to admit it, even to herself.

Zia forced a smile. “Oh, it’s nothing.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Come on,” he said. “We’ve been working together for what, two years now? You just showed that asshole what’s what and snatched the seeds from his clutches. Once this cohort finishes training, our volunteers will be able to distribute them just in time for planting. You should be celebrating, but you look like a doctor just gave you a terminal diagnosis.”

Despite herself, Zia chuckled. She gave Himmat a once over. Thick wavy hair, large eyes and sharp features that brought an owl to mind, loose linen shirt over jeans and battered work boots. Smart. Earnest. Hardworking. Penchant for Aperol Spritzes, which he singlehandedly prepared for every graduating class of their dryland farming training program. He’d proven himself as her lieutenant here. Which meant he deserved to continue growing, even if it made her uncomfortable.

“Take it further.” She took another swig of coconut water and drew circles with an index finger.

When he opened his eyes wide, it accentuated the owl.

“You might be happy to have overcome this hurdle, but you know it’s just one of many,” he said slowly. “You love your work, but you’ve been chasing disasters for so many years that they’re starting to blend together. The satisfaction you take in helping people wilts in light of the fact that you can only offer stopgap solutions to systemic problems. You’re treating symptoms instead of addressing root causes, and you have to beg donors for the privilege of doing so. Your energy is flagging. Your compass is spinning. Am I getting somewhere?”

The corner of Zia’s mouth quirked to accommodate her burgeoning pride and melancholy. “Yeah, you’re getting somewhere,” she said. “My first field op was typhoon response in Taiwan. Flash floods took out all the bridges in Hualien and debris flows wiped out entire neighborhoods in seconds. Afterward there was this huge international response as footage went viral. We had more donations than we knew what to do with. We started with direct relief—just getting people fed and sheltered. But once we had things more or less sorted and were trying to get started on long-term recovery, the mayor’s office kept dawdling. We’d get a permit for our reconstruction plan but without a start date, approval for one site but not another, requests for additional impact reporting when the proposal was already thoroughly vetted. I spent months in extended dinner meetings trying to figure out what the problem was, why they wouldn’t let us get to work. But I couldn’t get a straight explanation, only promises that weren’t really lies but never quite came true either. Drove me batshit. Finally, a politically connected friend from Taipei came for a visit and tagged along to one of the banquets. Afterward he took me aside and patiently explained that there was a consortium planning to build a new casino in town, an initiative the mayor’s office secretly backed because of the jobs and tax revenues it would bring, and that the project was contingent on buying up the destroyed homes for redevelopment before people could rebuild them.” She could still remember Li Jie’s pained expression as he dangled his feet over the seawall, face illuminated by the glowing ember of his cigarette and tongue loosened by their host’s liberally dispensed baijiu. “They wouldn’t let us rebuild because they didn’t want to rebuild. They wanted to put a casino there instead.”

Zia drained the last of the water and handed the coconut back to the vendor.

“He gleaned all that from one dinner?” asked Himmat.

The vendor raised his machete and split the coconut with a thwack. Then with a practiced twist, he carved out the thick white meat and presented it to her piled up in one of the hemispherical halves. She chewed on a fatty piece. Swallowed.

“I was a hamster that didn’t realize it was on a wheel,” she said. She turned to the side and spat into the dust, which flashed ever so briefly scarlet before the parched earth sucked up her saliva in front of their eyes—molten lava hardening into basalt. “All that wasted effort. All those missed opportunities to actually do something that mattered, to serve the people I sought to serve.”

Zia squeezed Himmat’s shoulder. “Listen to what people mean instead of what they say. Pursue subtext. Don’t just speculate on motive, ask what context shapes the motives on offer. Reframe that context. You’ve got a knack for it. Now you need to develop it into a superpower. In this job, it’s everything.”

Even in the chaos of the street, the moment held like an expanding soap bubble—until a chirp from her phone popped it.

A text. Not the group chat, but a direct message from Selai. The profile picture next to the notification set off a cascade of memories. Bleached reefs. Quantum theory. Singing along to Disney songs. Impossibly elegant proofs submitted in response to rudimentary math assignments. A dizzying ascent to internet stardom. Don’t you dare bail, Zia read. No excuses of any kind, especially of the long-suffering savior variety. There’s a new project I want to tell you about.

The reunion. Zia checked the time. This debacle had resolved itself faster than expected. She could still make the flight to Zürich if she went straight to the airport.

She shouldn’t. She should. Fuck it, what did “should” mean anyway?

Zia looked up at Himmat, who was peering at her quizzically.

“You’re in charge,” she said. “Effective immediately. I’ll be back in a few days.”

His eyes widened.

“And you’re right,” she continued, raising a hand to hail a cab. “I don’t know what I need right now, but maybe a change of pace will help.”

 

 

+

3

+

 

 

Zia tucked away her dog-eared copy of The Princess Bride, muscled her carry-on out of the overhead bin, and triaged her inbox as she walked up the gangway into Zürich International Airport. There was a message from Jason right at the top. The subject read, “You’re gonna hate this, but” with a shrug emoji appended to soften the blow.

Zia opened the email.

 

Z, sorry to bug you during PTO (which you should take more of), but we’ve got a new major donor prospect who wants to press flesh. Apparently he’s also flying into ZRH this afternoon. Assuming your flight arrives on time, can you swing by to meet him at the Blue Bottle in the international terminal before you head off to the mountains?

 

Says you’ll recognize him. Asked me not to mention his name, wanted it to be a surprise. Weird, I know, but whales are always odd ducks if you can forgive a mixed metaphor.

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