How It Ends
The windows are open, and I'm driving my mother-in-law's car, a turquoise compact number that's festooned with bumper stickers like "Namaste," "Peace," and "Save the Tatas." I'm free, free from my child for the first time in weeks, free from my husband, free from the little rented bungalow on the adorable street where the blue skies are almost oppressive. I've been back in the U.S. for exactly two weeks, and this trip away from it all, up Venice Boulevard, feels like a Carnival cruise.
I'm kind of a terrible driver. Turns out I haven't spent much time at the wheel of a car in the past handful of years. For a long time that job went to other people: cynical, sarcastic, sometimes burly, sometimes handsome, always charming men — men I would hire by the day or the week or the month.
There was Ahmed, in Baghdad, who drove NPR's armored Toyota pickup. He was big and round and baby-faced and soft-spoken and reasonable, with a Hitler-like mustache you would recognize if you've spent any time in Iraq. I want to say we were as close as siblings, but I knew that could never be true. Still, from the day I met him, my first day on the job as Baghdad bureau chief in 2010, I knew we would die for each other if we had to.