The house was among a small cluster of homes built in an oasis of olive trees. A shallow creek bed cut through the village, its bed littered with bottles and pieces of old metal. A half finished stone fence was built in front of the home, which was built of concrete blocks covered with a thin later of plaster. A bundle of wires ran from a generator into a hole above the front door.

Baris knocked on the door, and a voice called to them to enter. Baris pushed the door - which wouldn’t latch closed - open.

Inside, the woman - she wasn’t much older than a girl, really - sat in a small kitchen with her mother. The stove had two burners and was hooked up to a gas tank, and two pots were boiling. The girl, her head wrapped so that her face was cast into shadow, her bare wrists latticed with scars, was mashing garlic with a pestle. Her mother, who was short and round and wore a heavy sweatshirt over a faded dress, had her hair loosely wrapped, gray sinewy strands hanging limply over her forehead. The small room was warm, steamy.

The mother, Trifa, motioned for them to sit. There were two more chairs, both mismatched and likely scavenged. Maleka sat down. To avoid looking too closely at the girl, she looked around the room. The shelves were hung unevenly, unleveled. They were stacked with jars, pickled vegetables and jams of all colors.

Before they could proceed with anything, they had to have tea, a full lunch. Maleka was hungry, but even if she hadn’t been, there was no way to turn down the offer. The tea was scalding and thin. For lunch, they were served old bread with a thick gravy, a vegetable stew - potatoes and other roots - and a few very old, crumbly cheeses that they ate along with jam - fig and rose and sumac.

While Trifa scurried back and forth between the stove and the table, her daughter didn’t move, her scarred hands constantly at work, her eyes focused on the table, head lowered. Every so often, the mother would whisper something to the daughter, a conspiratorial moment that made them both smile. Most of Trifa’s teeth had gone to rot.

After they finished the meal, a young man emerged from the back of the house, wearing a stained t-shirt and jeans. He had long hair, a thick beard and an angular face. He was attractive. He barely acknowledged the visitors, kissed his mother on the cheek, brought his forehead together with his sisters, and then disappeared out the front door. Baris lifted his eyes at Maleka and then excused himself.

The brother, Artin, had gone to the edge of the yard, following a track of earth worn bare by passage - by human, fowl, or both. He smoked, pacing along the edge of the small creek, whose banks were slowly caving in. A thin poplar grew from the bank, sickly and weak, being whipped in the stiff wind.

Baris came up beside Artin, lit his own cigarette. He listened to the water, looked down the creek, at the smattering of other huts and shanties. The wind picked up, threatening the tree. All around them, poplars and olive trees turned white in the wind. They’d had an extraordinary winter, clear and breezy. It was impossible to enjoy such weather, knowing the suffering it would bring - the ruined crops, the wizened produce, most of the animals shriveled and baked in the sun. But it was beautiful, this weather, the light clear and soft.

“You’re the photographer?” the brother finally said.

“Yes.”

The brother nodded.

“You won’t show her face?”

“Of course not.”

Again, a nod. He smoked hastily, like he was trying to get everything from the cigarette he could. He smoothed his hair back against the wind. His hands were long, his knuckles hairy.

“Do you work?” Baris asked.

“Yeah, I did. On the pipeline.”

“Good job?”

He shrugged. His eyes were bloodshot and bleary still, not yet awake. He squinted into the bright afternoon.

“It paid OK. But now that’s over. My brother’s still out there.”

“Younger?”

He nodded.

“I don’t like this,” Artin said. “I don’t like you. But it’s mom’s house, and she insists. A lot of people here are pretty backward. Most of them would send their sisters back to their husbands. He ran off without a word, once he heard she was in the hospital. Took their money and vanished. If he comes back for her, I’ll kill him. We’re not backwards people. I wouldn’t let my sister go back to a man like that.”

“But what now? She can’t marry again.”

The brother flicked the cigarette into the creek. Baris watched it bob and weave downstream. The brother turned to face him, opened his hands uncertainly, clucked his tongue.

Her life, Artin thought, is over.

They walked back inside in silence. Without a word, the brother vanished back into the bedroom.

The mother smiled at Baris, wiped her hands on her sweatshirt, and sat down.

“We thought he was a good man,” she said. Her dialect was rough, but she spoke slowly. Baris glanced at Maleka, who was staring into the grounds of her tea. He would translate for her later.

“He worked with Artin and Hawre.”

“On the pipeline?”

She nodded, took a deep breath. She looked at the young man across from her. He had very soft eyes, she thought, and good manners. She wasn’t sure about the girl, who seemed like she wanted to be anywhere else in the world. She timid and proud, all at once. Trifa sighed again. She would spend the rest of her life here now, with her daughter, who no man would marry now; she was spoiled and ruined. Trifa had lost her beautiful Viyan to the fire. It would’ve been easier for everyone if she’d died, if her neighbor hadn’t seen the flames.

This was her penance for choosing poorly. He’d seemed like such a nice man - respectful, from a good family, a hard worker, very devout. More devout than either of her sons. Viyan had been so happy whenever he came for dinner. She couldn’t stop smiling, her face like light. That was all Trifa had wanted for her daughter - that kind of happiness, the happiness of a good man. A better life, a house where she could have a big family, many daughters of her own. And now that was over. He wouldn’t be coming back. No one would be coming for her. They would take their photos and they would leave and no one would come back. It would be the two of them out here, getting older, until she died. And then what would Viyan do?

“Hawre was friends with him. It was his idea to invite him for dinner. He was far from his own family, all alone. He came every week. He was polite. He always prayed after dinner. On my husband’s prayer mat. Which doesn’t get much use since he died.”

“When did he die?”

“Just three years ago.” It had been a rainy day, and he’d gone out to get firewood. She was cooking, laughing with Viyan. Then she realized Birousk had been gone for a very long time. She wasn’t worried, strangely. Surely he’d just found something broken and was fixing it. Or one of the neighbors had invited him for tea. Trifa had poked her head outside and there he was, face down in the mud. Just like that, delivered from this life. And what a blessing for him, with all that had happened. Though maybe it wouldn’t have happened if he’d been here. Maybe he would have chosen better.

“I don’t know what you want me to talk about,” Trifa said, suddenly feeling very tired. “Our lives are ruined. My daughter’s beauty is lost in flames. He would beat her every time she displeased him. If he didn’t like her food. If he thought the house was dirty. If he didn’t like the way her hair looked.”

She shook her head, took her daughter’s hand, feeling the raised lacerations where they’d put the skin from her legs, which hadn’t burned. Heat, they said, rises. And she’d lit her chest, her heart, on fire.

“It’s scary that a person can be so evil and you can’t know. That you can look at them and see goodness. It’s a scary world when you can’t trust people at their word. All we can do now is put our faith in God. That he will pay us back in paradise for this suffering and that this life will not be too long.”

“It wasn’t an accident” Viyan said quietly, briefly looking up. Her left cheek was sunken, thatched with scars and mottled humps that were like veins. The left half of her nose had been reconstructed, albeit poorly. The nostril was much bigger, and higher, as if it had been gouged open.

No one said anything. Maleka could hear water boiling on the stove, the hiss of the gasoline. Baris could hear the wind rattling the roof. He wondered how much longer the poplar would stay rooted. Maybe, he thought, if it could survive the winds of spring, could make it to summer …

“Can we take the photos?” Viyan asked. She spoke softly - likely to mask how nasally her voice was, Baris thought. When she talked, it sounded like air was leaking out of her from someplace unknown, as if the cabin of a plane had been punctured.

“Sure, of course.”

Baris went to the car and came back with his camera. He didn’t take many photos, and he worked quickly. He took a few photos of her hands laid out on the table, amidst the dirty dishes. He took a few photos of the left side of her face.

“I won’t print your whole face,” he promised. “Just your cheek, if that’s OK.”

Viyan nodded.

He took a few photos of mother and daughter together, Viyan pressing her reconstructed left side against her mother’s shoulder, her smooth right cheek glinting, even in the kitchen’s dim light, her eye twitching rapidly, swimming about like a fish in the throes of death.

And that was it. He put his camera away. Viyan excused herself and padded softly into her mother’s bedroom, closing the door behind her. Her mother gathered the dirty dishes and took them outside, where she would wash them. Baris and Maleka followed her out the door.

“Oh no, please, one more glass of tea,” she said.

Baris smiled politely.

“No, you’ve given us too much already. Next time, I’ll bring something with me. A gift.”

“Okay,” Trifa said, unexpectedly taking his hand in hers, squeezing it. “Please do come back. Please don’t forget we’re here.”

“I won’t.”

She smiled at Maleka, kissed her on both cheeks, took her hand for a much briefer, more perfunctory squeeze.

While Baris loaded up his case, Maleka stood in the long shadows of late afternoon. The day had grown cold; the cluster of homes was entirely cast into shade. Black smoke rose from a few of them, pirouetting towards the magnificent, cloudless sky. The wind roared down from between the mountains. The roof shook and rattled. For a moment, Maleka thought the whole house might be lifted up and blown away.