Return to Sender

"You got a package from Shevan today."
I was leaving Casa Fiesta with my mom and brother. The sun was hot, the twilight air chokingly thick with humidity.
"Oh god, you're kidding. Please say you're kidding." We had to walk up a hill to get back to our car, and the huff and puff of our ascent made my outburst at Lens admission that much more dramatic.
"It's one of those big envelopes with bubble wrap inside. There's this lumpy thing in the middle. I think its a ring."
Len kept staring at the asphalt as we neared the top of the hill.
"Len, come on. It can't be a ring." My mom said. "He wouldn't send her a ring in the mail." She laughed like it was nothing, and unlocked the family car, a golden 99' Buick Regal.
"I wonder whats in it..." I said.
"Why does he keep doing this? Its been like four years since you last saw him, right?"
In fact, only three years had passed. But three years was more than necessary for most guys to get the picture. When someone ignores you that long, especially after cursing at you to stay the hell away and let it go, most people would take the hint and move on. Not Shevan.
I affectionately refered to him as my stalker.
"I told him I was married last time. He called me Sweetie before I hung up on his face," I said. Len had taken the front seat leaving me to stretch my legs out across the back. I fanned in the stuffy heat.
"He must have mental problems," Len said from the front. "He's probably retarded."
"Well if he comes by the house again, I'm not answering the door."

Len had answered the phone one day when we didn't realize how bad it was. A husky voice had asked for me and Len had replied, like normal, that I wasn't there. The voice said "okay I'll call back later", and never did. What the voice did, was to come to our house the next week and knock on the door. Because the voice belonged to Shevan. And the voice had gone all the way through the phone book, calling every addressed listing of our last name before reaching Len. Shevan wanted to see me. My mother had answered the door and said I didn't live there. Which was true, I lived in an apartment complex two miles away, but Shevan didn't know that. My mom thought it was creepy. She always looks before she answers the door now.

*****************
I met Shevan in college.
It was only a year or so after Zyan had left for the military, and I still remembered all my Kurdish words. When Shevan showed up at an orientation for Dorm Desk Assistants, I made a point to follow him out of the lobby.
"Hey, are you Kurdish?"
"...Yes." He turned abruptly to face me. It was a strange question to ask someone you don't know. "Are you Kurdish, too?"
"Oh, no. I just knew some people from there. In high school." I wouldn't mention Zyan. In fact, I never mentioned him at all. It was years and years later before I found out they knew each other.
A conversation ensued whereby we found that we were both studying History, we both grew up in the same neighborhood, and we both had lofty ideas regarding politics and religion.

I never settled down long enough to spend very much time with him. After exchanging numbers that first day we met, we had lunch a few times, walked around campus once or twice, and shared a class that I later dropped. Something about Shevan seemed off to me. I couldn't figure out what it was. He would take these high level courses and talk about getting a PhD. He had a great GPA, but when he opened his mouth it was like common sense was not there. I couldn't decide if it was his culture talking, or a learning disability. Whatever it was, it didn't seem normal.

One day, about a year or so after we had met, I invited him out with a group of my friends. We hung out, had some appetizers, then came back to my friend Shana's apartment and watched bad tv until I had to go home.

Almost as an afterthought outside my car, where he had walked me, I kissed him goodnight. During this action, I surmised several things. 1) He had horrible breath. 2) He didn't know how to kiss at all. 3) He was overly excited about kissing me in general. Inevitably the odds were not on his side. I mean, I was not about to waste any more time trying to placate him with consolation prizes when I had no intention of being with him. I cut straight to the chase and over the next few days I ignored all four of his calls.

"Um, you know that guy that went to dinner with us the other night?"
"Yeah." Shana called me on my way home from work one day.
"Well, he kinda came by my apartment. He said he was worried about you."
"Shevan? Why would he come to your apartment?"
"I think he was upset you didn't answer his calls."
"Oh god. I guess I have to call him now."
"Yeah, because I don't want weirdos knocking on my door. I told him you were probably ignoring him."
"Well gee, thanks, Shana. Now he's going to be mad when I call, too."

He wasn't. He was delighted to hear from me. Like always. I downplayed the goodnight kiss and tried to keep a safe distance.

Over the next two years Shevan went into the military as a contractor, begged me to "wait for him," told me he would change anything and everything about himself if only I'd be with him, and proposed marriage to me more than once via international text message. Yeah. From Iraq.
*****************

"So what do you think is in there?" Len was feeling up the lumpy envelope on our kitchen counter.
"Its probably something stupid."
"What if its a bomb?" Len widened his eyes and grinned. He was the best at exaggeration.
"They don't make bombs that small."
"How do you know? Maybe they do in Khazakstan or Romania or whatever."
"Kurdistan."
"Maybe they've harnessed the technology to make microchip bombs and they're just waiting to play a huge joke on American PC users."
"Shut up, Len."
I really wanted to open that package. Len put it back on the counter and slouched out of the kitchen.
"Just put Return to Sender on it and put it back in the mail," he said over his shoulder. "I don't wanna have to worry about his weird ass showing up on the porch again."
I stared at the envelope on the counter before picking it up and running my fingers over the length of the little protrusion near the bottom left corner. It felt like there was nothing in there but this little oddly shaped thing.
"I bet it's a keychain!" I yelled toward Len at the back of the house.
In response, I heard his X-Box make its ritual noises and power on.
Before I could think too hard, I put it back on the counter and left the room, too.

How many lives could I have lived before this day? How many choices could I have made that would have turned me into something completely different than I am now? All I would have had to do is say one tiny word and I could have been in Germany, in France, in Amsterdam, in Dubai with Shevan Ibrahim. And that was only one life I could have had. I could have just decided to get along with Miguel Morales. I'd be married and maybe have brown children with green eyes. I could have tried harder with Russ when I was first in college at Lavery. I could have been a Lavery success story, a rich Brentwood wife.
But I didn't do these things. I wouldn't settle. I wouldn't compromise. I don't even remember sometimes what it was I was having to compromise on, but if you want the basics, I wasn't READY. Besides, in Shevan's case, I'll never be "ready" to marry a lunatic.

The package came back a week later. My mother had boldly printed RETURN TO SENDER on it in sharpe marker and I sighed when I opened the mailbox and saw it all bent up and stuffed back inside.

"Should we put it in there again? I really don't want him to think you care." My mom said. "You don't care, do you?"
"Who, me? Are you kidding?" I felt the lump inside the bubble wrap again.
"I guess I'll take it to work with me tomorrow and put it in the mail there."
"Oh... This is ridiculous." On impulse, I ripped open the envelope at its top.
"Wait for me!!!" Len busted out of his room. How he heard me open that envelope I'll never know. "I wanna see!"
I reached in, pulling out first a typed letter on a single sheet of print paper, and then a shiny blue keychain of the Eifel Tower.
"I told you it was a keychain."
"Oh." Len looked at it for a few seconds before turning back around toward his room. "That was anticlimactic."

Shevan's letter detailed the last year and half during which time he had apparently been in Paris, Rome, Naples, Dubai, the Netherlands, and last but not least, a VA hospital for PTSD treatment. He said he'd lost some military friends in Iraq and had some "close calls" himself. I suddenly remembered him telling me, during one of those unwanted international calls, that he'd had shrapnel removed from the whole right side of his body, sparing his face.

I would love to talk to you. To hear your voice. We don't have to get married; I just want to be your friend. I want to talk to you as friends do. I rolled my eyes reading it. I'm sorry I tried to get in touch with you so many times and so many different ways, but you know what they say. When you tell someone you don't want to see them anymore, your girlfriends will tell you, "If he loves you, he will find you no matter what." That is how I feel. But I understand now. Please take my phone number and call me if you want to talk.

"Hell no," I said to piece of paper in my hands.
"I really wish you hadn't opened it," my mother said from the living room.
"Oh don't worry about it." But I knew she would just a little.

Even though there are many lives I could be living in some parallel universe somewhere, being with Shevan Ibrahim, stalker extraordinaire, would never be one of them. Besides, its not good to hang on to the things you have cast off, or the things that have cast you off. Its better to forge ahead and quit turning around to look back at the things you passed.

Because seriously, if you do that in a moving car, you can get super motion sickness. I mean, I do, anyway.