iv

The biggest landlocked body of water is nestled in the palms of the Caucasus Mountains and holds around 40 to 44 percent of all the lake water in the world. Both the Persian and Turkic people who share its border with the Russians call it the Khazar Sea after the ancient nomads. We know it better here as the Caspian Sea.

I've always lived near the water. Everywhere I go, it's followed me.

Fact: most Azeris live outside of Azerbaijan. In fact, 15 to 20 million live in neighbouring Iran. The southern part of the Caspian Sea, divided between the two countries, is known for its subtropical climate; made perfect for rice cultivation.

Discrepancy: Yashar tells me about Yazd, about Zoroastrian fire temples and the desert. He tells me about Shirazi poets and their graves and pilgrims in white. It all leaves me a bit parched. He never mentions the constant rain, the caviar, or the snow-capped Alborz Mountains.

This is what I'm reduced to, facts and discrepancies and a fistful of moulding breadcrumbs that lead nowhere. Not even with five open Wikipedia tabs and a lexicon.

He once told me his grandmother was infamous. In what way, I asked. The bad way, he answered. Once when left in her care, he came down with a fever, and she—part medicine woman, part oracle—cured him with fire. His father's face is burnt and he plays the ney as if the angels themselves had lent him their lips. At night, curled under the sheets, I ask him why those tattoos and he replies: to rotate the sun and the moon when I dance. He burns wild rue to ward off the evil eye and covers his mirrors before he goes to bed. His family is not normal. I don't need the internet to confirm that to me. I need him to tell me what exactly about them makes it so we can't coexist in the same sentence.

What are you afraid of? Unless, of course, he isn't. Maybe he knows I've stolen his mother's perfume and is waiting for me to fumble it and shatter the glasshouse. Maybe he wants out of this relationship. Maybe—

"...matter?" I don't notice I've been staring at him without seeing him until his voice zooms in and his features come into focus.

"You've zoned out, hard. What's the matter?"

"No, nothing...just a bit tired. You?" It's a stupid question, and it only hits me when I realise he isn't nearly as close as I initially thought he was. He's technically still in the kitchen, albeit leaning against the opening; a damp kitchen towel draped over his shoulder.

He holds my gaze, unconvinced. "Weren't you supposed to fetch the bunnies from the neighbours?"

"Erm," I stall. Slam my laptop shut. The phone I'm looking for is nowhere to be found on the living room settee. "A bit late, isn't it?"

He cranes his neck and reads the clock on the wall above the door frame. "Ten past nine."

"I'll get them in the morning."

"Afraid you might knock while they're having sex?" He turns around to the kitchen sink where he's been scrolling Instagram under the guise of 'doing the dishes for the better part of an hour.

"Yashar, stop." He's begun to lean over the counter, and I just know what's coming.

"Afraid you might give Gertrude," he says, drawing out his words in mock-seduction while he squats, "a heart attack while she's getting her geriatric freaky on—"

"Jesus Christ. He's the fucking vicar—Yashar!" I burst out laughing in horror as he squats deeper and starts contorting his upper body.

"What, don't think religious people can get freaky? I bet they have a stash of sex toys as moist as their fruitcake."

That's it.

"Weren't you," I say, throwing the closest pillow at him and suppressing my gag reflexes. "Too tired," another pillow bites the dust, "for this shit?"

He laughs, dodging them as they come. "I'm bone-tired, which only proves what a good boyfriend I am."

"You?" I ask. "For cleaning your own dishes?" He picks up the pillows from the floor and makes his way towards me.

"No, for potentially pulling my back to get you to stop frowning."

"Is that what you were doing?" He's standing before me in a t-shirt that he could've borrowed from any of the Ramones and a pair of distractingly short shorts. I crane my neck, "So, you weren't trying to add fuel to my nightmares by planting visions of Mrs Edwards' prosthetic teeth falling out while riding the vicar? Ugh—" I mock gag, my hands flying to my face. "I can't believe I said that."

"They take care of your rodents, man," he pries open my fingers, revealing a view of his unabashed grin, "can you like chill."

I pull him down onto the settee with an oomph. "They are not rodents." I hiss. "They're rabbits, how many times do I have to—"

He kisses me and it's not gentle, not soft. My surprise is just wearing off when he grips my jaw and pulls away. "I'm going to bed. You coming?"

My arms come around his torso, " Haha, funny. You're not going anywhere."

"I'm knackered."

"Tough luck, I'm not letting you go." I grip him tighter. "We were supposed to finish off that bottle of Chardonnay, remember? Cuddle, talk?"

At the word, 'talk,' he raises one eyebrow in that infuriatingly hot way only he's capable of, "You want to talk? About what? A little therapy sesh about how Eric's been driving up the wall with all this work?" His voice is playful as he gestures to the papers and CAD drawings on the coffee table. "We can do that later. Just come to bed—"

"We can talk about you, for once," I suggest. "About all the things you're afraid of."

I lay my head on his chest and he chuckles, tries to ease off my grip, "I see, you're in a mood."

"Afraid the list will be too long?" I ask, baiting him. Unsuccessfully seeing as he's still fighting. I drag his weight with me in a last plea to change his mind. He lands on top of me, huffs against my hair, and then we're wrestling. Arms, hands, legs, until our lips meet again like two apostrophes bracketing a sentence. See, two can play this game. Just like him, I give fair warning that I won't play kindly.  I grip his jaw, just like he did mine, and break our lips apart before I disentangle myself from under him.

His confused expression is probably the most erotic thing I've ever seen on him. "If you go now," I say in warning, "I will chase you."

"That a bad thing?" He asks, feeling his bruised lips.

"I will chase you and corner you and you will have nowhere to hide."

He laughs like someone who has no idea. "Tempting."

"I will pry your lips open, make you talk."

"Say that again, slower."

"And I will win."

His eyes are molten lava as he regards me with bemusement. He thinks it's a game, but I've clearly lost him.

"Go to bed, eshgham."

The last remaining light emanates from the laptop. The house is quiet, and not like how you'd expect an old house that was once a mill to be quiet; branches grazing the windows, creaking floorboards. No, it's quiet like how abandonment is quiet; like waking up to realise you're the last person on earth—dropped in the middle of nowhere.

It's the kind of quiet that soothes the city-weary and disturbs those who've known little else since they were born. The perfume is called, Atoma. It says so on the bottle in golden cursive writing. On the original bottle it had worn away, leaving behind only golden streaks in the grooves. I'm afraid of the same thing happening now. My sweaty palms wiping it off. The bottle is growing warmer in my hand, and I have this fantasy of the vapours catching fire and the glass shattering. Or that I drop it, and the fluid permeates everywhere—waking Yashar up. I don't know which of the two is worse.

I hate the scent. It smells nothing like him; like jasmine and the resin incense that his sister ships from Malmö in brown-paper envelopes. I don't dare tell him that I hate it when he wears it. That it feels like lying in bed with a faceless woman. The kind you'll catch at Harrods doing her Christmas shopping a month before everyone else. Draped in a fur coat like Cate Blanchett in Carol, a perfectly manicured finger poking self-indulgently at the jewellery display.

When I picture his mother, I picture her smelling like khoresh-e bademjoon; like mint and dill and homely sweetness. Like Mum. And not like—I pop open the bottle for the hundredth time that evening and smell it again—bergamot and chief executive energy.

If I try to erase everything I'm conditioned about motherhood, then yes, the idea of her wearing a fragrance like this isn't so hard to imagine. I see her face in my mind's eye. Her almost petulant, daring expression; her aggrieved blankness. I bring the fragrance up to my nose again. Yes, it smells like someone who would move away from the comfort of everything they'd known and jump at the chance at a better life thousands of miles away with two children and a musician of a husband. The perfume screams breadwinner.

I streak the laden cork along my jugular, and then on the other side. I rub my wrists up and down my neck, diluting it, but also spreading its cloying scent. Spreading it up my forearms and under my jumper. I dip the cork again. Spread again.

I should stop.

I don't. I want him to smell me and know that I'm acting out of fearlessness. That even though I dislike it, I will wear it. I will accept all of him. The bad, the ugly, the good, the otherworldly. That which pains him; makes him angry, makes him cry. Hurts so deeply it has shut down his ability to trust.

I want him to trust me.

Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way, but is our love so fragile that it should break over this when we've been through worse hell? And I gave him a warning, didn't I?

I close the laptop. Drunk on the fumes, I blindly feel my way up the staircase to the master bedroom. For the first time, I'm thankful for the white noise machine as the door closes behind me with a squeak. I make for the wardrobe and stop short when I notice the small mirror on the wall next to the ensuite bathroom; covered entirely by his t-shirt. I hear myself snort as I crouch down and pull open the last drawer.

I place the bottle on top of his clothes, proud of myself for breaking the chain of hiding it like a shameful secret. Feeling his eyes burning into my neck, I swerve around, but I can't see anything. I wait for a sound, a breath that never comes. With my heart busting out of my chest, I tiptoe closer, only relaxing once I'm standing over him, close enough to witness his peaceful slumber.

I open the window, welcoming the unexpectedly warm draught. I strip down to my underwear and slowly, quietly, knowing the light sleeper that he is, I climb under the covers. I press myself into his warm body, hoping, and yet not hoping he'll stir awake and smell me. Imagining the moment he will. Imagining his reaction and biting my lip, trying to suppress my growing grin.