[Lehvant]

On her hands and knees, she was confronted by blood in the snow. She wondered about how odd a behavior it was for her to bleed without worry for herself. Her only worries were about how inconvenient a place she might have hurt this time. Her face, fingers, and forearms were ideal — though they were the most visible parts of her body. The papers would inevitably take photos, highlighting how weak and frail she looks. Her toes and the inside of her palms were the most painful by far, that was when she’d have to push against the pain at the expense of worsening — and, at times, infecting— her wounds, in order to keep going.

Lehvant had made a big narrative pitch around its participation in the skiing events in the Olympics. Many of the government-sponsored billboards of Delphine Riahi’s face featured slogans about overcoming adversity, doing what has been deemed improbable — nay, impossible — for any Lehvantian before. Lehvant did face a substantial geographic disadvantage when it came to skiing. In the alpine skiing events, athletes that grew up in a cold climate have been known to have a competitive edge. This is what made it all the more noteworthy when Lehvant, with its notoriously arid climate, made a widely lauded play for the gold medal. Winning gold would represent much more than an impressive athletic achievement — the medal, along with the athletes that brought home this victory, would be celebrated as an inspiring tale of how a nation and its peoples, long underestimated and overlooked, could beat the odds. The communications office had already started planning the marketing campaign around it, and it was set to breathe new life to the government’s narrative of pushing Lehvant forward despite regional and global adversaries that wish to undermine its successes, and villainize the country and its government. All those hopes, dreams, and geopolitical consequences resting on her shoulders. It was more than enough to make someone break, and some would say Delphine already had.

[Lehvant]

The L Word

Written jointly with Laeral

Harra badenjan was a rustic dish, the kind of meal grandmothers had their own special recipes for, which adorned dinner tables on the same days the good porcelain and mother’s best tablecloth came out. Roasted lamb, rubbed with a special spice blend, served atop a base of smashed eggplant to make a hearty, aromatic dish. All in all, a humble thing to steer the course of a nation’s policy. But months before, harra badenjan had become a new gastronomic sensation in Laeral, of all places, where the exoticness of the dish’s flavors and its popularity on a noteworthy cooking show had made it a chic dish in the country's trendiest restaurants. The dish seemed to have been somewhat warped in translation—notably, diners paying M650 per head for the prix-fixe menu at Zélé 24 in a trendy section of Laeralsford’s North Bank savored “deconstructed” harra badenjan with the lamb sliced paper-thin and the portions miniaturized. A hearty rural meal became an “artisanal dish.”

When harra badenjan became the dish featured on the cover of Cook magazine and highlighted on Masters of Cuisine, much of the Lehvantian highlands, and the tourism ministry, was thrilled. Harra badenjan would stake out a central spot for Lehvant on the culinary map, and officials prepared a culinary trail in the Shiraz valley, traditional center of harra badenjan production, for tourists. Unfortunately for the farmers and herders of the mountainous Lehvantine highlands, neither the surge in interest in harra badenjan among fine dining establishments nor its bastardization as an upscale frozen dinner (retailing at 13.99 in frozen-foods aisles across Laeral) would bring wealth and interest to rural Lehvant. The boom passed these many millions by, leaving their meager existence no easier and slimming the market for Lehvantian lamb abroad.

Harra badenjan was spoken of as a Laeralian dish, its spices were substituted for those catering to the Laeralian palate, and, perhaps worst of all, the pomegranate-grazing lambs of the Shiraz valley were eschewed in favor of cheaper, factory-raised lambs in a flat, nondescript stretch of northwestern Laeral. It was a robbery, not least because the livelihoods of farmers relying on the export of agricultural goods were threatened by the emergence of Hesperidan companies producing en masse cheaper alternatives which, like a tapeworm, grew to swallow up the market abroad for Lehvantian agricultural goods. The same glossy magazine covers and TV features which had brought hope to the farmers and herders of the Lehvantine highlands now provoked curses and scorn from a more impoverished populace. 

Scholars of the 1970s made varying predictions on how Lehvant would do as the pallbearers of French colonialism in the IDU. There was, however, consensus that they would reform and modernize from this fraught legacy. Nowadays, those expectations have shifted towards Laeral, as they have been hailed as a successful example of post-colonial democratization. Laeral seemingly finished what Lehvant had started by building on French institutions without ever falling for the trap of assimilation. Lehvantian resistance was known for its wit, intelligence, and charm, so losing in this head-to-head against Laeral stung. That, combined with Laeral’s appropriation of Harra badenjan at the expense of Lehvantian farmers, was more than enough for Lehvant to want to hit Laeral where it hurt. It just so happened that that was skiing.

The communications office loved how marketable this rivalry was. For one, Laeral also had a skier named Delphine. “The Battle of the Delphines” narrative was tested on social media and once it took off, it was inescapable. It was most unbearable at the Blockade Ski Resort in southern Acadia where Delphine would train. She resented the campaign, how the emphasis on the two girls sharing a first name stripped them of their individuality – most of all, Delphine hated how people comparing the two would refer to her as “the brown one”. The two girls also had a complicated history, as they had started out as close friends during middle school at Blockade Mountains Academy in Greater Acadia, an elite boarding school that had an extremely competitive winter sports program. The girls were always pitted against each other, but remained close friends up until high school. Seemingly, they both had a visceral sense that skiing was what they did, not who they were. When their friendship broke off suddenly when they were 16, neither their instructors nor peers could make sense of it. While both have been asked about their friendship in interviews amidst the recent media campaigns, both the Lehvantian Delphine and the Laeralian one clamped up whenever the subject was raised.

As a rule, to be a winter Olympian in a place like Lehvant was much less desirable. For one, to achieve the kind of excellence that your country demanded from you, one would need to begin practicing extensively at a young age – which meant moving to a far-away boarding school at the tender age of 10 or so. Once, overwhelmed by homesickness, Delphine had used some of the money her parents had sent from home to buy herself a package of microwavable harra badenjan from the frozen aisle at the grocery store. It tasted like cardboard. 

[Lehvant]

Many of Delphine’s peers had once skied for fun. They swore up and down that it made no difference in their performance, that Delphine had started at such a young age that it didn’t matter. But she knew it did. All those girls loved skiing at some point — they shared memories of skiing in between their father’s legs and learning to make a ski pizza. They could still recall the rush they felt when someone first told them they were good at it, or when they got sent to ski camp for the first time.

Delphine was born and raised in an impoverished town in east Shiraz. When she was 6, her mom started having to skip meals to make sure that Delphine and her younger sister had enough to eat. She had once worked as a maid in the next town over, and when the formerly middle-class families she’d been hired by could no longer afford a maid, Delphine’s mother scrambled to find ways in which her children might be of use.

If you could prove their worth, the market for gifted children in Lehvant was booming. Knowing this, Delphine would spend her weekends traveling from ballet recitals to tennis tryouts, all in the hopes of finding something she would get noticed for — and then maybe, just maybe, her mother might be offered money for it.

Delphine was agile, but she wasn’t fast. She wasn’t a natural at anything — all she did was try, try, try. And try she did, until a scout recommended her for a training camp at Blockade Mountains Academy. Skiing wasn’t her favorite, but her ability to maintain control made her stand out amongst the other kids. Sometimes, after she found her rhythm going down the slopes, she’d imagine herself as a figure skater, jumping up to do a twirl right then and there. It was a childish thought, and her clunky skis wouldn’t allow her to, anyway.

Today, though, this thought helped distract her from her boot blisters. Delphine started every day with a painkiller, and for 4-6 glorious hours on the slopes, she couldn’t feel anything. Her medication schedule was unfortunately timed according to her training schedule, which made it so that the moment she took her gear off to take a break, her painkillers would start to wear off. And in that moment when her gear was off and her painkillers had fully worn off, she could suddenly feel everything. Her second painkiller of the day was timed so that she could fall asleep right after the medication kicked in, meaning her evening exercises had to go unmedicated. Delphine dreaded this, and begged her trainer to let her take 3 pills a day after a particularly dire practice day where she bit her lip in pain hard enough to make it bleed. Louis, her trainer, told her he was working on it.

“I know you’re working yourself to the bone. And I know you’re in pain because of it.”, Louis said. He often did this, it was supposed to make Delphine feel like he was on her side. This time, she knew better. She simply nodded while waiting for him to say “but there’s simply nothing I can do” in a dreadful French accent. Her eyes had started glossing over as Louis caught her off guard.

“What if I told you I could give you something…”

“What? A pill?”, Delphine asked, sounding more enthusiastic than she’d intended to.

“Not necessarily, though perhaps that can be arranged. Something to make sure you’re just as successful - perhaps even better - without straining yourself as much.”

He could have stopped after saying “perhaps even better”. At that moment Delphine already knew that whatever he was offering, she desperately wanted it.

[Lehvant]

For the past 2 weeks, Delphine had been consumed by reminders of the fact that Lehvantian state officials would be coming to visit her and the other athletes at the olympic training site. She knew that she couldn’t so much as talk about the weather if it wasn’t pre-approved by a communications officer. The trip was planned to a T. The delegation members would apparently express their desire to show support for the athletes and calm their nerves ahead of their events. Delphine knew just how counterintuitive this was, the state visits were notorious for their ability to terrify first-time olympians like her.

It reminded the athletes of just how high the stakes were for them. Whatever warmth they’d be met with at the state visit, each olympian had to keep in mind they’d be met with a contrasting, freezing cold if they were to under-perform.

The athletes were to wait for the state officials while standing in a line on a platform. Even while they stood on a platform, they looked small and subservient. The most extravagant ballroom was reserved for the event — and though there was an impressive spread of food and drinks, the athletes were strictly forbidden from them.

Under regular circumstances, Delphine would have had the urge to scoff at the irony of having a room full of Laeralian china for this event. This was before she had decided that she would not resent the fact that she had to obey mediocre men whose only noteworthy accomplishment had been to take credit for her talents. This decision had become necessary for her survival, otherwise she’d risk falling into a trap that had entangled countless young women before her.

Lehvant’s pipeline for remarkable children had a surprisingly balanced gender ratio, though the path offered to young boys included a quiet, comfortable retirement and the promise of dying with distinction. Young women were much more prone to fizzling out and having their legacy reduced to a scandal or a punchline. She was determined not to fizzle out, which meant understanding that her begging or obeying did not make these men big — so it could not make her small.

This is what she thought of on the podium of the ballroom, as she tried to keep her mind off of how desperately she needed another fix of whatever her trainer had been giving her. Delphine knew she’d have to beg. She also knew not to ask questions, though it would inevitably make her feel powerless and desperate to not even know what she’s begging for. All she knew about the injections were that they made her hurt less, and they made her faster. She decided she didn’t need to know anything else. 

“Is the shame of begging worse than the shame of losing?”, she asked herself. One was private, Louis even made her promise not to tell anyone or discuss it with him in public. Losing, however, would mean that she could never live with dignity.

[Lehvant]

It had taken Delphine her entire life to get to this point, all building up to this one moment. She’d listened to hundreds of speeches and had been forced to sit through hours of motivational speakers plagiarizing the same handful of self-help books — all in anticipation of this single moment where she’d lean and tip herself over. All these speeches and buzzwords told her how to work hard, never give up, and keep pushing herself. While combing through the mental rolodex of unsolicited advice she’s received over the years, not a single one was helpful in the matter of how to get her legs to stop quivering. It must have been the damn shots and the pills, maybe even that bottle of carbonated sucrose water she was forced to chug for a brand deal.

None of that mattered now, and she only had her unstable knee to blame. In less than a minute, however, the buzzer would go off and she hoped she’d be able to control the shaking by then.

Moments after the buzzer went off, she felt the cheers of the spectators at the starting line become a distant echo. She moved through the snow with all the grace of an avalanche, though she knew those watching on a screen from a distance could never tell.

Delphine soon reached the clearing in the trees and brought herself to a stop. In these kinds of events, the winner was determined by a margin of seconds. Meaning that in that moment, all she could rely on were the expressions of her team. She could’ve sworn she was the first one back, but she saw her manager and trainer arguing with some guy wearing a stopwatch.

“It wasn’t an early start, you dimwit!” she heard her manager explain with his finger wagging so hard it could fall right off. “We were all there, she didn’t start early!”

Before the timid man with the stopwatch could respond, her trainer chimed in. “It must have been a leg spasm, it’s very common for athletes with mild heart conditions like Delphine to experience those as a result of her medication.”

“You hear that? Spasm! Now fix whatever you did to the scoreboard before I jam that watch of yours so far down your throat you’ll…”

“You’ll have to excuse Delphine’s manager, he’s a little highly strung when it comes to such matters. Delphine will have a blood test and examination done today that will confirm what I told you about her abnormally high muscle tone resulting in involuntary spasms. As long as you will commit to reversing her 2-minute penalty once that happens.” Louis had mastered the good cop-bad cop routine, it’s part of what made him such a master manipulator.

“If that happens,” the guy with the stopwatch responded.

“I’m glad we have an agreement.”

[Lehvant]

As Delphine was escorted off the field, she could see the medal recipients being congratulated by their teams. She felt guilty to hope for their downfall, but she did.

“Listen, I’ve got the most easily corruptible olympic doctor on speed dial. You’ll get your blood drawn, a light tap on your knee. You’ll be a gold medalist faster than you can say… whatever.” Louis turned to one of Delphine’s handlers, “Have her changed into something quick and meet me in the hotel lobby in half an hour.”

Delphine’s legs had turned to jello by that point, and she felt humiliated as she had to ask her handlers if she could sit down while she got changed.

She thought back to when she was a little girl, before she’d ever even felt snow. Back then, when her feet hurt, all she had to do was tug on her father’s pant leg twice for him to pick her up. This was the liminal space she occupied — too old to be carried home, but helpless enough to be seated on a bench and have two middle-aged women undress and dress her. They did their best not to gasp upon seeing the open wounds on her feet and the fact that they were now covered in blood. Instead, they silently went to Delphine’s closet to retrieve her slippers.

The last thing Delphine needed today was to be picked and prodded, but she knew that it would all be worth it if she would get a medal. It wasn’t just today, she’d been telling herself this her whole life. She had had a lonely life filled with rice cakes instead of birthday cake, trainers and managers instead of friends, training videos instead of cartoons… the only light at the end of the tunnel was that it would all be worth it as long as she could win a gold medal someday.

“You know the drill. Test her blood and get whatever you need to diagnose muscle spasms,” Louis told the doctor.

“But won’t they find…” Delphine began to ask in a whisper, before Louis could motion her to shush. The needle was in and out of her arm in an instant. As soon as the doctor stepped out, Louis began to explain to her that the injections that made her faster had chemical properties resembling heart medicine. The doctor would include in his report that this had in fact been the case. All Delphine had to do was sit and wait.

And wait she did. Eventually she fell asleep from exhaustion, that is until Louis shook her awake.

“You need to get ready, NOW!”

Delphine took a moment to adjust to her surroundings. She was now in her hotel room, and it was still bright out. She must have slept through the night. “How long was I asleep for?” she asked, while trying to mask her general confusion.

“Long enough to miss me making you a gold medalist,” Louis responded. “I stayed up all night for this, but it worked. They replayed the footage of you starting a billion times and went through every aspect of your medical history before finally admitting that they jumped the gun with your penalty.”

“So, that means I…”

“You won. Good job, you’ve made your country proud. Now you have exactly 30 minutes to get ready for the medal ceremony.”

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The door slammed behind Louis, and Delphine jumped out of bed. She galloped across her room, punching the air while jazzy pop music played in her head. For 15 seconds or so, she was overcome with pure ecstasy.

Soon enough, she was out of breath and her injuries began to sting. She threw herself back on the edge of her bed. “This is what it was all for,” she whispered to herself. She felt a twinge of disappointment as she heard herself say it. “This is what it was all for,” she repeated to herself. Her joy was replaced with simple relief. Sure, she was glad to not have brought shame on her family and entire nation. But she also didn’t feel happy, not the way she thought she would.

Instead, she stared blankly ahead as her handlers dressed her in uniform. She disassociated looking into the edge of her bed, thinking of all the years she put into this. By the time she was being escorted into the car, she was able to snap out of it. “Of course it didn’t feel that good!” she thought to herself. “Seeing the medal, holding it as it gets put on my neck. Now that’s the stuff dreams are made of! That’s when I’ll know it was all worth it.”

This thought put a giddy smile right back on her face. Even as she heard other skiers whisper the words “technicality” and “fluke” behind her, she didn’t care. This was her moment.

Ironically, Delphine thought it was harder to be nationalistic when you already dedicated your whole life to your country. Although most days she resented Lehvant more than she loved it, it still felt damn good to hear them play the Lehvantian national anthem. I did that, she thought to herself.

Standing on top of the platform, she felt the heavy weight of her gold medal around her neck. For the first time in her life, Delphine truly felt proud to be Lehvantian.

“Did they already distribute the medals? Okay… okay. Just stop filming.”

The voice sounded familiar. As Delphine squinted into the distance, she could make out the face. It was the man from the day before with the stopwatch, and standing next to him were two security guards.

“Ma’am. You’ll need to come with us.”

Delphine was jerked into reality, with a sinking feeling about what this was. One she didn’t want to admit just yet.

“Upon further examination, your blood test came up positive for steroids, and we have started an official investigation,” the man said.

“So that’s what they were…” Delphine whispered to no one, saying out loud what she had always suspected to be true. So much for plausible deniability, she thought to herself.

The security guards dragged her off the platform, and she immediately locked eyes with Delphine from Laeral. The other girls looked shocked, and some were laughing. The two Delphines simply exchanged knowing glances, and the other Delphine mouthed something to her that might have been "I'm sorry."

In the background, the Lehvantine national anthem was still distantly playing.