Fives and Twenty-Fives

by Michael Pitre

  The dust from the American Humvees had not settled before Hani’s next customers arrived. A truck hauling diesel fuel from the Baiji refinery, south to Fallujah and Ramadi. An older man and his two sons, Sunnis probably, took a break and drank their sodas by the water while Abu Abdul flashed his friendly, toothless smile and brought them fried fish.

  While waiting a few days for Pederson to return, Hani did a good business and created sufficient profits from his first inventory to give a generous share to Haji Fasil and Abu Abdul. He doubled his inventory with the next buy and still set aside a good sum for travel. Enough to get the three of us to Jordan and beyond, possibly.

  But talk of leaving did not come, and I did not inquire. I feared it would necessitate talk of finding my father. If our departure seemed orderly, well planned, and safe, Hani would have insisted we at least attempt to find my family. He would have thought this a kindness for me. Better to wait for a gloomy moment in which a hasty exodus might seem justified. In any case, it seemed Hani might earn enough from his trade with the Americans to finance our travels, at least to Jordan, and quickly enough that we might not need my father.

  In the mornings and the evenings, when we all gathered around the fire ring or at the beach, conversation went elsewhere. Weather, fishing, ideas for new inventory. Hani made plans for the future, though he did not dare to use this word.

  Over those short weeks, we all took to the rhythm of life on the lake. Mundhir and Abu Abdul, silent and inseparable, rose at dawn to fish before the heat became too uncomfortable. Hani drove Haji Fasil to the Dra Dijlia market each day around midmorning, and again at night, to do his old, dependable business. Militants of all stripes continued to buy from him. But in partnership with Hani, he began to see the possibility of expansion.

  Maybe his own truck. Maybe a stall in the Ramadi Grand Souk.

  For my part, I read in a chair by the lake and worked on my thesis. I had left my latest draft in Professor Al-Rawi’s office for fear of checkpoints, but had enough in my memory to make notes, edits, and additions on bits of trash paper. I treated my time on the lake like a vacation. An academic retreat. I excused myself from farm labor with the rationale that I was the only true vacationer at Tourist Town. Important work all its own, keeping up that lie.

  But then Pederson returned and was soon making an appearance each day, though the hour varied. My vacation activities were suspended during these visits, and for several hours I followed him around and spoke for him. The marines were less aggressive with each visit, but always made sure the highway was watched while their officer did his business with us.

  Other potential customers, venturing down the highway in trucks and taxicabs, sped away at the sight of marines at Tourist Town, and I began to wonder how long before the men in the passing cars, all of them from Ansar al-Sunna or Jaish al-Mahdi or some other death squad, realized that the Americans were not searching or harassing us. How long before they reasoned that we were doing business with them and drinking tea like old friends? I knew we had until then to leave if we were to live. I would have to convince Hani.

  To Hani’s disappointment, Pederson did not always bring dollars. He sometimes brought Iraqi dinar, instead, crisp and new. Still, Pederson and his marines made up for this inconvenience with large buys of trinkets like kaffiyeh and prayer beads. Mostly, they wanted bootleg movies from Hong Kong cinemas. They bought all we had.

  After business, Lieutenant Pederson always accepted tea and sat down with us to make light discussion. I interpreted for him, wanting to do well and hoping to be honest.

  “Tell me, Hani,” Pederson asked one day, after a long silence in the conversation, “seen any folks from out of town around here?”

  I tried to appear bored, and not terrified, by this question. “Hani, he wants to know if we have seen any foreigners . . .”

  Before I could warn him to watch his words, he answered happily, “Sure. Guys from Syria. Plenty of Syrians. And some Egyptians, too. Most are hauling fertilizer down to the farms. You have seen them, too, right, Kateb?”

  Pederson had already heard the words, the English and Arabic pronunciations similar enough, and there remained no opportunity for me to lie.

  “Syria and Egypt,” I said. “He has seen gentlemen from Syria and Egypt.”

  Pederson took a sip and spoke directly to me. “What about you, Kateb? Seen any out of towners?”

  “Sure. Nobody lives here except us. Everyone is from out of town.”

  Pederson smiled. “Right. Why don’t we take a walk down to the lake, just you and me?”

  I followed him down to the beach while Hani collected stacks of dinar from the marines in exchange for the bootleg movies I had labeled in English with black marker.

  “This is a nice place, Kateb,” Pederson began. “The only stop for miles. Everyone passes by, and I bet half of them stop.”

  “This was Hani’s plan. And it is working for him. But when this place makes enough money, we are leaving.”

  Pederson frowned. “Leaving to go where? Back to Baghdad?”

  “No. We will go to Jordan first, and from there we will travel most anywhere that grants us visas.”

  “Giving up on Iraq?” he asked, appearing confused.

  “We lack good people. And without good people, we won’t have a good country.” I meant it, but Pederson smiled as though I had made a joke.

  “Don’t leave without telling me. And if you change your mind, come find me in Ramadi. We need good terps. Been meaning to give this to you.” He handed me an envelope with papers, pulled from inside his body armor. “Hide this until you need it. But if you’re interested, give it to the guard at Government Center. He’ll let you in.”

  I slipped the envelope quickly into my pants before Hani or Mundhir could see. “Shukran. Most likely not. But thank you.”

  We walked back to the fire ring, where Hani counted his money. I could tell by his attention to the bills that he had not seen the envelope, and I decided to keep it secret.

  “Pleasure as always.” Pederson put his hand over his heart in thanks, as he had learned from us.

  I shook his hand, firm like an American, and looked him in the eye.

  When the Americans left, I asked Hani about his business.

  “We need more movies,” he said. “They buy them all. Nothing left for the truckers.”

  “Truckers buy those?”

  “Of course. American action movies mostly.”

  I opened my mouth to say, “Ironic,” but he had already walked away. Off to the strongbox where he hid his stack.

  As he left, I noticed Haji Fasil in the doorway of the house and discerned at once, from the look on his face, that he knew of the envelope.

  “Come inside for a moment, Kateb?”

  “Certainly. I should like to have a nap.”

  Inside, I wasted no time. I simply pulled the envelope from my underwear and dropped it on the floor. “Papers to work for the Americans in Ramadi. Not money, in case you thought I might be cheating the group.”

  I walked past Haji Fasil into the room where I kept my book and notes, thinking the conversation over. But when I came back, I saw that he had scooped the envelope into his hands and was trying to lift a tile near the window under which he could hide it.

  “No need for that, Haji,” I said, confused. “We can just burn it.”

  Haji Fasil stood and pulled me by the shoulders, right into his face. “You need to keep these papers, Kateb!”

  “Haji, I’m going to Jordan—”

  “With soda money? Don’t be a fool!”

  I heard a car pull off the highway, the familiar sound of Iraqi customers who had waited for the marines to depart before they approached.

  Haji Fasil dropped to his knees to finish the work of hiding the envelope and, when he rose to his feet, whispered, “You and Hani. You have different fates. You must know this.”

  I heard car doors close and Hani rush to greet our new guests. “No, Haji. I am afraid
you are wrong. Hani is my brother. Mundhir might stay, and I would be happy for that, but Hani and I have plans and they do not include a knife to the throat in this desert.”

  Outside, I heard Hani call my name.

  “Then go now,” Haji Fasil said. “Leave him with me and I will take him south, to Ramadi possibly. He will do better without you here.”

  I looked to the dirty tile and considered the American papers hidden beneath it. “I’m not leaving him.”

  Growing insistent, Hani again called my name.

  “I have to go see what Hani wants.” I brushed past Haji Fasil and through the door.

  As my eyes adjusted to the bright afternoon sun, I heard Hani say, “You have visitors, Kateb.”

  When my sight returned, I saw the old, black Mercedes from my driveway in Baghdad, and my father and my brother standing beside it.

  After Action Report: Enemy Activity Trends

  1. Improvised explosive devices shifting from artillery shells to ammonium nitrate charges. Insurgents mix fertilizer with diesel fuel and pack the resulting explosive compound into plastic sacks. The devices have few metal components, making them difficult to detect.

  2. New coalition jamming devices increasingly effective at defeating remote detonators. As a result, cellular phone and radio-based initiators increasingly rare.

  3. Anti-Iraqi Forces shifting from remote detonation to victim-­operated triggers. Insurgents construct pressure plates from two or more metallic leads, designed to compress under the weight of a coalition vehicle. Compression of metallic leads completes the circuit and allows voltage from a battery to activate denotation cord.

  4. A washing machine timer often provides a circuit break between the trigger and the battery. This technique allows insurgents to plant a device and withdraw to a safe distance before the device is effectively armed.

  Respectfully submitted,

  P. E. Donovan

  A Fair Fight

  As planned, Paige meets me at the West End harbor on Saturday afternoon. I stand off to the side while she examines every inch of Sentimental Journey. She doesn’t laugh out loud, as I feared she would at first sight of the wreck, but she stops short of encouraging me.

  “I do love these old boats, though,” she offers. “New boats don’t have these lines, with the flying sterns and the low freeboard. Beautiful. But you should know that there’s a reason. She won’t be as fast or stable as a modern design.”

  “I’ve read all about that.”

  “Says the guy who’s never been on a sailboat.” Then a thought furrows her brow, and the pitch of her voice shoots up as she quips, “You know what?”

  I follow her from the moldy scrabble of the municipal harbor, down the freshly scrubbed piers of Southern Yacht Club, to a blue-hulled Catalina named Smile.

  “Dad used to be a real Beach Boys fan,” she explains.

  “Did they have a falling out?”

  “No. I mean he was . . . He passed a few years ago.” Before I can apologize or offer my condolences, she adds, “Smile isn’t as well kept as it used to be. So don’t take this as an example of how to keep yours when she’s finished.”

  I take the hint and leave the subject of her father alone.

  Paige tells me to sit still in a corner of the cockpit and not to touch anything. She hustles around the boat setting sail, with one word explanations for each activity like “Halyard,” “Mainsheet,” “Traveler,” and “Tricky.”

  The late afternoon is overcast and cold, and the lake is gray and uninviting. We’re the only boat leaving harbor. The rollers hit us as the bow rounds the navigation light at the head of the rock jetty, and the boat begins to pitch.

  “You’re not sailing, yet,” Paige remarks over the noise of the exhaust. “That’s just waves. Just so you know. We’re still on the engine.”

  Huddled against the cold, with my chin in my chest and my hands in my coat pockets, I mumble, “Thanks for the tip.”

  I must look hurt, or simply wretched, because her eyebrows come together in an expression of guilt, and she offers me an olive branch.

  “Here. Go up to the mast. When I tell you to start pulling that rope, the halyard, really put your back into it. It’ll be heavy.”

  I nod in acknowledgment and step gingerly from the cockpit, one hand always on the boat.

  “Now,” she says, cutting the motor, “heave.”

  I pull down hard on the rope and hear the mainsail slugs squeal reluctantly through the dry groove in the mast. She wasn’t kidding about the boat being outside its maintenance window. But the challenge grows on me, and five pulls later the mainsail is up. I cleat the halyard with a knot I know to be wildly wrong and make my way aft into the cockpit.

  As I take my seat, Paige pulls the tiller toward her. The sail fills and stiffens as the bow comes around. Smile heels abruptly to one side and gathers headway. Paige helms us into the deep trough of a whitecap. The pit of my stomach delights when we break the crest. I close my eyes and don’t even bother with the fine sprays of brackish lake water pelting my face. Somehow, in my dreams, I’ve imagined this motion perfectly.

  When I open my eyes and look up, Paige is grinning at me in a way that I don’t recognize. She’s released something, pulled some cotter pin that’s held the muscles of her cheeks taut against the bone.

  “You love this, don’t you?” She beams.

  “I do.”

  After about an hour, Paige lets me take the helm. The vibration of the wooden tiller against my palm sets my heart racing. We make laps up and down the lakefront, two hundred meters from shore. She talks constantly, explaining the exact purpose of every winch, line, and cheat. She walks me through the steps for executing efficient tacks and jibes.

  When I turn too steeply into a jibe, she admonishes me with a smile to “Steer small. Seriously.”

  I give the rudder a sudden pull.

  “Asshole. Steer small. You almost threw me overboard that time.”

  At dusk, I help her lower the sails and set the anchor.

  We watch the moonrise. Pressed up against me for warmth, under a moldy blanket she retrieves from belowdecks, Paige tells me about a friend with a covered dockyard space I can probably lease on the cheap and use to work on Sentimental Journey. I take hold of her face and interrupt her midsentence with a kiss. Her body goes limp, and I exhale with complete deliverance as she kisses me back.

  When nothing we do, no means of physical proximity we can conjure, will keep us warm, we go belowdecks. Eventually, reluctantly, we fall asleep.

  In the morning, after motoring back into harbor and working to secure Smile at her moorings, I promise to meet her at Molly’s on Thursday night for drinks with classmates.

  “They have a special on High Life,” she says. “Only a dollar.”

  “Just paper, right?” I say, spooling the bowline with newly acquired craft in my wrists.

  Paige doesn’t answer. She doesn’t laugh. She puts on a serious, nurturing face as she waits for me on the pier. Showing me she’s ready to hear more. More of that story about the burning money. More about the old man and his hay. More of anything else I’d like to tell her. She’s ready to listen.

  From nowhere, a terror rises inside me. The thought of responsibly drinking beers in public pushes me near to panic. I imagine standing next to her and smiling, our classmates asking me questions, and I yearn for the smallest, darkest room in the city where I can hide until I’m sure she’s forgotten me. I fight it as we walk through the parking lot, back to our separate cars. But something has soured in me. I’m polite, kissing her good-bye as sincerely as I can, but I’m sure Paige notices it, too.

  I sleepwalk through Sunday, and I go back to work on Monday morning. Stall isn’t as friendly as he was on Friday afternoon, and he doesn’t put up any fight when I tell him I’ll be working on Sullivan’s analytics all day. He feigns disappointment when I tell him I won’t have time to grab lunch, like he’d wanted to cancel it himself but hadn’t known how.


  I leave Stall’s office and shuffle down the hallway, to my cubicle in its windowless corner. The stack of research assignments sets me at ease. This much work is a gift, a reason to hide for the entire day, focus on these quiet tasks and not speak a word to anyone.

  This much work might last into Thursday night, giving me a reason to break my promise to Paige. This much work might even follow me home from the office. When my mother sends me an e-mail asking why I never answer my phone, I can claim with a clear conscience that I’ve been too busy.

  I sit at my desk, triaging Sullivan’s research assignments, and try to convince myself that she’ll expect me to stand her up. It won’t surprise her, I tell myself, fighting the urge to smash my cell phone so I won’t have to see her confused messages as the hours slip away on Thursday night.

  I miss the phone center. The unreachability of it all. The line of people waiting to call home. The scratchy connection. The rough smell of industrial cleaner. All the good reasons to get off the phone whenever you needed it.

  On my birthday, not long after Marceau died, I went to the phone center before evening chow. The guest worker, a skinny kid with shoulder-length, black hair, handed me an index card with a number on it. He gestured to the waiting area before settling back into his chair to watch a Philippine soap opera on his laptop.

  I sat down and waited my turn to call home, sizing up the middle-aged national guardsman in my booth. I tried to judge from the look of him how long I’d have to wait. Skinny and hunched over in his Army uniform, he had gray hair and deep wrinkles in his face. He’d grown frail while other men his age had grown fat. I recognized him from his job at the chow hall, where he sat on a stool and made sure Marines washed their hands. That was his whole job. It was always strange seeing a forty-year-old private. It was strange having the National Guard here, at all.

  I watched him arrange five calling cards on the desk and dial four times before he found a card that worked. When someone in America picked up, he leaned forward and spat, “Put the money back in the account.” Blood boiled into his face, filling his wrinkles from the bottom up. “Put the money back in the account so I have something to live on when I get home.”