The Mirage

by Matt Ruff

  “Damn it,” Amal said.

  “You’re doing fine,” Salim told her. “Stay cool, we’re almost at the end.”

  There were only two buildings left in Amal’s lane, a house and a hospital. She watched the windows, and got two Minutemen in quick succession, one—“Target right!”—with a revolver, whom she killed, the other—“Target left!”—with a daisy, whom she (just barely) let live. In his lane, Salim shot a Redskins fan with a pipe bomb, and then a final chime sounded and the voice of the gunnery sergeant said, “Course completed. Please clear your weapons.”

  Amal removed the magazine from her rifle and emptied the chamber, calling out “Clear!” once this was done. Salim called out “Clear!” as well and a long buzzer sounded, indicating that the course was, for the moment, safe.

  “You did well for a first-timer,” Salim said as they walked back down Main Street.

  “I don’t think those two poor innocents I shot would agree with you,” Amal said. But she was pleased with her performance. Earlier at the sniper-rifle range she’d been a bundle of nerves, barely able to focus on the target.

  She was beginning to get used to him. Thank God he didn’t sound like her father. The timbre of his voice was more like Anwar’s, and while Anwar’s voice in young Shamal’s mouth was unnerving in its own way, at least she didn’t feel as though she were talking to the dead.

  Zinat had been joined by another Lioness. “Do you mind if we have a go?” Zinat asked, nodding at the course.

  “Please,” said Amal. She and Salim turned in their weapons, and then, at Amal’s suggestion, stepped outside to have a smoke.

  Before the invasion, East Potomac Park had been LBJ’s private golf course, and you could still get in nine holes down by Hains Point. But the Marines, on the pretext of securing the Tidal Basin, had turned the upper part of the peninsula into a carnival of violence. East of the blockhouse that contained the indoor target range was a great earthen berm, erected around the sniper’s range to stop stray rounds from traveling into Southwest D.C. To the north was the grenade toss, and to the right of that in a concrete pen, handheld sprayers belched fire at asbestos-clad mannequins. West was the Potomac, with Marines and other Green Zone refugees sunning themselves on the riverbank, while patrolling gunboats kept watch for waterborne suicide bombers.

  Salim bent close to light Amal’s cigarette. She glimpsed her father’s ghost again and shivered.

  “So where did you learn to shoot?” Salim asked.

  “Beirut.”

  He was surprised. “You’re Lebanese?”

  “Baghdadi,” Amal said. “But I went to college at U of L.”

  “Huh! Me too!”

  She played it coy: “Really? Forgive me, you don’t look old enough to be a graduate.”

  “Ah, I’m not—I was only enrolled for about a week.” He looked around. “I didn’t want to miss this.”

  “Doing your part for the War on Terror,” Amal said. “Your parents must be very proud.”

  He frowned, and she worried she’d been too forward. But then he said: “My dad, you know, he’s not entirely happy with me . . .”

  “Oh?”

  “He’s a conservative,” Salim explained, loyalty and resentment warring on his face for a moment. “He loves me, but he doesn’t want me to take any risks.”

  “And your mother? What does she think?”

  This time there was no conflict: He just looked guilty. “She’s scared for me. In her last letter . . .” He trailed off, took a drag on his cigarette. “But I’ve promised her I’ll be OK.”

  “Well then,” Amal said, eyeing one of the gunboats on the river. “As long as you promised.”

  He laughed. “It’s only a seven-month deployment! In no time I’ll be home again, and bored . . . So what’s it like to work for Homeland Security?”

  “Exciting,” she said. “More exciting than I expected, actually. And before this I worked for the Bureau, which was also pretty cool. You get to chase bank robbers. Of course,” Amal added, “for either job you need to finish college.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Salim said. “I promised my mother I’d do that, too.”

  They tossed their cigarette butts and went back inside the target range, where Zinat and her friend had just finished. “What’s wrong?” Salim asked, seeing their faces. “Don’t tell me you lost!”

  “I didn’t,” Zinat said. “But Tamara shot a kid with a soda cup.”

  “A fat American child,” Tamara sniffed, handing her rifle back to the gunnery sergeant.

  “It’s well-known that soda’s no good for your health,” Salim offered.

  “Speaking of unhealthy sweets,” said Amal, “what is that about?” She pointed to a dish of hard candies that sat on the counter in front of the gun storage area. The candy dish, which had been fashioned from a piece of a mortar shell casing, had a steel tab sticking up from its center, to which a crude skull and crossbones had been welded. Just in case this wasn’t clear enough, a little cardboard sign had been taped beneath the skull, reading FORBIDDEN! Amal had noticed a similar candy dish at the sniper range, although that one had contained toffees.

  “That,” said the gunnery sergeant, “is an object lesson about the importance of following rules.”

  “And of the long-term effects of testosterone on one’s sense of humor,” Zinat added. The gunny scowled at her, but she smiled back sweetly until he turned away.

  “They’re not really poisoned, though,” Amal said.

  “Oh yes,” Salim said, “with cyanide.” He explained: “There’s a Christian holiday here, called Halloween—the Eve of the Saints—where it’s traditional to give away candy to strangers. Last year, the chow hall got an anonymous gift of Halloween candies.”

  “Did anyone die?”

  “No Marines did. There was a stray dog that hung around behind the Watergate kitchens, begging for scraps. One of the cooks gave it a sweet, and that’s how they found out about the poison. The candies were supposed to be destroyed, but as you can see, some were kept as souvenirs. And as good luck charms, of course.”

  “Good luck charms,” Amal said. “Because no one died.”

  “Except the dog,” Salim said. Smiling, he took one of the candies from the dish and gave it to her. “Here. To keep you safe while you’re in America.”

  Amal stared at the candy, which was wrapped in a twist of green cellophane. “Thanks,” she said. “I think.”

  “Just don’t forget and eat it by mistake,” he told her.

  Samir spent the morning trying to hide from Al Qaeda.

  Just before leaving Baghdad, he’d gotten a message from Idris saying that a Qaeda agent would contact him in America with instructions. Samir had no idea what he was going to be ordered to do, but he assumed that it would be something dangerous, possibly fatal, almost certainly illegal, and likely a betrayal of both his country and his friends.

  He also knew that he couldn’t say no. But during the night a desperate strategy had occurred to him: If he couldn’t refuse the agent’s orders, perhaps he could avoid receiving them. The Green Zone was big enough that it ought to be easy to make himself scarce for the day. In the evening he’d have to return to the Smithsonian, but that was a pretty big place too; maybe he could sleep in a closet, or find a diorama of an empty tomb to curl up in.

  All he had to do was make it through the next twenty-four hours. Tomorrow he’d be out in the countryside, and God willing if the insurgents didn’t get him by tomorrow night he’d be on a plane bound for home. Then when Idris asked, “Did you do what my man told you to?” he could say honestly, “What man?”

  And Idris would accept that answer. Sure . . . But Samir would worry about that later.

  Of more immediate concern was the discovery that it wasn’t just his own countrymen he needed to steer clear of. As he sat with Mustafa in the Watergate’s lobby, waiting for Colonel Yunus to finish up his business, Samir regarded each new black or Arab face that came into view with a mixtu
re of fear and suspicion. When a group of Somali Marines burst through the lobby doors in a cacophony of laughter, he nearly jumped out of his chair.

  Mustafa lowered the Washington Post he’d been perusing. “Too much coffee at breakfast, Samir?”

  “I’m fine,” Samir replied. His attention shifted to a coal-skinned maintenance man who was up on a ladder replacing some bulbs on the lobby chandelier. To a casual observer he would have seemed completely absorbed by this task, but because he wore a white knit prayer cap, Samir became convinced that the guy was casting sideways glances at him.

  “You know what,” Samir said, “I think I’m going to skip the tour of the White House . . .”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. I’m exhausted, so I think I’ll just hike back to the museum and take a nap.”

  “You should at least let the colonel get you a ride,” Mustafa said. “It’s a long walk.”

  “Nah, the fresh air will be good for me.”

  The maintenance man, done changing bulbs, was coming down the ladder now. Samir stood up quickly, ignoring Mustafa’s perplexed look, and bolted for the nearest exit.

  Passing through a set of double doors he found himself in the adjoining office building at the intersection of three hallways. A group of Arab Marines approached along the left-hand passage, and two black men in suits were having a conversation in the hallway straight ahead; to his right he saw only a Hispanic woman vacuuming the carpet. Samir went right, his heart skipping a beat when the woman greeted him with a hearty, “Peace be unto you!”

  Two minutes and several multicultural encounters later he was out on the sidewalk. A bus idled beside a sign that read FREE SHUTTLE in both Arabic and English. Samir boarded, not bothering to ask where the bus was headed, and slouched across two seats so that no one could sit next to him.

  The doors closed. Just as the bus started moving, someone came running up alongside of it, banging furiously for admittance. Samir tensed, but when the bus driver opened the doors again, the latecomer turned out to be a white man with a silver cross pinned to his lapel.

  The bus proceeded along its route, the driver calling out stops: State Department, Department of the Interior, various other agencies of the new American government, some of them still more hoped-for than real. Samir stared dully at the passing scenery while the bus was in motion. When new passengers got on, he lowered his eyelids and pretended to doze. When the driver announced “White House!” Samir slumped down below the level of the windows and remained that way until the executive mansion was far behind him.

  He got off at the Hoover Building stop. The bus driver didn’t say what government agency was headquartered there, but from the look of the place—a boxy, concrete structure hinting at kilometers of filing cabinets—Samir assumed it was something stodgy and ultrabureaucratic, the Department of Weights and Measures, maybe. He thought about sneaking inside and finding an empty office to hole up in.

  Instead he picked a random direction and started walking. The sun rose higher in the sky; the morning got hot, and humid. Samir stopped to take a drink at a water fountain. He noticed a Christian church across the street. Its front doors were propped open, and a sign proclaimed in multiple languages, ALL SOULS WELCOME.

  The church’s interior was cool and dim. There was no service in progress, and despite the open invitation the place was almost deserted. As Samir sat in a pew near the back, he could see only one other person, a gray-haired Chinese woman. Her head was bowed, and at first he thought she was praying, but then he heard her snores.

  He looked up at the altar and was relieved to see that it was decorated with a plain cross rather than a crucifix. The Christian habit of depicting the prophet Jesus’s tortured body was objectionable on a number of levels, and while Samir wasn’t personally offended by the practice, he did think it was creepy. The empty cross, however much it had come to be associated with terrorism in recent years, seemed far more civilized.

  The hairs on Samir’s neck prickled as someone slid into the pew behind him. He told himself to stay calm. But then a hand gripped the back of his pew and a voice said in Arabic, “Aren’t you one of Lut’s friends?” which was the code phrase Idris had told him to be alert for.

  Samir let out a sigh of despair. He turned around. Sitting behind him was the white Christian from the bus. The silver cross on his lapel—definitely a symbol of terror in this context—shined faintly in the churchlight.

  “You?” Samir said. “You’re Qa—”

  “Shut up,” said the Qaeda man. “Follow me outside.”

  There was a pocket park adjacent to the church. Something about the way it was laid out—the configuration of the benches, perhaps—reminded Samir of a park in Kadhimiyah where, not long ago, two gay men caught in a tryst had been beaten by a mob.

  The Qaeda agent led him behind a hedge at the back of the park, then rounded on him with his fist clenched. “Take this!”

  Samir raised his arms to ward off the blow. “Wait! Wait!”

  “I said take this!” The Qaeda agent slapped a cell phone into one of his upraised palms. Samir fumbled and nearly dropped it, then held it out in front of himself as though it were contaminated.

  “What . . . What’s this for?”

  “It’s for tomorrow. When you go out on patrol with the Marines, you’re going to bring it with you.”

  Samir was shaking his head even before he thought of an argument: “I’m not supposed to have a phone with me. They told us—it’s a security risk.”

  “Never mind the rules,” the Qaeda agent said. “The Humvee you’ll be riding in will probably be equipped with a broad-spectrum radio jammer, so an ordinary cell phone wouldn’t work anyway. This one’s been modified to transmit on an unblocked military frequency.”

  Samir kept shaking his head. “You want me to make a call from a vehicle full of soldiers?”

  “The speed dial on this phone is very simple. You don’t even need to take it out of your pocket, just leave it turned on, and then when you get the signal push two buttons. I’ll show you.”

  “What signal?”

  “There’ll be a billboard by the side of the road with a white cross painted on it. As soon as you pass the billboard, you’ll hit the speed dial and let it ring.”

  “And what happens then?” Samir asked.

  The Qaeda man showed him a picture of Malik and Jibril. This was not the same photo Samir kept in his wallet. It was a photo he’d never seen before, the boys playing in their bedroom in their new home in Basra. The picture taker, whoever he was, had been standing outside the bedroom window, at night, looking in.

  “What happens then?” the Qaeda man said. “Your sons get to grow up, that’s what happens then.”

  The White House was something of a letdown. Mustafa would have liked to meet the new American president, about whom he’d heard good things, but a scheduling conflict made that impossible. Absent its chief occupant, the building was just another palace, albeit more tasteful than the Hussein residence. The rose garden was pretty.

  From the White House they took a driving tour of some of the Zone’s other sights, eventually circling back to the center of the Mall, where they proceeded on foot to the base of the Washington Monument. Colonel Yunus drew Mustafa’s attention to a series of pockmarks in the obelisk’s north face. These were, he explained, the result of insurgent mortar strikes, the Monument having become a target after rumors spread that Boulos al Darir was planning to use it as the gnomon for a giant Islamic prayer clock.

  “False rumors?” Mustafa asked.

  “Rumors,” said Colonel Yunus. “Speaking of prayer, it’s almost noon. Shall we stop back at the museum before lunch?”

  They walked east along the Mall. The colonel pointed to a castle-like building which he said was another branch of the Smithsonian, dedicated to Christendom’s wars. “LBJ’s misadventures feature prominently, but there’s also quite a lot about the original crusades. It’s rather interesting to see them po
rtrayed from the antagonists’ perspective.”

  “Is the crusaders’ wing where my guest bed came from?”

  “Yes.” The colonel smiled. “I rather doubt it belonged to Pope Urban, though.”

  Ahead in the distance they could see the half-completed dome of the new Capitol Building. A low-flying cloud passing behind it made the dome seem momentarily whole. Mustafa’s inner ear went crazy. He stumbled and would have fallen if the colonel hadn’t caught him.

  “Careful,” Colonel Yunus said. “You have dizzy spells?”

  “I do get vertigo sometimes,” Mustafa told him. “But I think this is just jet lag.”

  “Chronic vertigo is common here. It’s a symptom of what the doctors call Gulf Syndrome.”

  “Gulf Syndrome? Like the Gulf War?”

  “Yes, but also gulf in the sense of a void, a gap between the way things are and the way instinct says they should be. The sense of dislocation is difficult to describe exactly, but once you’ve felt it—”

  “I have felt it,” Mustafa said. “I think my father has, too.”

  The colonel nodded. “I’d heard that there were cases of the Syndrome back in Arabia. Here though it’s much more pervasive. Almost everyone experiences it to some degree.”

  “What do you do for it?”

  “Valium helps, supposedly. Also certain antihistamines. For myself I prefer a more natural remedy.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Devotion to God, five times a day,” the colonel said. “Not quite as potent as benzodiazepine, perhaps, but it has other benefits.”

  Mustafa snuck another look at the Capitol, and this time when his balance wavered, he knew it wasn’t jet lag. Forcibly shifting his attention, he said: “It really is different here, isn’t it? So many trees, Gaddafi would be jealous.” Glancing up at the sun: “Even the summer heat feels different.”