by Ali Bader
‘Do you know him?’ Faris asked, referring to the journalist.
‘No, but he asked me about my business. So what’s his story?’
‘A suspicious character. No one knows his story.’
Faris was holding a cup of coffee that he’d bought from the airport cafeteria. He was wearing a pair of khaki trousers that I hadn’t seen him in before. He looked as though he’d shrunk a little and lost some weight. He appeared different, perhaps a little paler than before. His bones seemed to protrude as a result of tiredness or premature ageing, and he didn’t look well enough to be able to complete this assignment. His movements, however, were so swift and energetic that they seemed to be someone else’s. He couldn’t bear to stand still. While I went to exchange some dollars for Iraqi dinars at a bureau de change, he kept pacing round in circles. He polished off the hot coffee in three quick gulps, as though it were a magic potion, without saying a word. We stood in the queue again to exit through a narrow doorway. On the other side, the Marines were also standing in a queue, with their clean-shaven faces, their blond hair, their open shirts and their khaki kitbags. Dealing with them was a female official who didn’t stop smiling, while we had a male official who frowned and pulled a long face. His hair was uncombed and he yawned incessantly, as if he’d just woken up.
As we left the airport, a grey Kia minibus was waiting for us. A fat driver was leaning on its bonnet, smoking. His head was shaved, his trousers were baggy and his shirt was buttoned to the top without a tie. His beard was unshaved. We placed our luggage quickly on the back seats. ‘Do you have your laptop with you?’ Faris shouted.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Don’t put it in the boot,’ he said. ‘And where’s the camera?’
‘With me too,’ I said.
‘Take it with you on the back seat.’
With a cigarette in his mouth, he carried his little bag on his back. From time to time he adjusted his glasses with his hand. He sat in front while I sat at the back. As the minibus gathered speed, we were met with tall concrete blocks and four- or five-metre-high barriers covered with an assortment of drawings: legendary heroes, trees and quails, luxury mansions and other colourful objects that were designed to disguise the lifeless concrete. Sparkling light flashed from electric lamps that hung here and there. As the daylight grew stronger, their light began to fade. There were cardboard paintings hanging down, posters that swayed gently in the breeze and political slogans of various types, attacking terrorism, advocating civil concord or calling for elections. There were pictures of politicians and clerics, of all sizes. Political posters and advertising predominated, some of them imitating Iranian revolutionary and graphic styles. They were dominated by the bold, extremely bright colours so revered by the Shias, such as red, green and black. Many of the posters included writing as a complement to the image, in order to maximize the effect. This style of vulgar art or kitsch was prevalent during the Saddam era, produced mainly by amateur artists who filled the public squares with their own type of artistic expression. The recent posters, however, tried to redefine the cultural and social values of Iraq and express its new state of turmoil. They also represented a type of political protest, for they were designed to deface the walls that had been built earlier by the Saddam regime as emblems of its power and authority.
On the road, convoys of black cars passed by. Armed men in black suits and black glasses sometimes jumped out of their vehicles suddenly and urgently, pointing their guns at any approaching car. ‘Blackwater,’ Faris said and then fell silent.
The war had wiped the landmarks from Baghdad’s streets. The Tigris was dry, the flowers were withered, the branches of the trees were scorched and the air was filled with dust. The gardens had lost their greenness and the buildings and houses stood randomly. Dust covered the pale green trees while rubbish accumulated on the pavements. There were potholes and ruts filled with stagnant water and high concrete walls shaded by blighted yellow palm leaves. The orange trees were dry and without fragrance. Only the smell of death was everywhere and its image haunted everything. The windowpanes were smashed to pieces by the boom of explosions, the walls alongside were cracked open and the streets were blackened by blasts.
As soon as our minibus reached a thick, high, concrete wall I knew we were about to enter the Green Zone. We stopped at an American checkpoint, which was considered the gateway to the most important area in the Middle East. The barriers were staggered so that the minibus had to zigzag between them. At the checkpoint stood a group of US soldiers in full combat gear, with their machine guns pointing at us. The driver followed the instructions given to him and moved forward slowly until the vehicle stopped near a wooden hut. Two very tall soldiers in Marine uniform looked out of the hut and ordered us to get out of the vehicle. As we stepped out, three 130 SM military helicopters flew out from a point beyond the concrete barrier. Their rotor blades beat like drums as they turned northwards and moved off into the distance like black insects. The sunlight was getting stronger. The muddy colour that dominated life and what was left of it in Baghdad began gradually to disappear and was replaced by a bright green. My watch showed midday. The temperature was close to thirty. The humid air was stirred by a refreshing breeze coming from the direction of the river that set the palm leaves and their shadows in motion. The American corporal came closer and started scrutinizing our faces and examining our passports, identity cards and papers. The driver was first, followed by Faris. The corporal finally placed his machine gun on his shoulder and took my passport. His face was not completely visible because of his steel helmet and the strap around his chin. As he stood there, four other soldiers behind him examined our faces.
‘What’s your profession?’ he asked, looking intently at my face and then inspecting the photo in my passport.
‘Journalist.’
‘Your press card,’ he said without looking up at me. So I handed it to him.
‘How long have you been out of Iraq?’
‘I was here a year ago …’
He nodded his head, handed back my passport and press card and ordered one of the soldiers to lead the dog around the vehicle to check for explosives. Then we all passed through a metal detector.
There was more zigzagging between concrete barriers and barbed wire until we found ourselves on a wide road. It was paved and very clean, and shaded by thick green trees. Suddenly we were in the middle of a very modern city, a city more akin to the American Midwest than the Middle East. As we approached a small roundabout in the centre of the city, two black cars overtook our vehicle, sped through a huge steel gate and stopped in front of a stone-fronted building. Two formally dressed men got out of the first car. Their guards, dressed in black and wearing dark glasses, swooped out of the second car. The street was full of imposing buildings, expensive cars, security guards and surveillance cameras.
The minibus stopped in front of a modern building. We carried our luggage up to the second floor. I followed Faris into an elegant apartment consisting of three well-furnished rooms. There was also a spacious living room with Western furniture, curtains, a wooden desk, a large bookcase and a beautiful balcony.
‘How much is the rent?’ I asked Faris.
‘A thousand dollars,’ he said as he carried my luggage into the room assigned to me. It had a bed, a table, a wardrobe and a chair. I followed him into the room and looked it over. Then I went out and sat on the large leather sofa placed directly beneath the window. I looked around the living room as Faris entered the second room and came out holding a large wallet.
‘Are you hungry?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s go to a bar, then we can go to the Press Cooperation Agency and AC Media & News.’
Parson’s Pub
‘The Green Zone has changed a great deal,’ I said as soon as we were out on the street. ‘Are there any new pubs?’
‘There are seven bars, a disco on Thursday nights, a sports bar, an English pub, a rooftop pub run b
y General Electric and a pub in a container run by Bechtel.’
‘Which one do you like best?’ I asked.
‘Parson’s Pub is quite nice and it’s always open to Iraqis.’
‘Only Iraqis?’
‘No, there are other nationalities as well. But mostly reporters.’
We saw a beautiful pub on our way. When I asked about it, he told me it was the most luxurious of all, with bamboo furniture. ‘Rumour has it,’ he added, ‘it’s the pub that belongs to the CIA so it’s known as Pub OGA.’ He turned to me smiling, ‘That’s the codename for the CIA.’
‘Is it really smart?’ I asked, trying to find out whether he’d been there or not.
‘Yes, I’ve been there once as a guest. It has a dance floor with a rotating disco ball and a games room.’
We passed a pizza place, two Chinese restaurants and a McDonald’s. It wasn’t long till we reached Parson’s Pub. As we arrived, I saw a large tent pitched in a parking lot, which had clearly once been a petrol station. According to Faris, this was one of the most exciting places to relax in the Green Zone. It had a random assortment of Marines, politicians, interpreters and correspondents who came to cover press conferences. As we walked past the tent, we saw American women soldiers in camouflage gear smoking hookahs, their machine guns lying beside them. There were also contractors on the make, chuckling aloud while drinking their beer, and strategic-affairs experts in light desert boots, white shirts and khaki trousers. They drank beer and played Risk, the board game. Suddenly Nermine Haidar, who’d flown in with me earlier that day, emerged from among those seated. She came forward in her jeans and open blouse that revealed her round breasts. She shook hands with us.
‘So, you’re here!’ she said.
I asked her about the journalist who’d been with her.
‘Don’t know how I got rid of him,’ she said.
‘Well, we’re going to the bar to have a bite to eat and a beer, and later we’re going the Press Cooperation Agency and AC Media & News. Would you like to join us?’
She paused for a moment. ‘Fine, I’ll join you later!’ she said.
We went into the bar, which was in the shape of a hut and fairly dark inside. As soon as we’d entered the main door, a black South African guard approached us. His accent was hard to understand but he told us to write our names in the guest book. The bar was beautiful, like a neighbourhood bar in Los Angeles or Miami. There was a lounge full of tables and chairs, and a dartboard on the wall. An American employee was holding a glass of beer in one hand and throwing one dart after another. At the front was a wooden barrel with draught beer. The pub itself was huge and consisted of several rooms. There were a few black barmen standing behind the wooden bar, with all kinds of bottles of drinks behind them. On the right was a tiny back room, used as a store for whisky, vodka and wine that could be sold at almost twice their price outside the Green Zone.
Faris stood at the bar and ordered two beers, at two dollars each.
‘Are you going to write your book on Kamal Medhat while you’re here in Baghdad?’ he asked.
‘I’ll write the Baghdad part here,’ I said, wiping froth from my lips with a tissue, ‘but I have to drop by the agency first to collect some important documents.’
‘Is your role as a ghost writer?’ he asked.
‘No, not at all. The book will come out in my name this time,’ I said. He nodded in agreement. ‘You know, of course, that I’ve written many reports under other people’s names,’ I added, still wiping my mouth, ‘but this time, I want the book to be mine.’
Then I began, I don’t know how, to draw an analytical comparison between two images that obsessed my imagination at the time: the image of the tobacconist – or the tobacco keeper, as I called him – as presented in Pessoa’s poem, and that of the ghost writer. I told Faris that each of us has two distinct personalities: one that we are born with, like the character of the keeper of flocks in Tobacco Shop, and one that we acquire, like that of the protected man. But few can distinguish the second from the first, whether regarding name, age or life history. What is even rarer is someone capable of creating the character of Campos, the tobacco keeper, who treated the other two personalities so condescendingly. He travelled and brought back the tobacco, guarded it, smoked it and lived his life stimulated by its clouds of smoke. That day, discussing the poem with Faris was like a hallucination, especially since he hadn’t read it. ‘Read it!’ I said to him as I drank my beer and continued to rave. I told him that I believed the work of a ghost writer was totally different from that of the tobacco keeper. The latter was unique in being enriched by the other two personalities, while the ghost writer was always ground down by his role. The ghost writer represented total absence and existed on another unconnected plane, living an empty life in an absolute vacuum. No sooner had I become totally absorbed in explaining my theory, than Nermine came in. The bar was overcrowded, so I stood up and beckoned her over. She came towards us and sat beside Faris, facing me. She raised her hands to tie her hair back with an elastic band. This was the first time I’d looked closely at her face. She was pretty with delicate features, thick black hair and a very fine nose. Her thick lips made her very sensual.
‘Would you like a drink?’ I asked her.
‘A beer,’ she said smiling.
It was Faris who asked her about her current work. She told him she was working for the BBC, making a documentary about Baghdad. On that day we learned many secrets of the Green Zone from Nermine. She told us that there was more than one sort of pass that enabled Green Zone residents to move around. The pass was your key to the Green Zone. We had to get either the military press ID or the pass for the International Zone, which was the official name of the Green Zone. The first one was red and the second was pink. The pink one was clearly the better, and was naturally only carried by Americans and government officials.
Nermine drank as she talked about the guards of the Green Zone. ‘They’re the most dangerous in the whole world,’ she said. ‘They’re authorized to kill, and you’d better keep a safe distance.’
She also explained the differences between the checkpoints. The ones closest to our residence were controlled by Gurkhas, the ferocious special security guards from Nepal. The ones further away were controlled by Irish guards.
‘But in general, people here are pretty varied,’ she said.
‘How do the Iraqis live here?’ I asked her, for I had, from time to time, visited the Green Zone but had never really got to know it. It was clear that Nermine Haidar had plenty of observations to make.
‘There’s always some misunderstanding,’ she said. ‘The translators, who are mostly graduates of English or American literature, think the American soldiers and officers will have some knowledge of literature and culture. But when they discover that those Americans are illiterate in every sense, it leads to friction. The Americans, for their part, believe everyone is ignorant or illiterate, and are then shocked to find that these people know more about their own culture than they do. While the Iraqis, who used to think Americans would know who Walt Whitman and John Steinbeck were, now realize they’re only a bunch of ignoramuses whose knowledge is limited to porn mags and sports news. That’s how the conflict starts.’
Speaking about Iraqi women she said, ‘Iraqi women have misconceptions about Americans, based on Hollywood movies. They start out thinking an American will be liberal and cultured and will therefore respect women. But he sees her only as a whore. The Americans treat the Iraqi women who work here just like whores.’
Nermine also talked about a very pretty Iraqi woman journalist, who had gone to interview some American soldiers and never come back. She believed that the journalist had been kidnapped, raped and killed, and that all traces of the crime had been completely erased.
Many translators came in and out of the bar. I knew them well, of course, and they represented a phenomenon worthy of study. They were mostly young people, recent university graduates. After the total c
ollapse of the state in 2003 they couldn’t find employment. All they could do was work as interpreters in the Green Zone, a hazardous line of work where their lives were constantly under threat. They were everywhere: on the streets, with foreign troops and at checkpoints. Those translators, influenced by Western literature, were mostly well dressed, very civilized and highly Europeanized. They were far more sophisticated than the American soldiers and officers who treated them with such contempt.
What was truly astonishing, at least from my perspective, was that they all had Western names: Michael, John, Robert or Sam. They were never called by their Arab names. When I asked Nermine about this, she said the Americans had trouble pronouncing Arab names such as Abdel Rahman, Majeed, Rebhi and Fakhri. So they used those fake names instead, which were easy and accessible and created no psychological barriers. Iraqi names in general suggested a kind of tacit enmity, while Western names, on the other hand, allowed Iraqi translators to forget the realities of their situation and live the illusion that they were truly American. This led them to act arrogantly, as though they’d appropriated the white masks of the Americans for themselves. This was what French philosopher Frantz Fanon meant by black skin and white masks. According to him, colonialism, in effect, oppresses and crushes people, hollowing them out and filling the void with a fragmented image of their original personality. In other words, the character of the keeper of flocks in Tobacco Shop is replaced by the character of the protected man, with a new name that is always American. It’s a dreamed-of character but one that cannot be fulfilled due to the oppressive, humiliating presence of the Americans. It is a character that is not ‘protected’. The first character, the keeper of flocks, is spurned and discarded like rubbish. As with colonialism, a bitter conflict arises between Alberto Caeiro and Ricardo Reis, which renders the presence of de Campos, the tobacco keeper, almost impossible.