A Disappearance in Damascus

by Deborah Campbell

  She had not asked the Americans to come to Iraq, but she knew that nothing could be accomplished without them. In sweeping away the state, they had become the state. And though their ranks included some fine and decent people, and others whom she saw as simply desperate, she had enough experience of war to know that soldiers followed orders. She also knew that the Iraqi people had expected the Americans to swiftly organize elections, then leave. But a new realization was dawning: the war had just begun.

  —

  “I remember one of the nicest afternoons in Iraq was at her house.” David Luhnow was talking to me over Skype from his office in Mexico City, where he was now the Latin American bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. I had contacted him to get his understanding of their work together, for the writing of this book. He seemed pleased by the prospect of talking about Ahlam. He was full of praise for her work, for how meticulous she was—her powers of observation and recall—and especially for what she had taught him about her country. Though he wondered if her open mind, her “can-do” attitude, the way she scorned the “Sunni–Shia–Kurd thing,” had made him more optimistic about the future than he ought to have been.

  It was a lovely afternoon in May when Luhnow went to Ahlam’s house. He sat in her garden drinking tea with the Americans who had “set up camp” in her home. They had yet to be reassigned, and their tanks were parked in her yard. “They were sort of based there. She had welcomed them and helped them reach out to the neighbourhood on projects and security. It was very encouraging to see that dynamic.”

  Some of the guys had gone swimming in the Tigris. He remembered Ahlam shouting to warn them about the current. The atmosphere was warm and relaxed, but a part of him wondered what other Iraqis would think.

  “She welcomed the Americans in terms of helping her own people,” he told me, “because they were the de facto authority. She was very much a community leader and tried to organize people immediately after the war and in the first months of the occupation. She was very smart about what needed doing. I think some of that ended up getting her into trouble.”

  He had already begun to have his own doubts about the war. “If you’re going to decapitate a government and try to run it from afar I’d think having the institutions intact to run it would be very important. There was none of that happening.” He remembered the protest outside the Green Zone, shortly after that visit to Ahlam’s home, and how stupid he felt not to have paid more attention. “Those days were the critical turning point.” It would not be long before the first Iraqi civilian walked up to an American soldier and shot him in the face.

  On that golden afternoon, such problems seemed far off. As they drank tea and talked and the soldiers dried off in the sun, Ahlam discussed ideas and plans that still seemed possible and Luhnow talked to Captain Pape’s superior, a lieutenant who had joined them that day. They both agreed that there were good signs and bad—it was alarming that nobody in the occupation forces seemed to have a plan for post-war Iraq—but even so there were reasons for hope.

  A year or so later the lieutenant wrote him an email. He wanted to know if there had been any word from Ahlam. “I remember he told me there were flyers and graffiti in her neighbourhood saying derogatory things about her. There was ill will because she was the main go-between for the Americans and the people.” By that time she was deputy director of the GIC set up by Civil–Military Affairs, and it was clear that the problems she had seen with Luhnow were just the beginning; that Iraq was the white stallion they had watched bleed to death on the street.

  “I went through my own journey in Iraq,” he added. “I had some hesitation about the war but I basically supported it. I guess I was one of those naive Americans who tend to believe what they’re told, and I guess I had that beaten out of me, largely because of Iraq.”

  Ahlam, he said, personified the sort of people they had let down. “Someone very much willing to build bridges and create a future.” He was quiet for a moment. “We left those people swinging in the wind.”

  —

  The situation in Baghdad continued to deteriorate after David Luhnow left. The reporter who replaced him didn’t want Ahlam as his fixer—he preferred a man who could function as a bodyguard. Looking for work, Ahlam applied to be a translator at the GIC, newly opened in nearby Kadhimiya. Her job, she was told by one of the Americans who led her training seminar, was to be the “missing link” between Iraqi civilians and the US occupation authorities. Meanwhile bodies had begun appearing on streets or dumped in rivers, often so badly mutilated they could not be identified. She carried a pistol in her handbag for a while, but then gave it up, since people were usually either shot from a distance or blown up. From her new office she observed that the Americans were arresting people “right and left” and jailing them based on suspicions and anonymous reports. “That was enough,” she told me, “to keep you in Abu Ghraib or Bucca for a year.”

  It was at Camp Bucca, through which a hundred thousand prisoners passed, that the future leaders of Islamic State met.31 Thrown together in numbers too large to supervise, their incarceration provided an ideal opportunity to forge bonds and spend time conspiring under the oblivious gaze of the Americans who had inadvertently brought them together. Indeed, without the American prisons in Iraq, Islamic State would not exist. Housed alongside the radicals were many more who were innocent of any crime. A neighbour with a grudge had only to make an anonymous report to have his enemy arrested. “And if you were wealthy,” said Ahlam, “forget it! You would be arrested for supporting terrorism. By the time you were released, everything you owned would be gone.” Even when the Americans had good reason to arrest someone, if they arrived when a neighbour had come to pay a visit, the neighbour would be arrested as well, as a matter of course. Detained without trial, without lawyers, without permission to phone their families, the prisoners appeared to have vanished. In her new office, their families besieged her, demanding to know their relatives’ whereabouts.

  She had recently agreed to serve on the governing council for northwest Baghdad. Captain Pape, who was responsible for rebuilding the local political system from the ground up, had taken note of her leadership qualities: she was educated, fluent in English, a take-charge person—and despite coming from a rural Sunni community known for its conservatism, “she came across as very liberated,” he later recalled. Her position on the council allowed her to expand the contacts she needed in her work at the GIC. One day, at a council meeting, she met the general in charge of the military base at the Baghdad airport, where many prisoners were being held. She introduced herself as a councillor and humanitarian worker and requested a moment of his time. Families were coming to her to look for their relatives, she explained, and she had no information to give them.

  “Please put yourself in these families’ places,” she told him. “They have no idea if the missing person has been kidnapped or killed or imprisoned. Telling them where their family members are held will improve the American reputation in the eyes of Iraqis. I don’t need their charges, I just need their names.”

  “I’ll do my best,” she recalled him saying. “I am not the only one responsible for this, but I’ll do my best.” He ordered her supervisor, Major Adam Shilling, to give her the names. And each day a list of the latest detainees arrived by email so she could inform their families.

  A kilometre from the GIC was Camp Justice, which housed a prison that had been used to torture political prisoners under Saddam Hussein, and would revert to that purpose after the Americans handed it over to the new Iraqi government. She tried to convince the commander there to give her the names of the prisoners and he promised to deal with it, but nothing happened. She knew the Iraqi translator responsible for registering incoming prisoners at Camp Justice, where they were detained until transferred, so she invited him to a meeting in her office. She told him she had a problem he could help her solve. She told him of the old men who came looking for their sons, how she watched them lose weight week by
week until they shrank inside their clothing, slowly dying before her eyes; of the women who wept in her arms, not knowing whether their sons or husbands or brothers were alive or dead; of the professional women, distinguished professors, arrested on anonymous reports. She explained that she had asked the Americans for help and been turned away, that they were ignoring the growing anger their actions created.

  She knew what she was asking him for was dangerous. “Because he would be in big trouble, actually. He would not only lose his job but be detained himself and face a trial.” She would understand if he was too afraid, and would not ask him again, but if he agreed it was not only she who would be grateful, but all the families who had someone inside.

  He promised to think about it. “If I call you tomorrow, come to see me at the gate. I’ll ask you a question. Then you shake my hand.”

  The next day he called her. She met him outside the main gate of Camp Justice. “Do you have the medicine for the prisoner?” he asked her loudly in English. It was a perfect cover. She replied, in English, that she had the medicine and would bring it for him. Then they shook hands. In her palm she felt a twist of paper. She surreptitiously tucked it into the pocket of her jeans.

  After that they met each day at noon outside the gate. They exchanged pleasantries, always in English so the soldiers on guard would not be alarmed, and shook hands before going their separate ways. If those in charge of the prison wondered why people no longer clamoured outside the gate, demanding information about their relatives, they said nothing to her. These meetings continued until she was kidnapped. After her ransom had been paid, she could no longer stay in Iraq. She would have to build a new life in Syria.

  Chapter 9

  A SMALL TRIUMPH

  THE OPENING CEREMONY FOR the school in Ahlam’s apartment turned out to be much more fun than I’d expected. I had envisioned a sad little affair—demure war-shocked girls like those who watched silently while I talked to their mothers or fathers. And I had to admit that part of me had doubted whether the launch would come off at all. People often talked about doing things here, and even planned them, but follow-through was another matter. There were a million obstacles to getting anything done in the refugee community.

  It was a stifling blue-sky Sunday afternoon in late August, and the apartment was an un-air-conditioned hotbox even without the twenty or so teenaged girls who crowded in excitedly, along with at least that many adults. The white walls ricocheted with conversation and competing perfumes. The girls had all dressed for an occasion: colourful frocks, chunky necklaces, bright scarves, lipstick. They must have borrowed the finery from sisters or mothers, taken makeup tips, absconded with eyeliner pencils.

  The preliminaries were short. After everyone had finally settled into the white plastic chairs lined up in neat rows, and the stragglers standing at the back quieted down, Ahlam stood up at the front to address us. Her face was beaming, her dark eyes glossy. To rapt attention she outlined the schedule—a roster of times and teachers, classes in English and French to be held on weekends so those who were enrolled in Syrian schools could also attend. This was followed by a solemn moment when one of the parents in attendance, a dignified-looking doctor in a grey suit, stood to give a small benediction. “Some people want to turn back the centuries,” he said. “That is why they murder our teachers and professors. We want to cooperate with each other to protect our children, girls and boys, from the looming darkness of the future.” Then an interlude of silence, after which the room broke into what felt like a garden party.

  Girls talking; girls laughing; girls snapping up books from the lending library and tucking them into their handbags. One girl stood out from the rest, as much for her aura of reserve as for her loveliness. I realized I had met her briefly, through Ahlam. I recalled what her parents had told me at their apartment, speaking softly only when their daughter was out of earshot. She had married an engineer a year ago, when she was just sixteen. A month after their wedding, her husband had kissed her goodbye in the morning and left for work. He was shot that day along with four of his colleagues by an unknown gunman in his office at the Baghdad electricity department. After that she had moved with her parents to Damascus.

  Today she was standing and talking to another girl her age. When the other girl said something, a subdued smile brightened her serious face. It may have been the first day in a year that she had worn a pretty dress, or talked to anyone of anything other than tragedy.

  I had taken a seat in the back row, where it was a surprise to discover that I was only one of many Westerners Ahlam had invited to the event. In total there were about a dozen of us: journalists, photographers, anthropologists, aid workers. Ahlam, I realized, had a gift for making friends. We were all in our thirties, dressed in jeans and button-down shirts like members of a visiting tribe. And we were all here to witness something rare: a small triumph.

  She had been to the intelligence headquarters to talk to Captain Abu Yusuf. He had, quite remarkably and fully out of character, granted her permission to hold the classes. “I have a feeling he will want something later,” she told me, before turning back to her girls. But I paid no attention. Because it was remarkable to see this one thing, this thing that had been talked about like a daydream, actually happening.

  Marianne was there, back from her travels, with her Italian-Dutch fiancé, Alessandro. Ahlam told me how they had bought the chairs, along with whiteboards and markers and books for the library, and I was pleased to meet them. They were a striking young couple, at once aristocratic and down to earth. Marianne was willowy, even statuesque, yet the kind of beautiful woman who would rather no one noticed. She radiated a gentle shyness that contrasted with Alessandro’s gregarious nature. While Marianne had immersed herself in fieldwork with Ahlam, he had spent the summer working on an educational project for Palestinians in Damascus and studying Arabic. Between the two of them they had six or seven languages.

  Marianne tucked a strand of fair hair behind her ear and talked, so soft-spoken I had to strain to hear her, about the rationale for setting up the school. It was about education of course, but it was also about creating a community for vulnerable girls who had so few opportunities to leave the house. It was a chance to make friends with others who had been through similar experiences, and perhaps find something to hold onto, the possibility of a different life. “The school is a small measure in the face of great need,” she said, as the party swirled around us, “but it addresses their isolation and loneliness while allowing them to learn.”

  “Two targets with one rocket,” was how Ahlam had put it.

  Ahlam’s children, Abdullah and Roqayah, were there, their high spirits muted in the presence of sophisticated teenagers. And for the first time I met her husband. Tall and thin, with a shock of white hair, he had a gentle face marked by worry.

  No one else that day seemed worried. For the Westerners as for the girls, the opening ceremony was a social occasion. It was refreshing to be around people who didn’t need any explanation for what you were doing here, in the middle of Little Baghdad on a ferociously hot day. Refreshing to not have to answer questions about what you were doing with your life that you could hardly answer yourself. And to be here to celebrate something all of us wanted: a better future for the people we had come to care about.

  As the noise level rose to a conversational roar, I chatted to a tall blond Frenchman who had recently left his job with the Red Cross in Iraq. He was spending a month in Damascus to work on his spoken Arabic. “Where to next?” I asked. He shrugged. “Not Iraq,” he said over the din. Next to us a woman with an intense expression was taking pictures with an impressively lensed camera. This was the American war photographer Ahlam had told me about, a close friend who was living in Syria. Ahlam had told me she hadn’t been by in a while because she wasn’t feeling well. She looked well. Lowering her camera as I introduced myself as another of Ahlam’s friends, she told me the real reason she wasn’t coming around anymore: “Ahlam’s na
me is a red flag.” She had been warned by a Syrian official to stop associating with her if she wanted to renew her visa. She had come today, just this once, because she didn’t want to let Ahlam down by missing the opening.

  It must have been the festive mood, or the fact that Alessandro and the Frenchman were conspiring to find us some beer and a place to drink it—this neighbourhood was dry—but I didn’t give much thought to the photographer’s concerns. As we prepared to leave, Ahlam’s husband called her over: he asked us to please be careful when we left the apartment building, to take different routes so as not to be seen. Ahlam rolled her eyes, giving the impression she was only humouring him, but we listened, nodding agreement. The problem was there was only one route out of the dead-end of the alley where she lived.

  The sun was already falling behind the rows of low-rise buildings as a group of us made our way downstairs. I realized that this would be my last visit for at least a few months. I was heading home soon—I had other assignments to juggle and would return in the winter to follow up—and this was the best possible note to leave on. Whatever the future held, whether the concerns of the war photographer or the fears of Ahlam’s husband were justified—and paranoia was normal here, how could it not be?—something good was happening. I was glad to have seen it for myself. The school had grown up by dint of hard and thoughtful work from the grassroots. If Marianne and Alessandro had helped to set things in motion, it remained an organic achievement, created by a woman who was not sitting around awaiting rescue, because rescue, as all of us knew, would never come.