“Two coffees,” she says, holding up a V-sign with her fingers. “Do you want something to eat?”
In truth, I am getting hungry, but I just shrug as if to say anything will do, and Sam takes this for a no.
“We had a really good start today,” she says. “But we also had some problems we’re going to have to work on.” She leans her right elbow and her hand rests for a moment in the hollows of her cheeks. “You know, sometimes I forget that the translation thing isn’t always so intuitive.”
I move to respond, but then stop myself.
“I mean, your English is wonderful so I assumed it wouldn’t be a problem, but I don’t think fluency is the issue here. You just need to learn to get into the right rhythm for, you know, for the interview process to work.”
Sam flicks up her wrist and peeks at her watch with a hint of a frown. “I should call the desk. Anyway,” she smiles at me with her chin slightly lifting, mouth closed. “They can wait. So, what I was saying is, I think that you just need to get into the right rhythm of translating. I ask the question, you translate it, and when the person starts talking, you stop him every two or three sentences to translate. And I mean, two sentences max. If he gets to three, you just gotta cut ‘em off. And don’t forget to use the first-person.”
I can feel my palms start to grow damp, as if tiny springs in them have just now decided to release their dammed up waters, and the same sweatiness is growing between my legs. If she tells me once more to use the first-person, I just might tell her she can find herself another interpreter.
“I want to understand correctly,” I begin. “Is the problem that you would prefer to have me write down whatever it is the person says and then translate it to you?”
“No,” Sam says, looking perplexed. “I didn’t say anything about writing.”
“But you’ve been saying that you want me to translate, and as far as I understand the word, to translate is to work in written form. To translate is to take a written document and then to change the material into a written document in another language.”
Sam’s eyes grow narrow.
“If one moves from a spoken language to another spoken language, that is interpretation,” I say. “The other is translation, is it not?”
“What are you—? Oh, you mean interpretation as distinct from translation?” Her eyes ride upwards, as if reviewing a registry of terms embedded in her frontal lobe. “That’s probably a British thing. We don’t really make that distinction in America. Or you might be spending too much time memorizing the dictionary.” She laughs in a way that sounds like a sneeze that has stopped midway. “Just kidding,” she says. She tilts her head to one side and smiles slightly, as if to apologize.
“Do you not distinguish between translating and interpreting, then?”
“Hmm. No, actually. I mean, I might say you were my translator or my fixer, but I wouldn’t say interpreter. That sounds a little too, I don’t know, formal, like one of those funny little guys sitting in a glass box at a UN meeting, you know what I mean?”
The waiter appears at the edge of our table with our coffees, and a plateful of green and black olives.
“Thanks,” Sam says, without actually looking up at the waiter. She throws a bunch of her hair, which had been hanging just above the table, behind her shoulder and plucks a large black olive off the dish. She puts it in her mouth and begins to work it, and suddenly I feel aware of her tongue and her teeth, sucking salty bits of flesh from the perimeter of the pit.
“Why fixer?”
She lifts her long fingers to collect a pit, and then she puts another olive in her mouth and begins again. “You know, a person who fixes things — appointments, travel, whatever. A fixer’s the guy who makes it all happen when a visiting reporter comes to town. Anyway, I’m not interested in the semantics of the whole thing,” she says. She smacks her lips together, the sound of a kiss, and pushes the olives towards me. “Have some.”
These olives look like they’ve come from a can, but I take one anyway. “That’s no problem at all,” I say. “In future, I will interpret it just as you require.”
“You know, I don’t even like the word interpret. Interpret suggests that you’re going to filter what you’re hearing through your own opinions, and that you might pepper in your own analysis and understanding of the situation. You know, like trying to give a forecast, like interpreting the future or something.”
“Right.”
“Right,” she smiles quickly. “That’s exactly what I don’t want. I mean, I’m really curious to hear your opinions, but not in the middle of the interview. For example, telling me you’re not sure whether Saddam really killed as many Shi’ites as people say he did, that’s also the kind of thing that, well,” she sits straighter and pats down the air with her right hand, “...better to leave that out.” She picks up her coffee cup and takes a short sip. “Okay?”
“Okay. But you might want to know that, right? I mean, you would want to know if someone’s lying to you, would you not?”
“Well, sure, but I don’t need my fixer telling me that in the middle of an interview. I mean, you can’t read someone’s mind. No one can. Half the things that Hatem character said might have been lies. But what can you do? You can’t run a polygraph test on him while he’s speaking.” She pauses. “Think of it like being a two-way radio,” she says, sitting up, excited by her analogy. “You know how important a radio is in a time of war? Crucial. Just crucial. But the radio never interjects. It’s the means of communication. And that’s what you need to be, I mean, once the interview is underway. Sort of like a human radio.”
I nod and glance quickly at my watch. It’s almost seven o’clock.
Sam reaches for the satellite phone, pushes a few buttons on it, and looks surprised. “Oh, wow. My editors have been chasing me for the past hour. I really have to run upstairs and call the desk. How about you meet me up there in fifteen minutes so we can finish the conversation?”
And with that she is on her feet, telling the men at the counter to charge it all — and anything else I might order — to room 323, leaving me at the table with nothing to do but to sip lukewarm coffee and eat bitter olives and watch two foreigners diving into the pool on the other side of the glass.
~ * ~
Rafik is still working the front desk when I walk into building two. His face seems heavier than it did this morning, as if he’d gained a bit of weight over the course of the day. He brightens when he sees me. “Miss Samara said you can go right up,” he says, gesturing to the lift. “Third floor.”
I wonder if what is going through my mind is going through his. Loose woman. Prostitute. Only a prostitute would allow a strange man to come up to her hotel room. Especially in the evening. If my sister ever did a thing like that...
“You only need to press it once,” Rafik says.
“Right, sorry.” I stand there waiting, resisting the urge to make an excuse as to why it’s okay to go up to her room. When I can’t stand it anymore, and the lift still hasn’t arrived, I ask if I can take the stairs instead.
“It’s a free country now, my friend,” Rafik answers. “You can do whatever you want.”
~ * ~
I’m almost out of breath when I reach the third floor and wishing I got more exercise. As I walk along the corridor, I see a handsome man with Mediterranean features and hair down to his chin, pulling the door of room 323 shut. We have to turn sideways in the hallway to let each other get by, and he gives me a small “hey” as he does, not quite looking me in the eye, and I watch him disappear down the stairwell. He could almost be a European-Arab, perhaps Lebanese but certainly not Iraqi, because I don’t know any Iraqis who wear their hair long like that. I notice it, in particular, because it’s wet.
I stare for a moment at Sam’s door. My fingers hesitate, and then knock. When there’s no reply, I rap harder. The door creaks open, and when Sam sees it’s me, she swings it wide and holds it
open.
“Hi Nabil. Look, I want to apologize. I’m under a lot of stress. I didn’t mean to give you such a hard time on your first day.”
She moves a few inches back, behind the line that separates the room from the hallway, her from me. She smiles at me and says, “Well? Ahlan w-sahlan. Welcome to my humble abode.”
Inside, to my surprise, is a small kitchen area and a modern lounge which looks very Western with two small sofas, a coffee table between them, a large cabinet with glasses, and a white formica desk with a small computer sitting on it, open. There are at least a dozen wires running around the computer and on to the floor, leading towards the sliding glass door that might lead to some kind of balcony. Whatever is out there is blocked by a line of eggshell-coloured curtains. If Sam sleeps, it is not here — or not in this room.
“You’re still on board, I hope?”
“Me? Of course. You don’t need to apologize.”
“Good,” she says, gesturing towards the sofa against the wall, and seating herself in the other one. “Because I’ve just realized I’m already having an astonishingly shitty day.”
“Sorry?”
“No, I’m the one who should apologize for my bad manners. I know that’s important around here. Can I get you a drink? Orange juice? Pepsi?” Out of the corner of my eye, I notice there’s a bottle of what looks like vodka on the cabinet.
“You’re quick, Nabil,” she says. “But that one’s not mine.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean to suggest that—” I glance at the Timex watch my parents gave me as a graduation gift. It’s 7:15 p.m. “I probably should go soon anyway. My family will start to wonder...and I think there’s a military curfew at eight.”
“Nine,” she says. “But no worries. You should get going soon.”
“Was it that bad a day?”
“Oh that,” she says, rising and going to the kitchen. She takes a jug of orange juice out of the fridge, pours two small glasses and then slams the refrigerator door shut. “I tend to exaggerate. But not in my copy,” she says, raising a finger. “Never in print.”
She brings the glasses to the coffee table and sits down. “My editor, Miles, wants me to drop everything and focus on some clean-up story.”
“You mean from the oil spill? I heard on the radio this morning that someone blew up the pipeline from Kirkuk to Baghdad.”
Sam shakes her head. “Not that kind of clean-up. Though that would be a good story. In fact, that’s a story I’d be glad to do right now. What I mean is that they need to clean up the mess from another reporter, and they want me to do it. Can you believe that? It’s practically a fact-checking job. Something you’d give an intern. I don’t know what to say. It’ll totally take us off news features for a while. I won’t get a damn thing in the paper, all because of having to clean up after some schmuck.”
Sam shakes her head in disbelief. Funny, that word. Us.
“The best part of it is, this morning, which was last night for him, East Coast time? Miles was using Harris Axelrod’s stories as an example, suggesting that I should be trying harder to get good scoops like that. Hah! And now it turns out Harris is in hot water, and the paper is trying to decide whether to bail him out.”
“A scoop, that’s a good story?”
“Hell, at this point, I’d settle for a good story that isn’t exactly a scoop. That’s where I need your help. Anything that might give an indication as to where Saddam’s weapons facilities are. Or, in fact, if there are any. Any story that gives clear evidence of life under Saddam. Witnesses to a massacre, people who say they’ve been tortured. We had a big story in the paper yesterday about people who had their tongues cut out for criticizing the regime. Made the front page,” she says, focusing somewhere in the vicinity of my chest. “That’s what my editors want. Any time you get a good story that no one else has, it’s a scoop. Or an exclusive.”
“Why do you call it a scoop?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because it usually means we’re digging up the dirt on somebody. When you dig up something,” she says, her hands holding an imaginary shovel, “it’s a scoop. But we don’t always use the dirt when we have it. Sometimes it’s more trouble than it’s worth. You have to save things for a rainy day. For example, do you know why the Hunting Club isn’t being looted, even though every other symbol of Saddam’s regime is? Did you notice that it was hardly touched?”
I hadn’t given the contrast much consideration. “Perhaps the people don’t really know it’s there,” I say. “It’s hidden away, not like the other buildings right on the main roads. Ordinary people wouldn’t be aware of it.”
“No, no.” Sam is shaking her head. “That’s not why. It’s because Chalabi wanted it for a base, or at least one of his bases, and his folks went straight there with the protection of the Pentagon. Rumsfeld had a nice gaggle of Marines sent over to guard the place so the riffraff wouldn’t come in and Chalabi could slide right into his new headquarters. Or at least one of them, because I’ve already seen another huge villa that he’s taken over. How’s that for planning?”
One of several phones on the desk rings. She rises, still watching me, and picks it up. “Hello?” A smile spreads across her face. “Hey, surfer boy. Did you have a nice swim?” I soon realize, during the part of the conversation that I can’t hear, that this is an internal hotel telephone. “Wait for me. I’m coming down for dinner right now.”
When she hangs up, she remains standing. “How about we wrap this up. I’ll explain the rest of it tomorrow, okay? Come, say, 8:30?”
As I make my way out, my own head is swimming with questions, about the Marines, Chalabi, the Hunting Club...
“You be careful going home at this hour, all right?”
This “surfer boy”, presumably the blond fellow I saw earlier, is he Sam’s boyfriend? And what about the one I saw leaving as I arrived?
“Of course I will,” I say.
“Don’t get in the path of any of those looters.”
“Sam, if the Marines could guard that Hunting Club for Chalabi, like you say, or any of the other buildings, why couldn’t they manage to guard the other buildings from looting? The Art Museum. Or the hospitals.”
Sam jiggles the doorknob for a moment, then shrugs. “No idea. Understaffed, I guess. They’re picking and choosing their battles. Just like we have to pick ours. At the moment, mine is getting you out the door so I can get a decent dinner in my stomach.” She gives me a wide smile and so I smile along with her, though I’m not sure if this comment is funny or insulting. “Bukra, Inshallah,” she says. Tomorrow, God willing.
I suppose these are the kinds of sayings a foreigner would pick up in a few days, but still, the sound of her words in Arabic moves something in me, and I’m not sure if it’s attraction or disdain. I want to compliment her on her pronunciation, but she is already releasing the door, allowing it to close behind me.
~ * ~
11
Allowing
I devour the baamya and rice my mother has saved for me, one of my favourites, meat with okra. But since they’ve already eaten, they seat themselves around the table and use the opportunity to pepper me with questions.
Baba: So what did you do for so many hours?
Mum: Didn’t she give you a lunch break? You haven’t eaten all day!
Baba: Did you interview anyone important?
Amal: What’s she like? Was she nice?
Baba: How much does the job pay?
I feign being hungrier than I am so I don’t have to answer, buying time. And when I get to the fruit for dessert, I allow my eyes to flutter as if I’m about to fall asleep on them. Bukra, I promise. Tomorrow I will tell them more. Tonight, I’m too exhausted to speak.
But later, in my room, I’m wide awake. I want to tell someone, anyone, everything. But there’s no point — it will only confuse them and worry them. Or maybe I want to tell Sam. Maybe. So I take my old typewriter out of the cupboard. I
’ve hardly touched it in the past year, and am relieved to find that the ribbon is still good. The surprising thing is that I don’t have an urge to write about what happened today. Instead, I feel the need to write about what happened leading up to today, about things that happened a long time ago. Things I would like to tell Sam, assuming she would want to listen.
~ * ~
I didn’t lie to Hatem, not about myself, anyway. My mother is a Shi’ite and my father is a Sunni. When I tell people this, which isn’t often, they sound surprised. But it’s not so uncommon. Sam was impressed when I told her. Westerners assume that all Sunnis hate all Shi’ites and vice versa. But it doesn’t work that way It’s all much more complex than that.
In our neighbourhood, there are other mixed families like us, though no one really talks about it. Still, it’s considered a Sunni neighbourhood, and that meant it always felt relatively safe and calm — that is, up until now. In university, I met friends who were real Shi’ites and I came to realize that they had suffered more harassment, more late-night visits by the mukhabarat, than the rest of us.
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