“So what do you want from me? I mean, what kind of information are you after?”
His manners are not usual for our part of the world. He has not said “welcome” yet and he has not offered us anything to drink, and I’m wondering whether I was wrong to accept his offer to sit.
“I want to find the general you introduced to a colleague of this fine lady-journalist here from America. This general, or maybe he was a former general, gave some documents to another reporter, Harris Axelrod.”
“Harrees?” Subhi turns to his friend, who has his head buried in a newspaper in the corner. “Do you remember a Harrees?”
“Harris,” I repeat. “Harris Axelrod.” Aks-el-rad, I pronounce it, as this is the closest pronunciation when you put it into Arabic. “He says you were the one who led him to General Akram,” I offer. “He said you were a part-time translator for him.”
“Oh, him. The big American guy, yes? Green eyes, very tall. Yes, I remember. I wasn’t a translator for him. I worked for him maybe three days. I’m still a student at the university.”
There are papers all over the floor and we could be in the sort of flat a young bachelor would keep. But I don’t know many students who live on their own. In Iraq, a decent son lives with his family until he gets married, which is why I am still living at home.
Unless, that is, the young man is estranged from his family, or makes an awful lot of money.
“I’m just trying to understand how you got some of the documents Harris had. We need to find the general who gave him these documents.”
Subhi turns to his friend. “Munir,” he calls, “do you remember anything about this Harris having some help from a general?”
Remember. As if I were asking about an event that happened years ago. Munir gives an indifferent blink. “Can’t say I do.”
“Me neither,” Subhi says, eyeing Sam out of the corner of his eye. “Like I said, I didn’t work with him for long. But you should go find Adeeb. He was the one Harris worked with most of the time.”
“Adeeb? And where would I find him?”
“Adeeb. Adeeb Maher. Or Malaki. He has a pharmacy in Mustansiriyah. You can look for him there.”
“Can I tell him you suggested I find him?”
Subhi watches me with a distrust crouching in the hollows of his cheeks. He is about twenty-one and in his presence, sluggish as I am and with a bit of a paunch, I feel much more than seven years older than him. He takes a pen out of his breast pocket. “I have to leave to meet someone, but I’ll try to explain how to get there.”
We stand and he shows us to his front door. He raises his chin, and now the fading purple bruise seems more prominent, like a border indicating where the cheekbone ends and the eye socket begins. “Do you have some paper in that notebook?”
I had forgotten the small pad tucked into my breast pocket and tear off a blank page. Subhi takes it and scribbles in an almost-legible script: Adeeb Maher/Maliki — Mustansiriyah Pharmacy. “There you go. So you won’t forget. He’s about five streets away from the university.” I hold out my hand and he compresses it slightly in his, and then nods at Sam without offering his hand. “Good luck,” he says in English.
We head down the exposed stairs. From the car I see Subhi still standing there in his doorway, watching us, lifting a hand to his sandpaper beard and stroking the hairs in the wrong direction.
~ * ~
14
Stroking
It turns out that the cells of Abu Ghraib are empty. Just before Saddam disappeared last week, he set the remaining prisoners free. Some former prisoners are going there now to tell their stories to foreign reporters, and ordinary people are arriving to listen, to look, to check if there’s anything left to loot.
That’s how we find people to interview. Somehow I thought that this work of being a real journalist would have more logic to it, but what I’m discovering is that most of it is random and unplanned. The business of “reporting” resembles hungry shoppers scooping up bargains in the last hours of a flea market more than it does a method of research.
Anyone who feels bad about his life should spend an hour interviewing someone who’s been held in Abu Ghraib. Some were tortured for actually being opponents of Saddam, and some simply for being suspected as such. Some for being overheard saying the wrong thing, and others for getting on the wrong side of someone. Sometimes, there was no reason. Some of the stories are so horrific — one actually involved a meat grinder — that I find myself ashamed to relay the details to Sam. But whenever I leave something out, she notices and insists that I translate everything. A few times I notice her wince at the thought of what I have told her. But she asks more questions. It’s as if her protection from being truly disturbed by such gruesome details is to ask for more. And to take down every detail. “How long did they beat you that day? With what? How did you feel? And then?”
I don’t know how she can tell when I leave something out. She listens even when she doesn’t understand. More than once, I’ve found myself entertaining suspicions of her being an American spy who actually speaks fluent Arabic, and who is gathering information to be used against us. When she works the two of us into a rhythmic dance of conversation with the person she’s interviewing, she’s just like a musician playing a piece of music. That makes me the instrument, and if I miss a note, she notices. She just senses things.
~ * ~
Our Abu Ghraib visit leads us to the home of the Sarraf family in Khadamiyeh to interview one of their sons, who was held over the last two years. Mohammed Sarraf was active in a religious Shi’ite group with support from Iran, he readily admits, and that’s why Saddam had him thrown into prison and tortured. Sam steps into her usual interview mode, and makes pained faces when Mohammed Sarraf describes his torture or shows the marks on his back. I even start wondering if perhaps this is exactly the kind of “story” the American government wants the rest of the world to hear. The more their reporters describe the bad things that happened under Saddam, the more they’re able to justify taking over our country
I try to push these thoughts out of my head. But the work of interpretation is becoming more natural, almost automatic: I am becoming the two-way radio Sam wanted me to be. But that leaves the creative corner of my mind yearning to keep itself occupied while the translation part of my brain does its job of moving sentences. They flow in through my ears, pass back and forth between the Arabic-English membrane in my mind, and exit my mouth.
As we wind down the interview, a woman of about twenty-five comes into the room with her gaze towards the floor. She asks if she can tell her story, too. This is Mohammed’s younger sister, he explains, Malika. Mohammed and his father — a sunkenfaced man who has been sitting in the corner saying absolutely nothing for the past hour — look at each other and agree.
Malika has moist, dark eyes that seem girlishly large, and she is carrying a baby boy in her arms. She sits with him and begins to tell the story of her husband, who was arrested in the middle of the night about a year ago. She has gone to Abu Ghraib, she tells us, and all the other prisons, searching for him in vain. Her family, she says, has reached the conclusion that he must have been killed, and has even brought her some report that her husband was probably buried, along with many other young men he was arrested with last year, in a mass grave near Baqubah. Malika doesn’t want to believe it.
“My husband must come home,” she announces slowly, in English. “He has never seen his son!” And then she is in tears, which are quickly turning to sobs. “What America will do for me now?” Malika demands of Sam, pleading with her a bit louder and rocking the child, who has also begun to cry. “America will bring back my husband? America will pay support for my son with no father? Every child must have father!” The words come tumbling out of her mouth, and she looks at me, and then back at Sam, as if expecting one of us to say something.
Malika wails louder. Her father whispers her name and clicks his tongue to hush
her, but it seems her family’s sympathy is spent, spread in too many places over too many days. Mohammed stares at the blank television set, studying his exhausted reflection in the curved glass. He picks up the remote control and presses it, shrugs, and tells me that even in Abu Ghraib they had electricity.
Sam keeps writing. When Malika calms down a little, Sam begins to ask more questions, and we get some answers. What his name is. What he believed in. Finally, Sam sighs. Asks me to tell them she’s sorry for their troubles and that she hopes things get better. She rises from the chair.
“Can I take a picture of Malika holding a photograph of her husband?”
Mohammed shakes his head. “It isn’t nice for Iraqi women to be photographed for Western men to see.”
Sam appears to understand the “no” without any translation from me, says she is very sorry again, and closes her bag.
~ * ~
Outside, the hot afternoon haze hovers over us, prickling my skin. We walk towards Rizgar’s idling car, and the most appealing thought is the air conditioning inside. Sam tugs at the handle several times. Rizgar has locked the door and is dozing, open-mouthed, against his headrest. Sam bangs on the window and Rizgar sits up, momentarily confused, and then clicks the lock open. She tucks herself into the front seat and I climb in the back, as I’ve become accustomed to doing.
“Where go, Miss Samara?”
She rests her head against the window, then pulls it back, bringing her hand to the bridge of her nose and holding it there.
“Where do you want to go now?” I ask.
“Give me a minute,” she says, turning to look out of the window. I can see her back rise, almost as if she were about to retch. When the rise subsides, there’s a tear clearing a path down her cheek.
“Are you all right?” But Sam is my boss now. Is it even appropriate to ask the boss if she’s all right? I never imagined a boss being a she.
She uses the edge of her hand to wipe her face. “I’m fine.”
Is Sam really crying for this woman? It must be about something else. Although it is an awful story.
“You wanted to go and meet another guy who was tortured in Abu Ghraib, right?” I take the paper out of my breast pocket, the one on which I’ve written the names of four other men who have terrible stories to tell.
“Fine. Let’s do that.” But her fingers are still holding the upper part of her nose. She moves her hand up, taps on the space between her eyebrows. “You know what? I’ve had enough for today. I’ve got what I need here. Let’s head back.”
No one says anything all the way home. The unreal blur of Baghdad passes us in silence. The river, the buildings, the trees, the bridges, the mosques, all of these are the same, except for the damage to the bigger buildings. And yet, nothing looks like it once did, because now you can really see that the American military is everywhere, and that the Iraqi government is nowhere. Unlike last week, there are no people out stealing and looting in the street. The summer heat is crashing in, luring us inside, slowing us down. We have conceded.
As I walk Sam to the reception desk in the second tower, she thanks me and says I’m doing well. Doing a much better job, she says. Really excellent, in fact.
She stands with her back to the stairs as if I shouldn’t pass, as if she wants to say goodbye to me right here. But then she says, “Why don’t you come up for a moment?”
I follow her, watching the sway of her body as she takes the steps, one and then two, one and then two. Outside her room she exhales heavily and pushes the key into the door. When it swings open, a man sitting at the desk looks up, one elbow leaning over the back of the chair. It’s the same man with the Mediterranean features and the long hair, now pulled back into a ponytail.
“Carlos!” Sam looks surprised.
Carlos is wearing a tight-fitting, sleeveless undershirt, showing off arms with tightly braided muscles. He looks like one of those young Lebanese heart-throbs my sister tapes up on her wall.
“Hey, Sam,” he smiles somewhat guiltily, as if he might have done something wrong, but he’s not yet sure. He grins at me and then looks back at Sam. “Hope you don’t mind. Just using your computer to file some pictures to Washington. My sat phone’s busted.”
“No worries,” Sam says. “Oh, Carlos, this is my new translator, Nabil.” She gestures between us, and I hold out my hand. He rises lazily so he can extend one of his athletic arms to meet mine.
“Carlos is a star photographer with the paper,” she says. She smiles at him in a way that suggests she’s holding back a joke I wouldn’t understand. “One of the best up-and-coming shooters around.”
“Nabil, was it?” Carlos looks me over and puts those arms, which look pumped for a fight, on his hips. “Do you know you’re working with one of the hottest young talents in journalism?”
“Oh, right.” Sam rolls her eyes and gives him a playful push in the arm. “Actually, Nabil and I have some things to talk about for tomorrow, so I was just dropping this off,” she says, dumping her bag onto one of the sofas. “Be back soon.”
She walks to the door and holds it for me with a flash of petulance in her eyes. “Come up to the roof,” she says. “There’s a good view of the whole neighbourhood up there.”
We walk across the roof’s funny white surface, which is almost as I’d imagine the moon to be — bumpy, crusty, pocked. There is a sprinkling of small satellite dishes. Some of them look like inverted mushrooms, and others, like solar panels.
Sam’s right. From here, the pool looks quite beautiful, and already surprisingly clear compared to its green-and-brown appearance of a few days ago. I wonder what kind of chemicals they put in it to make all the dark, corroded stuff go away.
She puts her back to the rail and leans her elbow over it, sending a wave of worry through my bones. What if a gust of wind were to push her off? What if there was another stray bullet?
“You’re sure it’s safe by the edge?”
“Why?” She shrugs. “I don’t see any soldiers around here that anyone’s trying to hit.”
From below, there’s a commotion of splashing, and then laughing. Sam watches the swimmers. “I guess the pool is open for the season,” she says. “Looks pretty nice, actually.” She faces me again and crosses her arms. “I can’t believe I got upset today. It’s not like me to get all teary like that in the middle of work. I mean, I’m not a big crier.”
“That’s okay,” I offer. “We were already in the car.”
“It’s just that, I don’t know...that one really hit me somehow.”
“The men being tortured, you mean?”
Sam sinks towards the floor, and I join her, sitting at a respectable distance.
“Well, hmm. Where to start? When I was twenty, I lost someone very close to me,” she says. She drags a finger across the roof’s pasty white surface, and then rubs it against her thumb to make the fine powder disappear. “We were together throughout school. I thought I was going to marry him.”
“Your boyfriend,” I finally force out the word. A relationship forbidden in our culture, but normal, I know, in hers.
“Yeah, Jack. Jacob Sorenson,” she says, closing her eyes. “We always thought we would get married.”
I try to imagine it, and find it easy. He’s blond, handsome, wealthy. Together, they raise happy white children with cheeks that glow like summer tomatoes. They live in a big American house where there’s no danger and nothing ever goes wrong. Samara Sorenson. It even sounds better.
“He died in a car accident, just after sophomore year. He got caught in a rainstorm on a very slippery road.”
Better than what?
Her face tightens. I hear her swallow old tears.
“He was really my best friend,” she says. “We had the same kind of...background.” She runs her fingers into the mess of locks near her forehead and pulls some of them into a bunch. She ties this section above her head into a twisted knot, which splays itself up a
gainst the white wall behind her like a spill of orange juice. Like this, she looks more girl and less woman. “I guess that story, Malika losing her husband, reminded me of Jack. It’s still hard sometimes.” She shakes her head. “I’ll never find anyone like him.”
Sam appears to be watching a replay of some other moment in time. I wonder if Noor dying is anything like that. Can you grieve for someone you didn’t actually love?
“You can understand, yeah?” She searches my eyes, her own seem out of focus. I consider telling her about Noor, but decide against it.
“And with Jonah going missing, that gave me a big scare. But he’s fine. I was running nightmare scenarios in my head.”
“Jonah is your boyfriend?”
“Sort of.” She picks at a white bubble on the roof’s surface, and I keep it in mind to warn her to wash her hands afterwards, that we might be sitting on a blanket of asbestos. “He was, for a while. It’s probably coming to an end. He’s a little ticked off with me.”
Baghdad Fixer Page 13