Sam rested his arms on the table, sipping a 20-ounce bottle of imported water from some unpronounceable desalinization plant on the eastern shore of Qatar. It tasted like saline solution, but Sam had grown used to it. It was cold and wet, and that was all he required anymore.
The chow tent was a little cool—it had been a cold night—but it was growing warmer as it became more crowded during the change of patrols, some on their way in, some getting ready to go. Bono was wolfing down a huge pile of scrambled eggs and dry toast. He kept his fork moving while Sam sipped his drink. They didn’t talk much until Bono was nearly finished with his powdered eggs.
“You hear about the Lizards?” Bono asked, referring to one of the other combat teams.
“What’s that?” Sam looked up.
Bono laughed as he leaned across the table. “A couple of their guys were working one of the checkpoints leading into the airport. Some fool comes speeding toward them, doesn’t even slow down. They fire warning shots, take out his tires, you know that routine. At the last second, the guy steers the car toward them, opens the door and bails out, even as the car is racing forward. The Lizard guys drop behind their cement bunkers, expecting a huge explosion; I guess little ol’ Lieutenant Ramirez has got to change his underwear tonight. The car screams toward them, hits the cement barricade, and . . . that’s it. No car bomb. No big explosion. Nothing. The guys come out from behind the barricade, wondering why they aren’t dead. They see the Iraqi running away, but he’s gotten too far for them to shoot. Then they see the money scattered all around.”
“Money?” Sam wondered.
“Yeah. A couple hundred thousand. Cash. U.S. bills.”
“What? Why?”
Bono shook his head. “No one knows.”
Sam thought a minute. “So some crazy guy goes careening toward the checkpoint, refuses to stop, gets his tires shot out, steers toward the barricade, jumps out, and runs away, leaving behind a couple hundred thousand dollars in cash to spill on the ground?”
Bono nodded and smiled. “Yeah. That’s what I was told.”
“They don’t know what—”
“They don’t know squat, my good friend. Just another day in this paradise we all call home.”
Sam shook his head in disbelief as a stranger approached them and sat down at Bono’s side. Although there was plenty of room at the table, he sat close to them. Bono looked up and nodded, then turned back to his eggs.
The man was dressed in dark jeans, heavy boots, and a tan jungle shirt. He appeared to be in his mid-forties, with short black hair and skin tanned from too many days in the sun. The stranger caught Sam’s eye, nodded his head in greeting, and turned back to his coffee, blowing over the hot brew. Sam studied him while he sipped. Who was he? Definitely not one of the U.S. civilian contractors. Too lean. Too relaxed. Those guys all drove around with a target on their foreheads, and every one of them was as skittish as a chicken in a yard full of wolves. Support staff from the civilian affairs office in Baghdad? Maybe. But if he was, he was new to the country. It would take him a couple weeks to get that scared look in his eye, the darting pupils, the constant swivel, the unremitting suspicion that most of them couldn’t hide. Got to be CIA, Sam thought. Plenty of them around.
The man looked up and caught his eye again, then leaned toward him. “Captain Brighton?” he said, keeping his voice friendly but low. “I’ve come a long way to see you. Could we get away and have a quick talk somewhere?”
Sam hesitated. “And you are?” he asked.
Bono stopped eating and looked over. The stranger turned and nodded to him. “And you too, captain. I’d like to talk to you both.”
“What about?” Bono demanded.
The man extended his hand. “Colonel Gass,” he answered with a crushing grip. “Come on, men,” he said, pushing away from the table. “Like they say in the movies, I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse.”
Washington, D.C.
It was a little after nine in the evening, and General Brighton was just getting ready to leave his office when his computer chimed, telling him he had another batch of e-mails. He had already turned his monitor off, and he hesitated to turn it back on. He was supposed to meet Sara at a dinner party for the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, way out in Chevy Chase, and he was already more than an hour late. But he couldn’t resist.
Fourteen new e-mail messages had been loaded into his inbox, but there was nothing so urgent it couldn’t wait until morning. Then he saw the last message, this one from Sam. It was short and ambiguous, but not so coded that Brighton didn’t understand:
Dad,
Things are going well here. Nothing earth-shattering to report (or dangerous, Mom will be happy to hear).
Thought you might want to know that I had an interesting conversation yesterday morning. Met a guy who made me a very tempting offer. It looks like all those days of playing cowboys and Indians when I was a kid will come in handy.
I’m real excited. I think this is my calling in this world. And if I can help this gig turn out good, that is a good thing and I’ll be proud.
Just thought I’d let you know.
Tell the family hi.
Tell Mom I’m happy and doing well and that I think of her every day.
Sam
Brighton read the message quickly, and then typed a short reply:
Very good. I am proud of you. It is a great honor, but one that you have earned.
I pray for your safety every morning and night.
Come home when you can.
Dad
FIFTEEN
Khorramshahr Refugee Camp, Iraq/Iran Border
Azadeh walked toward the bright sun, which was just cresting the top of the great Zagros Mountains. The craggy peaks, topped in dark granite, had sloughed off ten million years’ worth of broken rock, and a huge boulder field spread across the foothills on the west side of the range. Above the Zagros Mountains, the sky was clear and open, a deep blue that had not yet taken on the lighter hue of mid-morning. Azadeh breathed the air, smelling hints of salt water and rotting seaweed mixed with the deep musk of junipers and pines from the dry forest on the mountain ridges to her right. The morning was crisp and clean, and though it was still chilly she felt the soft rays of the sun beginning to warm the skin on her face and the backs of her hands.
This would be a good day. She felt it inside. The day before, her letter to Omar had been returned, “Deficient Address” stamped across the back flap. Staring at the unopened and tattered envelope, Azadeh realized that if she were to get out of Khorramshahr it would be on her own.
Earlier in the week, she had talked to one of the U.N. headmasters, a stern Muslim woman from some unknown village along the Pakistan border, about being allowed to attend classes at the improvised school. High-school classes were held in the cafeteria tent between meals, but so far only young men had been allowed to attend. There was talk now of letting the young women attend the classes as well, and Azadeh had been the first to sign up when the list of those who might be interested had been passed around. Today she would get her answer and she was full of hope.
Standing outside her tent, a small, aluminum, semi-permanent structure mounted on a plywood platform and covered with a wide sheet of canvas to keep the rain off, Azadeh sniffed the fall air, and then glanced around, realizing she was going to be late for breakfast if she didn’t hurry along.
She was just turning toward the chow line when something stopped her. She paused, thinking a long moment. Then words she had spoken in her morning prayer repeated themselves in her mind: “I would like to do something good today.”
She hesitated, wondering why the words would come back to her now.
I would like to do something good.
She looked quickly around.
There was no one there. No one who needed her.
“No. There is someone.” The voice was clear in her mind.
Turning left and right, she confirmed once again
that she was alone; the row of small tents under the canvas sheet appeared empty, and the dirt path that ran between the rows of tents was deserted as well. She could hear the low sound of the gathering crowd in the distance, up near the top of a small hill where the refugees were forming up in the chow line, but no one was around her, and she didn’t understand.
But she couldn’t shake the feeling.
“No. There is someone near.”
She shook her head, thinking, then put the feeling aside. Turning, she started walking to the cafeteria hall. She was already late, and those last in line got very little to eat.
Then another voice came to her, soft, subtle and yet unmistakably clear. “If you want to help, you’ve got to listen.”
Listen?! That was not how Allah worked. He had no voice, no spirit, no intention to speak directly to man. He caused. He controlled. He manipulated. He dominated. But Allah did not speak. That was not how Allah worked.
Yet she stood there, unmoving, and then slowly nodded her head. “I will listen,” she answered in an uncertain voice.
She closed her eyes, her head low, and waited. But she didn’t hear anything. And the feeling didn’t come back again.
A minute passed. Then another. She caught a whiff of coffee, hot oatmeal, and brown sugar drifting down from the cafeteria tent. The wind had picked up, coming now from the mountains. She remained still, and the shadows fluttered as the canvas over the tents flapped in the gentle wind.
Still she waited, unmoving.
She heard the sounds of the eager voices diminish as the refugees who had been standing in line received their daily rations and started eating in silence. She felt the air getting warmer as the sun rose over the mountain peaks.
“I will stand here all day,” she said to herself. “I will stand here all year if I have to. I will stand here forever until I understand.”
Then she heard it, a soft sound behind her, but not one she had expected to hear.
*******
Pari al-Faruqi was too old to consider the possibility that she might one day actually live in freedom. She had been in the camp too long to even remember what it was like to live somewhere else, and the thought of leaving Khorramshahr was almost distressing to her now. Knowing she would never leave, she had accepted this place and sought to make it her home.
Pari’s assigned quarters were a small plywood and tin-roofed hut with prefabricated pieces of foam insulation tacked to the ceiling and walls. Most of the 600 refugees in Camp Khorramshahr lived in these semi-permanent structures—the newest refugees stayed in tents until a plywood hut became available—and Pari had decorated her small home to an almost ridiculous degree. A single, small window and door took up most of the front wall, but she had taken colored chalk and painted fantastic murals on the other walls, the only paintable surface available to her in Khorramshahr. The colors were bright, with oranges, pinks, and blue hues depicting a sunrise over the mountains, spring flowers, and the black sand and deep green water of the Persian Gulf. The paintings were awkward—whatever talents Pari had, painting was clearly not one of them—but they were certainly more pleasant to look at than the bare, foam-insulation walls. Under the murals she had placed tin cans filled with wild chrysanthemums and croton plants she had gathered along the fence, back where a small stream kept the ground wet and agreeable. In one corner of the hut she had set up her small, foot-operated sewing machine, the only object from Iran she had brought with her to Khorramshahr, and through the years she had taken odd scraps of cloth and crafted dresses for the younger girls in the camp as well as colorful quilts, one of which was on top of her cot. Her clothes were neatly folded and arranged on top of a small bureau, and the only pair of shoes she owned was placed neatly at the foot of her bed. The floor was covered with a threadbare Persian rug, a gift to her from one of the U.N. volunteers who had worked in the camp some eight or nine years before. On the bureau was a black-and-white photograph of a young man, handsome, light-haired, with blue eyes and a thin nose, clearly not Persian. A silver cross, highly polished, hung over the head of her cot.
It was a home of poverty by any measure, humble but clean, warm enough but never quite comfortable, adequate, but without even the simplest luxury. It was a home filled with as much beauty as she was able to create from the barren environment around her and despite its lack of elegance, Pari was satisfied.
And unlike many of the huts in Khorramshahr, this one had an air of permanence, as if Pari had accepted that this was the place she would die.
Through the years, Pari al-Faruqi had seen many come and go from Khorramshahr—a thousand children, a hundred families, far too many to remember. She had known orphans, single mothers, tiny babies, and old men who had lost everything. Few of them spent more than two or three years in the camp before they were assigned a patron outside Iran or Iraq, someone who was willing to sponsor them in their country, provide them with a job, a little money, and someplace to live until they could get on their feet. But Pari hadn’t been so lucky and she never would be. She would die in Camp Khorramshahr, of that she was sure.
Although she was only sixty-six, she looked older, with frail shoulders, thinning gray hair, and so many lines on her face that the creases seemed to fall into each other. But her neck was long and slender, her fingers thin and elegant, and she carried herself with such confidence that it was clear to anyone who studied her for more than a moment that Pari had been very beautiful. And though she was now an old woman, her eyes were bright and alive, and they danced as if she knew a secret that she would never tell.
Resting on her cot, Pari coughed deeply again. She had been coughing all night and she held a small cloth sprayed with blood in the palm of her hand. She lay there and wondered if she should get out of bed. Maybe not. Not this morning. Not until the sun had warmed things a bit.
Pushing herself against her pillow, she looked around the room and shivered. The inside of her hut was cast in a pleasant light from the sun filtering through the thin fabric over the window, but she still felt cold. Turning, she saw that the flame on the small propane heater in the far corner had gone out again.
Wincing at the chill, she hacked through a coughing fit, then lay back again.
*******
Azadeh followed the sound of the coughing.
Behind her tent was a double row of huts, all of them identical, with rain-stained plywood walls, tin roofs that were now rusting, and small prefabricated doors. She had never spent any time in this part of the camp, and she made her way carefully, not knowing if she would be welcome.
She listened, hearing the sound again, then stopped in front of the unpainted door. Knocking gently, she squared her shoulders and waited.
A long moment passed, but no one opened the door. She knocked again, the sound echoing off the wood walls. Then she heard a voice answer, and she pushed back the door.
Azadeh poked her head tentatively into the room and saw the old woman waiting on the side of her bed.
“Hello, hello,” Pari said in a bright voice. She motioned with her hand, beckoning Azadeh to come in. “Well, well, what is this? Who is this beautiful girl?”
Azadeh smiled shyly. “I heard—” she hesitated. “I heard you coughing and I wondered if you were all right?” She glanced around quickly, taking in the murals and flowers.
Pari adjusted herself on the side of her bed, and then looked up, her dark eyes flickering in the morning light. She wore a deep blue cotton robe, which she pulled tightly around her waist. Azadeh watched her, standing shyly at the door. “I’m sorry,” she tried to explain. “I was just wondering if, you know, if there was anything I could do?”
“Oh, how wonderful,” the old woman exclaimed. “I’ve been hoping to meet you. Your name is Azadeh, am I right?”
Azadeh nodded in surprise. “Yes, my lady, but how did you know?”
The old woman smiled. “I know most of the people in this camp. And someone as beautiful as you, well, it would have been hard for me not to
take note.”
Azadeh lowered her eyes. She was not used to being complimented so easily and she did not know how to respond. “Bânu—” she started, but Pari broke in.
“Your last name is Pahlavi?”
Azadeh looked up in surprise, instantly on guard.
Pari read the worried look on her face. “Come in, will you, please,” she said, gesturing toward the younger woman. There was a single chair in the corner, near the portable loom, but Pari patted the cot beside her. “Come, Azadeh, please sit down.”
Azadeh entered the hut carefully, leaving her shoes near the door, and stood in the center of the room.
“I knew several Pahlavis,” Pari began gently. “It was many years ago. And a long way from here. I used to live in Tehran. When I was a little girl.” She studied Azadeh’s face as she spoke.
Azadeh kept her eyes on the floor. “My father—” she started to say.
“—was a grandson of the Shah?” Pari finished the sentence. Although the raising inflection in her voice indicated it was a question, it seemed she already knew.
Word spread easily through the camp; among people with little to do, there was plenty of talk. Badguyi. Gossip. Everyone knew everything. Azadeh had heard some of it already, the quiet whispers, the sideways looks. But she lifted her head defiantly. She would not apologize, nor would she try to hide who she was. She nodded, her lips pressed firmly, her chin held high.
“They were good men.” Pari offered in a soft voice. “A good family.” She paused and stared at Azadeh, choosing her words carefully. “I knew some of your family, Azadeh Jan, a very long time ago. My husband was a very—” she stopped, thinking, then continued slowly. “Your grandfathers were treated poorly, very poorly, I’m afraid. I think they had the best intentions for our country, but most of them are gone now.”
Azadeh nodded but didn’t say anything.
Pari patted the cot again, motioning once more for Azadeh to sit down. “OK, Azadeh Jan, that is all we will say of that for now. We will talk of it later, if you want to, but come and sit down.”
(Wrath-03)-Son Of The Morning (2012) Page 15