How to Break a Terrorist

by Matthew Alexander

  “Well, he goes home and runs into his cousin, right?”

  Hadir translates. Zaydan nods.

  “Okay, so he says to his cousin, he says ‘Hey! I just got back from the soccer game, and boy was it exciting! Guess who won?’”

  Zaydan can’t contain himself. He starts giggling. He brings his hands up to his mouth to cover his laughter, and I notice he has chubby fingers.

  “So the cousin shakes his head and says, ‘I already know!’”

  Both Bobby and Zaydan start howling. Even Hadir cracks up. I alone sit unmoved.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you get it? Hadir does and he’s a Kurd,” Bobby says.

  “Yeah. I get it. The al Dulaimi are gossipers. News travels fast. That sort of thing, right?”

  “Yeah. There’s a lot of those al Dulaimi motherfuckers.”

  “I guess it’s sort of an Iraqi inside joke.” I make an effort to grin. Zaydan’s still belly-laughing. He looks like an Arab jolly ol’ St. Nick, only with an I recruit killers for Al Qaida sort of dark side.

  “You can’t throw a rock in Iraq and not hit an al Dulaimi,” Hadir opines.

  It takes a minute to restore decorum in the interrogation booth. Bobby sips some water. Zaydan plays with his chubby fingers. Hadir polishes off his second Coke of the session. I sit next to the lone desk in the room, pen in hand waiting for us to continue.

  Finally, Bobby nukes the jovial atmosphere. “Zaydan, you are going to be leaving us soon. I wish I could help you, but you’ve got to give us something. Anything. Please, we like you.”

  Zaydan frowns and shakes his head curtly.

  “I cannot give you what you want.”

  Bobby suddenly erupts. “Damn’it! I’m trying to save you! Help me help you!” He emphasizes the last words with a palm-slap to his notebook. Zaydan looks surprised. He sits up in his chair, his eyebrows arch, and he crosses his arms. Bobby stares at him. Zaydan says nothing. He averts his gaze.

  “Fuckin’ A, man! Give me something!”

  “I can’t.”

  Bobby lets out an exasperated “Fuck it!” and gets to his feet.

  What’s going on? Bobby, what are you doing?

  Bobby hovers over our detainee and gazes at him. Zaydan freezes, unsure of what’s happening.

  Bobby pivots and walks out the door without another word. Hadir and I exchange quizzical glances. We’re left in awkward silence.

  What am I going do now? Should I leave and follow Bobby? No. Stay here. Engage Zaydan. Build rapport.

  What do I say after this? I’m not sure. My mind races.

  Start with the basics. Start on his turf.

  “So, uh, Zaydan?”

  “Yes?” Zaydan sounds rattled.

  “How long have you been an imam?”

  “For about fifteen years.”

  Keep going. He liked that question.

  “Have you memorized the Koran?”

  “Not all of it, but most.”

  “I’m reading the Koran now,” I tell him. This piques his interest.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, I’m surprised to find that some of the stories in the Bible are also in the Koran.”

  “Yes, that’s true, but they are a little different.”

  We start talking about the Angel Gabriel and how he came to Mary. According to Zaydan, the immaculate conception is made after Mary goes into the desert and drinks from a stream that appears at her feet to quench her thirst and then eats a fig from a tree.

  I marvel at this. “Wow. That’s different from what I learned in the Bible. But you know, it is amazing that you’re a Muslim and I’m a Christian, yet we believe in the same story.”

  Actually, I’m not a Christian. I’m part humanist and part Buddhist. But in the booth, I become whatever and whoever can build rapport with the detainee.

  “We are people of the same book,” I say. “We’re both believers.”

  Zaydan loves this discussion.

  “Are you interested in learning more about Islam?” he asks.

  Before I can answer the door slams open. Bobby storms inside, a portable phone to his ear. “Zaydan!” he starts, but he’s out of breath. He gasps for air.

  “Yes?” Zaydan’s face is puzzled.

  “There was a bomb, a bomb at the compound this morning.”

  The news stuns our detainee. “What?”

  “The compound where your family lives! The one our marines are fucking guarding! A suicide car bomber rammed the damn checkpoint! There are bodies fucking everywhere! I just saw it on CNN.”

  It was Zaydan’s compound that we saw. He’d said the marines guard it.

  As Hadir translates the words in a raised voice, I realize I’m on the edge of my chair.

  “Look, I’ve got the marine commander on the phone. I want him to send some soldiers to check on your family. What number is your apartment?”

  Zaydan looks panicked. His eyes bulge. His face flushes bright crimson. “Uh, um…”

  “Hurry up!” Bobby yells.

  “My apartment number?”

  “Yes. Hurry up! The colonel is waiting!”

  Bobby’s urgency prompts Zaydan to say, “Building five, number one hundred and four.”

  Bobby repeats it. Zaydan nods.

  “Okay, sir, you there? I’ve got the address. It’s building five, number one zero four. Did you get that?” Bobby ducks a bit and blocks his other ear.

  “Sir, I can’t hear you.”

  Zaydan looks apoplectic.

  “Sir, you there?” Bobby mutters to himself. “Shit, I think I lost him.”

  Hadir translates that quietly. Zaydan emits a low moan, his hands come up to the sides of his head, and he mutters something to Allah.

  “Yes, sir! That’s right. Building five, one zero four! Right. Okay. Call us back when you know something. Thank you, sir.” He lowers the phone slightly and says, “Zaydan, they’re sending people to check right now.”

  The tension in the room is so thick that Bobby seems to swim through it as he paces back and forth.

  “Zaydan. I pray everyone is safe.” My words sound stilted.

  Bobby blurts, “I’ll be right back. I’m going to check on something.” He vanishes through the doorway, leaving me, Hadir, and Zaydan to stare after him.

  Zaydan crumbles under the weight of the unknown. His face falls into his beefy hands and he mumbles a prayer. His voice cracks. Is he crying? I can’t tell. As the wait continues, he slaps his forehead repeatedly. This is an Arabic sign of extreme duress and angst.

  Hadir and I share another glance. We’re both wide-eyed and stunned. I can’t believe I didn’t make the connection this morning. I wonder what triggered it for Bobby.

  Zaydan rocks back and forth in his chair, still slapping himself, and mumbling.

  “Allah,” is all I can make out of his words.

  The minutes pass. Were I in his shoes, I don’t know how long I could take the suspense.

  What can I say to this man?

  I say nothing. I know Zaydan is picturing his wife amongst the dead and maimed; his girl, broken and bloodied by the debris thrown as shrapnel by the exploding car. Those are mental images no father, no husband ever hopes to endure, especially one who has played a role in this sort of carnage. Does he feel guilty?

  Bobby returns ten minutes later. He appears in the door and presses the phone to his ear. “What Sir! I’m still here. What’s that? Say again?”

  Zaydan stops rocking. Now he’s as still as a corpse, focused on Bobby. In seconds he goes from cherubic to ghostly.

  Bobby clicks off the phone and pockets it. He pins his eyes on Zaydan.

  “Is my family alive?” he pleads.

  Hadir struggles to repeat the words, but finally he says, “He wants to know if his family is alive.”

  “Yes. Your wife answered the door,” Bobby replies. Zaydan’s shoulders sag. Relief washes over him.

  “Your wife said everyone is okay. The bomb did not hurt your family. They
were inside the apartment when it exploded. They’re scared, but okay.”

  “Allah be praised! Allah be praised!” Zaydan bursts out.

  Bobby sits down in front of Zaydan, “They’re okay my friend.”

  “Thank you. Thank you for doing this for me, my friend.”

  “No problem. We’re here to do whatever we can for you.”

  Zaydan isn’t finished. He grows effusive, “I am so thankful for what you have done. Bless you.”

  “Zaydan, there are a lot of dead Sunnis at the checkpoint. They are your neighbors. The marines who protect your family—some of them are also dead.”

  “God’s will.”

  “No,” Bobby lowers his voice and softens it. “Next time it could be your wife or your daughter. Help us end this violence. Give us something.”

  Zaydan lets out a long sigh.

  “We’re not here to harm Iraqis,” Bobby continues. “You know that. We want to find the foreigners who have come here and caused all this violence.”

  Zaydan doesn’t react, but I can tell he’s hanging on Bobby’s words.

  “Look, Abu Ali told us about a farmhouse. One used by suicide bombers.”

  “Show me the house.” Zaydan says.

  Maybe he’s going to play.

  Bobby turns to the laptop and brings up the satellite maps on the flat-screen TV. He walks Zaydan down the highway from Baghdad to Abu Ghraib and then over the bridge and south into Yusufiyah, but stops short of the farmhouse that Abu Ali gave us.

  “Keep going south,” Zaydan says.

  Bobby scrolls the map to the south. We all watch the thin trail of orange dirt below the cursor as the map continues to move.

  “There,” Zaydan says. “That house next to the road.”

  It is the same one Abu Ali noted. Either that place is significant, or they’ve all been told to give that house up should they be captured.

  “What is this house?” Bobby asks.

  “They have meetings there,” Zaydan says.

  Bobby decides to press. “Zaydan, this is extremely helpful. Thank you.”

  “I am grateful to you, my friend. My family is everything.”

  “Then help us keep them safe. Give us the name of your boss.”

  Zaydan shakes his head firmly. “I cannot. If I were to do that…” He falters.

  Hadir waits for him to finish. When he doesn’t, he shrugs at Bobby.

  “Zaydan? We’ve offered you an olive branch of friendship here.”

  “I know. I cannot tell you more.”

  I don’t think he’s loyal to Al Qaida. He’s afraid of whomever he works for, and we won’t be able to quell that fear.

  Bobby senses this, too. “Okay, Zaydan. Just know that we’ll always reach out to you, buddy, no matter what you do.”

  “Thank you, my friend, thank you.”

  We end the interrogation. Zaydan goes back to his holding cell. He’ll be transferred to Abu Ghraib tonight. He’ll eventually be tried in court and, because of his role in aiding suicide bombings, he’ll get the death sentence and hang. If he’s really lucky, he’ll only get life in one of Iraq’s Shia-run prisons, which is the same as death.

  As Bobby and I walk back to the ’gator pit, I ask, “That’s amazing that you realized the bomber hit Zaydan’s compound.”

  “Yeah, it struck me after I left.”

  “How’d you get the marine commander on the phone so quickly?”

  Bobby stops in mid-stride. He turns to me with a wicked half-smile and says, “I didn’t.”

  I’m confused. “What do you mean?”

  “There was no one on the other end of the line. Fucking phone doesn’t even work.”

  Love is the ultimate weapon.

  Six

  THE BURNING HOUSE

  HEY, MATTHEW,” CLIFF says to me as I arrive the following morning.

  “What’s up, Cliff?”

  “Check out this video. We just got it from the SF guys.”

  I walk over to Cliff’s desktop. Bobby’s already there. Cliff explains, “This was taken by one of the SF teams. They were hitting one of the safe houses Abu Ali gave up, right? Well, as they approached, they started taking fire.”

  “What did they do?” I ask.

  “Watch.”

  Cliff starts the video. It shows a white, flat-roofed house with a white sedan parked nearby. It appears to be a tranquil daylight scene taken by someone on the ground less than a hundred yards from the house.

  After twenty seconds of this, Bobby gets impatient. “Boring Cliff. Come on.”

  Suddenly, the house disintegrates. Pieces of masonry fly in all directions. Smoke billows out and up, swallowing the white car. Secondary explosions follow, throwing more smoke and debris into the air. When it clears, the house is gone. Only a heap of burning rubble remains.

  “Boring, eh?” Cliff says snidely. “The SF guys called in an air strike. Didn’t want to risk entering the house with possible suicide bombers inside.” He pulls out a bottle of nasal spray and uses it. “Sorry.” Like all new arrivals to our piece of Iraq, he’s contracted a sinus infection.

  Bobby has an idea. “You know, Matthew, we can use this with Abu Ali.”

  “What do you mean, like a Love of Comrade approach?”

  “Yeah. What do you think?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t think it’ll work. Very risky.”

  Bobby shrugs. “He’s not talking now and he’s on his way out. Let’s just throw the dice and see if this opens him up.”

  David, our senior interrogator, joins our group. “Matthew,” he says to me, “Why don’t you join me this afternoon in the monitor room to watch the other interrogations. You’ll be doing that a lot in the weeks ahead, so you might as well get used to it.”

  I look at Bobby.

  “Go ahead,” he says. “You can watch my handsome mug from that Hollywood room.”

  “You sure?” I ask.

  “Damn sure,” Bobby says.

  “Come on, I’ll show you how to work the controls,” David says.

  I look Bobby over before I follow David. Bobby looks exhausted. His eyes have dark circles and his shoulders are slightly slumped. All week we’ve stayed long after our shifts have ended to write our reports. Bobby’s a stickler for details and always triple-checks to make sure the reports are in the proper format. I haven’t gotten back to my hooch before 3 A.M. all week.

  “Hey, have you gotten any sleep?” I ask. He picks up a Coke can and raises it as if he’s going to offer a toast. “Forty-eight hours straight!”

  David leads me into the Hollywood room and explains how it works. On one wall are three rows of state-of-the-art flat-screen TVs. Below the flat-screens is a long desk with several electronic switchboxes that control the cameras and audio in each of the booths. On the back wall are four customized roof-high glass cases with stacks of electronic components. The whole room is a hack-job of wires and buttons, and it nearly requires a masters degree to operate. Big Brother is watching. It’s a great way for the senior ’gator to keep tabs on what techniques the other ’gators are using.

  “Have a seat,” David offers. As elsewhere, the chairs here are worn and broken.

  Bobby appears on one of the flat-screen displays. Abu Ali follows a few minutes later. I grab a set of headphones, flip a switch, and tune in. As I watch, I’m really taken by Bobby’s physical appearance. The vibrant Nebraskan I’ve gotten to know this week is gone. Instead, I see a young man who has pushed himself too far, worked too hard. It is a lesson we all learn. Back when I was a shiny 2nd Lieutenant, I didn’t know how to pace myself either. Now, in my mid-thirties, I’ve learned that this sort of deployment is not a sprint; it’s a marathon. You’ve got to apportion your energy for the entire race; otherwise you’ll crash and burn early.

  Bobby’s on the brink. As he starts working with Abu Ali, he sounds testy and impatient.

  “Abu Ali, we need to know who you work for,” Bobby begins.

  Our detainee doesn�
�t answer. Bobby repeats the question only to get the same result.

  “I thought you agreed to work with us?” Bobby asks angrily.

  Abu Ali replies, “You Americans have lied from the beginning.”

  He’s retrenched, retreated back into his shell of bitterness. Coaxing him out at this point is going to be tough, if not impossible.

  Bobby works hard to get him talking, but Abu Ali barely responds to his questions. In some cases, he doesn’t answer at all.

  “Abu Ali, help us save lives. You said you’d join us.”

  Silence.

  “We’re trying to help you.”

  No response.

  Bobby slams his hand down on his notebook and in a fit of frustration shouts, “Is that all you’re going to do? Fuckin’ sit there? You’re not going to say anything? How’s that going to help Iraq? How’s that going to help your son?”

  “I gave you the houses.”

  “Yes, and I thought that you would join us.”

  “I can’t.”

  Bobby looks ready to blow his stack. Instead, he says, “You know what, Abu Ali? I’m gonna show you a video.”

  Abu Ali has been staring at the floor through most of this. Now he glances up. I see he’s curious.

  “Yeah. That’s right. It’ll show you what the future of Iraq holds if we can’t work together.”

  Bobby flips open his laptop and places it on the single table in the room. He puts in a CD, and the image appears on the large flat-screen TV on the wall in front of them.

  “Watch this,” Bobby says. He presses a button, and the video rolls.

  My camera is looking from above the flat-screen TV down at Abu Ali’s face. For the first twenty seconds, his face is a mask. It shows no emotion at all. Suddenly, he bends over double, as if someone has just kicked him in the stomach. He’s facing the floor, and I can see spatters on the concrete. Tears. He’s sobbing.

  Bobby shuts the video off, closes the laptop, and says, “That’s what happens to people who support suicide bombers.” He turns and sees Abu Ali’s condition. “What’s the matter?”

  Abu Ali says nothing. He sobs silently. After a minute, he sits back up in his chair. His cheeks are slick with tears; his eyes are haunted and full of loathing. Gone is the mask. The transformation startles Bobby.