Spoils

by Brian Van Reet

  The path from poverty to war was well trodden, but not the only path, and it would have been wrongheaded to assume, as apologists among the kuffar had, that want of material things was what compelled us to this jihad. It was more the other way around. For every brother with a meager past, like Abu Annas, orphaned in the worst slum of Jordan, there were two like Abu Mohammed the Jeddite, men from prosperous families, the sons of merchants and engineers in the Kingdom; they arrived seeking remedies for a spiritual poverty that wealth only exacerbates. Some, like Dr. Walid, were descended from families of middling means, though, it should be said, the doctor had received a rich man’s education after he flawlessly recited one of Iqbal’s ghazals in the presence of a regional governor who was then visiting his village. The governor, a nephew of the king, was so moved by the young Walid’s recitation that he practically adopted the boy, eventually paying for his education at Baghdad University and later Oxford.

  And yet, almost to a man, our fathers’ fathers abided the time-honored codes, knew the Qur’an and the hadith by heart, and lived as their ancestors before them, concerned with tending their herds, with their families, the substance of their days stretching without much variation back to the time of the Prophet. Most of those old ones—and I am speaking of men who came of age just out of living memory—had never so much as seen a Westerner or an internal combustion engine. Theirs was an arduous life that purified the spirit in the way of desert people, for whom trials are ordinary and every gift precious.

  Perhaps I romanticize the monotony of a bygone age. But there is no denying that in the span of twenty years, everything changed. The time-honored ways of the old ones were set aside in favor of modern conveniences. The oil companies, the giant engineering firms, the foreign mercenaries and the Western military advisers, with their liquor and paper money and promises of empire, they thrust our princes onto the world’s stage to play the fools of Monte Carlo. Petrodollars were welcomed at all the casinos of Europe, but even as they took our money, the kuffar aristocracy looked down their noses at their churlish Arab cousins, laughingstocks who aped the latest fashions and exchanged an ocean of oil for newly minted fortunes, which they spent like it was a matter of principle.

  I was once well-off—not royalty, though I would’ve been heir to a tidy sum—but now found myself poor as a street cleaner, sick as a poisoned dog, useless as cargo on the vessel. Lonely, angry, miserable, the seasickness arousing a petulance in me that could not be distracted. I should have, instead of distilling the past, concentrated on discerning the future, but the coming war eluded me. I had campaigned on three continents but never against the Americans. I’d seen the strange apocalyptic masterworks of Hieronymus Bosch hanging in the Prado, I’d seen a lovely girl walking barefoot along the Nile, but never the onion-domed minarets of Baghdad, its triumphal arch made of smelted Iranian rifles, its slums teeming with millions. It had been decades since I had even visited a city so large. We traveled to the unknown, and I wasn’t sure exactly why I had come along for the journey. Maybe I did know but was too afraid to admit it and thus make it real. When I looked over the rail of the rolling ship, I couldn’t help but think of throwing myself into the waves.

  Fifteen days later we crossed the Syrian border near al-Qa’im and entered Iraq. Before nightfall we drove south to Haditha, along the Euphrates, which was like a sapphire gaping through a deep crack in the desert. After unbroken years in the stark wilderness of Afghanistan and the tribal regions, the lushness of the river valley was a sight to gladden my heart. It reminded me of boyhood in Cairo and the river that the ancients simply called River, because which else would they be referring to? The Nile had been a short walk from Father’s stately villa in the Maadi District, broad avenues shaded with eucalyptus trees planted to repel mosquitoes, the district itself a fairly recent development, carved out of mango plantations on the riverbanks; the first residents were Jews and British military officers. After the occupation ended, it remained home to the city’s European expats and well-to-do natives, their children mingling at the Lycée Français du Caire—with classes taught in Arabic, French, and English—and at the nearby sporting club, where I passed countless afternoons playing squash and swimming in the pool within sight of the Giza Pyramids.

  The present Iraqi scenery, riverine and so reminiscent of home, lifted my spirits and appeared to be having a similar effect on Dr. Walid, who rode with me and a few others in the lead truck. More animated than usual, he from time to time wiped the dust and sweat from his face with a handkerchief as he reassured us of his many contacts and supporters here, friends he’d met while studying at Baghdad University, where he took his baccalaureate nearly thirty years ago. From our guesthouse in Aleppo, the last stop before we crossed into Iraq, he recently had been corresponding with one of these men in particular, a fellow doctor practicing in Haditha, which was why we were headed there.

  We traveled several hours and arrived at the physician’s estate, outside town. I found Dr. Walid’s old schoolmate pleasant enough, if a little full of himself, a fault common to men of that profession. We hid our trucks under cover of his palm grove and retired to the main house, where our host fed us masgouf, the national dish, which was new to me. After dinner he gave us the name of a cleric in Fallujah whom we might seek out for a base of support closer to Baghdad, our ultimate goal.

  Darkness fell. Some of us went to town for coffee. The streets of Haditha buzzed with anticipatory liveliness, and, surprisingly, few people appeared afraid, even though all the talk in the café was about the air war, the Americans’ “shock and awe,” which we all knew would surely commence within days, if not tonight.

  Just now I’ve been talking with Abu Hafs, his pallet situated beside mine on the recessed roof of the doctor’s home. We’ve heard jets flying overhead, although it’s unclear whether they’re American or Iraqi, and no bombs have yet fallen. The night air is cold, and I write by penlight, wool blanket hooded over me.

  Over the past weeks the Yemeni and I have repaired our friendship. He’s grown comfortable around me again and has gone so far as to confide that he only voted for Dr. Walid for emir because that was what all the other brothers were doing and he was afraid to go against them. Whether or not this is true, I don’t know; the boy is earnest enough in his desire to please. I willingly blind myself to his flattery. He fulfills in me something that I thought had died with my son in that forest near Grozny. He’s revived my manly desire to teach. There was a time when I took great pleasure in instructing the youth, but after Chechnya I tended to distance myself from them.

  Tonight, laid out in the open air under a bowl of stars, Abu Hafs asked if he might take a wife in Iraq. Throughout the evening spent in town, I’d noticed him making eyes at a certain girl outside the café; I’d thought to correct this behavior, it was asking for trouble, but his glances were sly, never rising to the level of impropriety. More than scandalized, I felt sorry for him. He’s at that transitional age when the blood runs hottest, yet he finds himself least able to secure a marriageable woman, the best matches being reserved for older men with greater means.

  “I’ve heard even the rich ones practically fall over themselves for the honor of marrying mujahideen,” he said after I’d told him that, like anyone else, he would be permitted a wife if he was lucky enough to find one. “I’ve heard the normal rules don’t apply. That the engagement might only last a few days. Is that true?”

  “Oh?” I teased. “Is that why you decided to make jihad? Who would’ve known. All along you were angling for a wife.”

  “No. But why not? This could be my last chance.”

  “With luck you’ll have all the time in the world. You are barely a man, my son.”

  “I’m more of a man than most of these Iraqis,” he said. “They wouldn’t fight for their honor if a knife were held to their throats. They’ve lived under the heel of the tyrant too long. Their spirit is broken. You can see it in their faces.”

  “I’m not saying you ar
en’t brave. But how would you provide for a wife? What would happen to her if you become shaheed? Would you be satisfied with your widow living on charity?”

  “If I’m shaheed, she’ll praise God she once had such a husband.”

  “Praises won’t pay her bills.”

  “Do you think so little of women, Father of Dread?” He sounded genuinely curious, not reproachful. “Do you think that all they want is to be rich and comfortable? Don’t they want the same things we do? Their hearts burning for justice?”

  “No,” I said plainly. “Their hearts aren’t the same as ours at all. Marrying a mujahid is like taking a crown of roses that starts to wilt as soon as you put it on.” I gestured at the flat broad roof where the other brothers were sleeping. “How many of them do you think are married?”

  “I’m not sure. I know the emir has a wife back in Afghanistan.”

  “He does,” I said. “And one in Medina. And I have a wife myself, in Pakistan.”

  He seemed surprised to learn this. “You never talk about her,” he said.

  “We’ve become estranged. For all I know, she’s divorced me and remarried. I write her from time to time, but it’s been years since she replied. By now it’s very possible I’m actually a bachelor.”

  “You don’t miss her?”

  “Of course I do,” I said. “Though I miss my children more.”

  “They’re with her?”

  “That, or grown. Or dead. My eldest was martyred in Chechnya.”

  An uncomfortable silence hung between us, as if Abu Hafs was unsure whether to express sympathy or congratulations on my son’s distinction.

  “Think long and hard about what you really want,” I continued, now in a softer and more reflective tone. “Do you pray for a glorious death, or is it a home, family? Comfort, safety and wealth, God’s favor—it’s nearly impossible to have all those things in one life. Choices must be made. No one will think any less of you if you marry and decide to leave the struggle. You made a good jihad in Afghanistan. You did your duty better than most.”

  “I won’t leave my brothers,” he said, not even thinking about it, possessed with all the stupid confidence of youth. I felt sure he was reliving his shame over the strike that killed Abu Bakr on the mountain. He rolled over on his pallet so as not to face me; we spoke no more. In time his breathing grew deeper, settling into the rhythms of an easy sleep. To be so young, when bodily fatigue is enough to erase one’s troubles; at my age, they are, rather, compounded.

  Awaiting another insomniac dawn, I realize I’ve been a fool to speak to him as I have. Tonight’s impromptu lesson on the fickleness of women was a travesty. I have to restrain myself from waking the boy and telling him that everything I’ve said was a lie—prudent but wrong—and he would do well not to listen to the ramblings of one bitter with too much life. The point is not to avoid pain but to follow the right path, however painful. He should take one more wife than he thinks he can afford, father one more son than he can possibly mind, fight one more battle than he has the gall for, and then go to his grave with no regrets. How can a great man do anything less? What boy does not wish for greatness? How would we ever know our limits, if not for constantly overstepping them?

  “What’s gone is dead,” I tell myself, needing the reminder. I gaze on the sleeping form of Abu Hafs and ponder the mystery of the generations, how one’s hour forever draws to a close. Our time is short, twenty thousand days. I think of my son who will remain forever young in death. Sometimes, I try to imagine how he would’ve changed and grown if he’d survived Chechnya, but it’s as difficult as imagining oblivion.

  But there—that’s just the thing. A child is nothing if not a projection of oneself through time, a wish for immortality made flesh. I look at this proud Yemeni boy, whom I’ve come to adore as my own, and I see beneath the level of analogy: I see myself, glimpsed through an infinitude of filters, so to speak, which is the world. Life gazing on life and wishing it could live forever.

  Praise God that is impossible. Praise God for not giving us what we want. Praise God that what is gone, is dead.

  6

  CASSANDRA: SUFFER THE CHILDREN

  1 Day Before

  IRAQ (TRIANGLETOWN)

  Some wiseass dubs it Triangletown, and the name sticks. None of the GI topo maps show it here, this gnarly growth on the side of the highway, cinder-block compounds, mud-brick and sheet-metal shanties, goat stables roofed in white-painted straw, open sewers, hand-dug wells, a communal rice paddy watered by an irrigation canal that runs parallel to the highway, traveled by a detachment of Cassandra’s platoon, on their way to set a roadblock west of Palace Row. The hinterlands, cordon security. Control the traffic into and out of Baghdad.

  The villagers are warned of the platoon’s approach by their ascending dust cloud. Some of the Iraqis drop what they’re doing and kneel, weeping, on the roadside: the emotional display disingenuous, a stylized expression enacted for the benefit of authority. Others keep their distance and stare sullenly or gape mouthed, like what they’re seeing is impossible, a ghost army booming down the highway, the war and the Americans finally here, Baghdad having fallen mid-April after little more than a week of fighting, and only three weeks after the platoon crossed over from Kuwait with the second wave of troops to enter the country. Everyone is in the streets. Cassandra makes eye contact with an old woman who holds up a sick-looking girl, bundled in a blanket, like she wants one of the gunners to take her. The woman shouts at the convoy as it passes, growing more frantic as no one acknowledges her, ululating, now crying out to God, one of the few Arabic words Cassandra understands. After first detecting Allah in the greater cacophony, she hears it on everyone’s tongue in tones variable and only guessed at—exclamation, plea, blessing, joke, curse; she finds it difficult to discern the prevailing mood in the crowd. Everything inside them pouring out in a rush.

  For Triangletown’s children, the Americans’ arrival is less serious. More like a carnival train steamed into town. The kids, some shod in tire-tread sandals and some barefoot, run along the cracked asphalt, trying whatever English they’ve picked up.

  “Hello, I love you! Mistah, I love you!”

  “Ameriki nam!”

  “No no Saddam! Saddam donkey! Yes Bush, Bush good! One water, please, mistah?”

  They call her mister, just like the rest. From a distance, the Humvee in motion, it’s a common enough mistake. Her size-medium body armor draws her breasts uncomfortably tight against her chest; the chemical suit smooths the curve of her hips to baggy uniformity. With the Kevlar helmet overlarge on her head, hair the same length as the average Iraqi man’s, and desert goggles bulging like frog eyes to hide her cheekbones, she does look like a baby-faced boy suited up for high school football in pads too large for her. Which means she looks like many of the young men riding in the convoy’s three other Humvees.

  Her truck closely trails Lieutenant Choi’s, and together with the others they crawl down the heaving street, slowing to navigate the crowd. Crump nearly runs over a toddler who darts in front of them at the last second. He curses, slams on the brakes, and thrusts his palms on the Humvee’s horn, which makes a pathetic bleating sound like a Model T Ford. There are a few other near misses; the Iraqi kids press in close, their begging claustrophobic, but soon the platoon clears the throng and after that the far border of Triangletown, speeding up again on open highway beyond, big knobby tires humming over asphalt, the low roar of road wind sucking at the eaves of her helmet, morning sun just risen high enough to hit them sideways, like the light in a bad dream.

  They arrive at the roundabout, splitting the highway four ways. Holding this intersection for a twenty-four-hour shift will be their small part today in securing the capital city, about a fifteen-minute drive east. Shit mission to draw, just one step up from getting stuck pulling guard with the quick reaction force back at the Row.

  Crump parks their truck near the center of the circle, where stands a monumental statue of Sadd
am greened with copper rust. This President Hussein, unlike the one toppled and televised last week, is costumed with an eye to please the local, traditionally minded population, robed as a sheikh in a long flowing dishdasha.

  “Look at him in his fucking man dress,” Crump says. “Shit’s gay.”

  Cassandra doesn’t bother responding. With the exception of a couple refit breaks, she’s been cramped in this truck for days, pulling what could be called combat missions, sent here and there to set up snap checkpoints and roadblocks, but hasn’t yet fired a shot. McGinnis has warned them repeatedly to stay vigilant. Keep up with weapons maintenance. Hydrate. Watch for blood clots forming in your legs from too much time behind the wheel. That last one seemed like an unlikely thing to worry about at first. Not anymore.

  They waste no time dismounting, moving around to get the juices flowing. McGinnis fires up his camp stove, puts on water for coffee, and spreads his laminated map of their sector over the hood of the truck, where he meets with his fellow noncommissioned officers and Lieutenant Choi. They pore over the map, fretting over grid coordinates, defilades, enfilades, the emplacement of wire obstacles, and other tactical arcana.

  Crump does not dismount with the rest. He conks out in the driver’s seat almost immediately after ratcheting up the parking-brake handle. Cassandra is continually amazed by how he can fall asleep on cue. He’s spent nearly every spare minute of the war sleeping through it. Fastest way to get to the end, she guesses. Above him in the hatch, she considers a little kick in the shoulder to startle him awake. He should be awake right now, adding oil to the truck, doing something, anything, but the malicious urge passes, and she busies herself with weapons maintenance, using a dry paintbrush to dust off the fifty.