The Rope

by Kanan Makiya

  “The Shrine and the city have both fallen, with barely a shot,” Uncle replied, his bearing and tone of voice displaying more than a hint of pride in this achievement. “Your police and soldiers just dropped their guns, shed their uniforms, and fled. We are now in total control of the city.”

  “They are not my police and soldiers,” the president replied with a show of disdain. “Don’t confuse me with this caricature of a government headed, incidentally, by a former Baʻthi.”

  Thus did these Foreigner Iraqis talk about each other.

  There was no mention of the arrest warrant the entire evening, until, in a whispered aside, the president let drop an assurance that the Sayyid would get everything he wanted. All members of the Cabal of Thirteen, it turned out, had put their names to a letter, demanding from the Occupier a “suspension” of the arrest warrant, followed by a cease-fire. They even demanded that the Occupier integrate our Army of the Awaited One into the political process unfolding in Baghdad. All our army had to do was withdraw from the Holy City, ending its occupation of the Holy Shrine in Najaf. The letter, a copy of which was given to Uncle for the Sayyid’s approval, was later read out to the Occupier in a secret meeting presenting the “demands” of the Cabal of Thirteen upon the Occupier!

  The Occupier’s army did not trust our Sayyid and his army; neither trusted what was left of the Governing Council, which in turn was so divided upon itself it could not agree on anything. The Occupier-appointed Iraqi government did not trust its own national security advisor, because he was a member of the Cabal of Thirteen, which in turn was the least trustworthy of the lot because it was permanently on the verge of breakdown through backstabbing and rumormongering.

  The most interesting word in the letter—which the Occupier read but was refused a copy of—was “suspension.” This was a sop to the Occupier, demanded by its legal advisors, who objected that since the Sayyid was charged with a crime, a crime based upon an elaborate investigation by an Iraqi judge, the Occupier could not be seen to be dealing with him, or put him on the Governing Council, or integrate his army into the New Army of the government. “Suspending” the arrest warrant meant putting aside the file the judge had opened, not closing it forever, a compromise a member of the Cabal had conjured up to resolve the impasse. In practice it meant that the Occupation Authority would toss the crown of thorns of the arrest warrant into the hands of a duly elected future Shiʻa-dominated government, which, Uncle was privately assured, would immediately rescind that which they were now merely pretending to “suspend.” On the basis of these reassurances, Uncle agreed to the word “suspension.” That is the only concession he made in this affair.

  War in Najaf

  The following week in August 2004, the Iraqi government, disregarding the recommendations of its national security advisor and the Cabal of Thirteen, sent its American-trained, Iraqi-officered New Army into the Holy City. This would be their first major engagement. The troops began by opening fire on a demonstration of unarmed pilgrims marching peacefully in support of our Sayyid. Eighteen people were killed, our men were incensed, and the fighting intensified. Overnight Najaf turned into a city of ghosts.

  American tanks, planes, and Apache helicopter gunships bombarded our positions around the Shrine. Marines attacked a building in the inner ring of the Old City, reaching a few meters from the Shrine. Only this time they dug in and held their ground, not just attacking and leaving as they had done before. Our commanders ordered us to fall back into the Holy Shrine, which Americans would not fire upon. Several thousand of us poured in, turning the Shrine and its Great Courtyard from a sanctuary and place of worship into a city, with hospitals, canteens, and stacks of coffins for our dead and dying.

  Meanwhile, units of the new Iraqi government’s army continued parading about in the areas captured by the American marines. We were safe inside the Holy Shrine, but the city had been reduced to crumbling buildings, blackened storefronts, cars crumpled like tin cans, and dead goats and dogs littering the sidewalks. Najaf looked like its sister city, the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah, after the Occupier had pounded it into submission back in April.

  Our army, which had started out five thousand strong, had by the summer’s end reached twenty thousand fighters.

  We began coordinating with Sunni jihadi insurgents from Fallujah and Ramadi, forcing the Occupier to fight on two fronts at once. Uncle’s continuing relations with the Islamic Scholars Association that had taken over the Mother of All Battles Mosque, which I visited with him back in 2003, were paying off. Fighters from the Sunni triangle were being bussed in to augment our forces. Even the Muslim Brotherhood, the wellspring of all militant Sunni organizations, was issuing statements in support of our Sayyid.

  —

  Haider and I had been moved into the Shrine and paired up as a sniper unit. He was the shooter and I the spotter in charge of communications with base via a prized satellite phone, of which our several thousand fighters in the Shrine had fewer than a dozen. Our training took place on the first three dusk-to-dawn missions into the Old City, when we were accompanied by a professional sniper from Fallujah, an older man of great renown as a shooter who had trained under the Tyrant but who could still scramble up rubble and falling walls like a goat, and who handled his rifle as though it were his third arm. I saw him splatter the brains of a soldier on the run at three hundred meters. The art, he taught Haider, was one of patience and concealment. We learned from him the value of spending hours choosing a location, and setting up meticulously until both the weapon and its handlers were perfectly concealed; then followed the wait—the hardest part.

  The killing that counted in this August war was done by snipers; the rest was mindless mayhem and destruction caused by planes, Apache helicopters, and tanks, none of which we had. The Occupier had better equipment, and snipers who had trained longer and harder than we; the terrain was a problem. Our enemy’s snipers, whom we feared more than his tanks, had to keep close to their front lines; venturing out was risky; they had been known to lose their way in the rabbit warren of alleys that made up our Old City. We knew those alleys.

  Haider and I ended up going through houses as well as around them, traveling over rooftops and hiding in old mosques and new ruins; we knew every alley, every rooftop, and which remains of each partially gutted building had better vantage points. Taking out soldiers and officers of the New Army was child’s play; killing Americans was harder, not because we could not get close enough, but because they reacted instantly, their tanks like wounded elephants obliterating within seconds the building we were concealed in. Or, if we had not been spotted from the flash of Haider’s rifle, a tank would plow through the whole alleyway, bringing down everything on either side. And yet the only Americans to die in the war over Najaf were killed by snipers like Haider and spotters like me.

  Haider excelled at his work, and he was in rapture over his semiautomatic Soviet-made Dragunov sniper rifle, standard issue to sniper squads in the days of the Tyrant. He took to saying there was something akin to a religious experience in a meticulously prepared, patiently hunted, and perfectly executed kill. First, he said, there was the near ecstatic awareness of the proximity of death, your own and, you hoped, someone else’s; second, there was total focus on body, self, and task, to the total exclusion of the world; third came the higher value you placed on your comrade’s life over your own; fourth was the warm feeling of being part of something bigger than yourself and full of meaning, like our presence inside the Holy Shrine; and finally, the exhilarating explosion of happiness and relief at being able to distill all these components of an authentic religious experience into the perfect killer shot.

  There is a savage joy in a good killing. Perhaps all our fighters who had occupied the Shrine felt it. I felt it. Perhaps our Sayyid felt it as well, catapulted as he now was out of the shadow of his martyred father and brothers to near mythic status by the boldness of his takeover of the Holy Shrine, and yet knowing, as he must have, the terr
ible consequences on his beloved Najaf.

  I remember marveling at the way the experience of war changed the men around me. Haider’s mind had been unhinged by a crazy preacher awaiting the apocalypse; his home life, destroyed by the revelations about his father. But for those four weeks we were holed up and at war in Najaf, Haider’s mind and body were in harmony with one another, pitched to perform one singular task perfectly.

  I look back in amazement at those feelings and memories from the scorching hot August days of 2004 fighting the Occupier. Perhaps there is more than one person inside us: one who thrills in destruction, and the other who recoils from the fact. Or perhaps it is a matter of those despised parts of our natures that are normally frittered away as harmless foibles giving rise in times of war to monsters.

  One incident I will never forget: I was sneaking back into the Shrine, carrying a wounded comrade, when an old man called out just as I approached the alley’s end and was preparing to sprint across the open space to the tall wooden doors. “Look,” he said, pointing at a dead donkey that had been pulling a cart laden with blocks of ice. “Help me. My donkey was shot by a sniper.” The cart, tilted forward, was on the verge of spilling its contents over the dead animal. “Those bloody Americans,” I shouted back, and pointed to my bleeding comrade by way of explaining why I could not tarry to help.

  An hour later, Haider, his Dragunov, and I, carrying the rest of our kit, snuck back out of the Shrine from the same doorway to take up a position west of the Old City. Near the dead donkey, lying facedown in the dirt, was the old man, a hole centered in the back of his head.

  “Good shot,” remarked Haider.

  I looked at him aghast. “Why…who?”

  “Who knows? Probably just a practice shot.”

  Cease-fire

  The war with the Occupier did not end because the Occupier “suspended” the arrest warrant for the Sayyid; it did not end because of the maneuverings of the Cabal of Thirteen; it did not end because our Army of the Awaited One obeyed the terms of the deal that had been struck with the Occupier-appointed Iraqi government. It ended because a ninety-year-old recluse forced himself out of his sickbed and, against his doctor’s orders, led a march for peace from the city of Basra all through the southern provinces into Najaf. It ended because one million Shiʻa men and women walked with him, not weeping and wailing and beating their chests, as they had done on the march to Karbala in 2003, but calling for peace and an end to all gunmen in the Holy City.

  There was nothing our Sayyid could do after that except meet with the old man, and strike the best possible deal that would allow us to withdraw with dignity from the Holy Shrine.

  The meeting with the Grand Ayatollah of the Shiʻa world took place as the great march was ending in Najaf; it took place on the last Thursday in August. Crowds of people were still on the streets. The Sayyid entered the Ayatollah’s house and found him sitting cross-legged on the floor of his small reception room. It was the Sayyid’s turn to bow low from the waist and kiss the old man’s hand. The Ayatollah did not wear large turquoise and silver rings on his fingers as our Sayyid did, so the Sayyid kissed the wrinkled skin on the back of the old man’s hand. Did the Ayatollah withdraw his hand, as he was wont to do with esteemed visitors whom he wished to put at ease? We don’t know. Uncle doubted it. Did the old man for that matter rise from the floor out of respect for his guest? “Definitely not,” Uncle said angrily. There was no equality in that room on that extraordinary day.

  The meeting with the old man lasted fifteen minutes, but our Sayyid had to stay in the room longer, alone, while the Ayatollah’s aides obtained assurances of safe passage for him. The old man had drafted a statement, which he wanted our Sayyid to copy out in his own handwriting, sign, and affix his House’s seal onto. Our Sayyid agreed with the text after it was read out to him, but tried to avoid signing it. The old man would have none of it. He had to have the words copied out in our Sayyid’s hand, and then signed, sealed, and read out loud by the Sayyid into a tape recorder provided by the Ayatollah’s aide. There was neither equality nor trust in that room on that extraordinary day.

  The Sayyid squeezed one concession out of the old man during the fifteen minutes. He wanted us, his fighters, to exit the Shrine with heads held high, not as an act of surrender. The Ayatollah agreed, “for your fighters’ sake,” he said, but on the condition we turned in our guns. Our Sayyid then said he feared his fighters would be photographed as we filed out of the mosque and punished later by the Occupier; he asked for assurances in the shape of ten thousand unarmed worshippers mingling with us, his soldiers in the Army of the Awaited One, as we left the Shrine. The Ayatollah agreed the fear was warranted, and conceded two thousand.

  —

  Filing out of the tall wooden doors of the Shrine, my comrades and I threw our Kalashnikovs and RPGs into a cart standing outside. The voice of our Sayyid, which the old man had insisted be recorded on tape, came crackling out of the loudspeakers of the Shrine: “In the name of God, my brothers in arms of the Army of the Awaited One. You defended yourselves. You fought for your Imam bravely and unflinchingly. Now I ask you, and the Ayatollah of this blessed city asks you, mingle with the peaceful unarmed pilgrims from Kufa and Najaf who are among you, and depart from the Holy Shrine.”

  Neither the Americans nor the Iraqi Army and police, whom we had fought in Najaf for a month, were to be seen as we walked out. We threw our arms into two carts that had been placed outside the gates. It looked like we were disarming; in fact, the carts were driven to a warehouse outside the city, where we later collected the same weapons we had discarded. When American trucks showed up to collect the weapons they were told were waiting for them in the carts, nothing was there.

  Exhausted and hungry, carrying our dead and wounded, but with our dignity and honor intact, we walked out mingling with thousands of ordinary pilgrims, dispersing ourselves in the alleyways of the Old City.

  As I left, in the distance I could see a crowd of reporters and camera crews milling around the house of the old man. The Holy City’s Supreme Source of Emulation had said how it was to be, and everything was as he said. A press conference was under way announcing the terms of the cease-fire to journalists from all over the world. The Ayatollah’s aide was standing on a raised platform. As I walked toward the reporters to see what was going on, out of the corner of my eye I spied our Sayyid, flanked by two of his aides, slip out of a side door of the Ayatollah’s house and make a dash for his car, black robes flowing.

  The Quiet Ayatollah

  A few days later, Uncle was obliged to follow up on details of the cease-fire agreement with the Grand Ayatollah’s aide. I accompanied him, and was instructed to wait in the courtyard of the house where the meeting was taking place. A young man my age had organized refreshments, and he sat down with me out of politeness. He was a student of the Ayatollah’s studying jurisprudence and ethics. I asked him what kind of a man his teacher was. He began with a story about the Ayatollah when he was a young seminary student in the Holy City of Qum in Iran.

  At that age, the seminarian said, the Ayatollah was known for two things: good looks and love of philosophy. One day he seated himself in a circle of the most esteemed teachers of his college, who were discoursing on issues of predestination and free will. After a while the oldest in the group, and clearly its leading scholar, noticed the young cleric and said: “Have you a question you would like to put to us?”

  “How may we know the difference,” the young cleric asked, “between the acquired character of a person and his or her true heavenly essence?”

  “That question is pretentious, young man,” the scholar replied abrasively. “Why not say what is really on your mind, like how can I use my good looks to become superior to my contemporaries? Isn’t that what young men like you think about?”

  The young cleric was silent, thinking about what his elder had said. He then thanked his interlocutor most courteously and took leave from the company.

 
“Why did he thank a man who was so rude to him?” I asked the seminarian.

  “Because the scholar’s answer made him reexamine his reasons for asking the question in the first place.”

  “He wasn’t offended?”

  “No.”

  “Does the Ayatollah speak in Arabic or in Farsi?”

  “That depends.”

  “But he is an Iranian.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t understand. He was born in Qum.”

  “His is the Community of Believers in Him, none other.”

  “Does he think of himself as an Iraqi?”

  “No.”

  “How then does he think of himself?”

  “As a subject of our Lord, frail and prone to error, as are all His creatures.”

  “But we call him our most Supreme Source of Emulation!”

  “He is not responsible for what others call him.”

  “Does he love Iraq at least?”

  “Of course.”

  “Does he love Iran?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Equally?”

  “Equally.”

  “Doesn’t he love any one place more than another?”

  “He reveres the Holy City, Najaf, above all other places. Here he has lived for half a century.”

  “That long! Is that why he intervened to resolve the standoff in Najaf?”

  “He intervened because the Holy City faced destruction; it called out to him.”

  “Leading a march into Najaf is an unusual intervention for a man who despises politics.”

  “The crowds who flocked around him did not think so.”

  “Why did he not intervene on other occasions, when there was fighting in Sadr City, in Karbala, or in Fallujah, for instance?”

  “Loss of any Believer’s blood, Sunni or Shiʻa, is like a dagger in his heart. But he will not intervene in situations where he can achieve nothing.”