Backstabbing for Beginners:

by Michael Soussan

  I did my best to stay sane. I went to the gym every day at lunch. I took a night class in screenwriting at New York University. I moved downtown, to the East Village, where there was no shortage of partying going on. But as much as I would have liked to find the answers to my angst in the New York circuit, it mostly just ratcheted up my sense of general panic on hungover mornings.

  I tried ignoring my colleagues altogether in order to escape their constant whining, thereby isolating myself further from the people who cared for me the most. Some of my senior colleagues were used to being sidelined at various times in their UN careers. I wasn’t. I began to realize that every initiative we took and every problem we tried to resolve wound up being blocked in some way or other.

  A UN audit report eventually questioned the wisdom of isolating the Program Management Division from the rest of the office, but that report took several years to emerge. Gradually, I began to malfunction.

  I started having bouts of Paper Flow Paranoia that almost rivaled Cindy’s. I started snapping at junior colleagues for absurd reasons. Once, I arrived at the office moody from having been inadvertently pushed into the elevator, to find that some denizen of the cubicle prairie in the Contracts Processing Division had posted pictures of an office party on the Internet. I flew into a rage because as “acting spokesman for the program” I hadn’t been “consulted,” and I sent a nasty e-mail berating the poor kid for treating his workplace like a “summer camp” and holding him personally responsible if the Iraqis decided to use the pictures to accuse us of “partying with Iraq’s oil revenues.”

  My reaction was completely off-the-wall paranoid. When I finally came to my senses, I managed to apologize to him. But there was something about snapping that I enjoyed, for it allowed me to express my hate.

  I was fast becoming a real asshole. My social life was equally affected. When people inquired about how my day had gone, they got an earful. My friends worried about me. But there was not much they could do, because whenever they mildly observed that I seemed to be angry all the time, I would snap. My peaceful Norwegian flatmate came home one day and, looking at the remnants of a door I had kicked in half, asked me what had happened. I started talking about my day.

  I had come home that evening with the intention of working on a screen-play for my writing class at NYU, but I wasn’t able to concentrate because of a memo Cindy had sent to Pasha that afternoon, in which she had cc’d Christer and implied something I felt deeply offended by. As a result, I couldn’t concentrate on my screenwriting, because my mind kept going back to the memo we were planning to write in retaliation, which we would cc to Cindi (misspelling her name just to irritate her). After an hour of trying desperately to concentrate, I snapped, karate-kicked my door, and sat down on the sofa to watch the news, only to start fuming about the coverage of Iraq.

  It eventually occurred to me that I was well on my way to ruining all aspects of my life if I didn’t find a way to shed the extreme frustration that had possessed me in the past few months. I saw two options. I could either leave the UN and let the stupid turf wars continue without me or stay on and make a difference in the world by destroying Cindy.

  Everybody wondered why Pasha was letting her have her way around the office. Christer speculated that Cindy was somehow blackmailing Pasha.

  “She has to have something on him,” he kept saying. But what? We could only speculate, even as she pursued her schemes to render us more irrelevant by the day.

  Then, one night, an opportunity to take revenge materialized. It all started with a panicked call to my cellphone.

  “AAAHHHHH!” The scream pierced my eardrums, forcing me to hold the receiver away from my head.

  “Hello? Who is this?”

  “AAAAAAAHHHHHH!”

  “Habibi? Is that you?”

  “Man! You won’t believe what just happened!”

  I was at an uptight cocktail party on the Upper East Side. There were people here of princely descent, and they, too, heard the scream coming out of my phone. I stepped out into the corridor and leaned against the coat rack.

  “Dude, what’s the matter? You OK?”

  “No! She tried to . . . AHHHHH!”

  “All right, calm down, man. What’s going on?”

  “She went out of control on me! She wanted me to eat her pussy!”

  “Who? Lucy?”

  “No!”

  “Kim?”

  “No!”

  It could have been any number of women. Since leaving Baghdad for New York, Habibi had become something of a hipster. He had bought a mountain bike, which he rode through the city every evening in a wild bid to lose weight. And it worked. With his body quickly taking the shape of an Adonis statue, and a redesigned wardrobe to match, he was determined to make up for the three sexually frustrating years he had spent in Baghdad. With his British accent, his smooth Lebanese charm, and a healthy dose of self-effacing humor, Habibi launched out on the New York dating scene with Travolta-like zeal.

  “So who was it, then?” I asked.

  “Cindy!”

  “WHAT?”

  “She wanted me to eat her pussy!”

  “Habibi, how drunk are you?”

  “I’m hammered! But she was even worse! Jesus, I can’t go to the office tomorrow. This is totally fucked up!”

  “All right, chill out, man. Let me get out of here. I’ll meet you for a drink in ten minutes.”

  We met at Le Bateau Ivre, a discreet French wine bar in the east fifties. A normally calm and composed guy, Habibi looked like he had just come back from running with the bulls in Pamplona. And fallen down. His collar was out of whack, and his tie was hanging out of his coat pocket. Even at the height of the 1998 bombing in Baghdad, when he was hiding down in the basement of the UN compound while the windows above were being shattered by the shockwaves, his voice on the phone had remained controlled. But that night, his pitch was bordering on hysterical. Poor Habibi. What had the woman done to him?

  Cindy was Habibi’s direct supervisor. It was she who had yanked him out of Baghdad. The transfer of Habibi to UN headquarters was part of Cindy’s master plan to expand her own power within the office. As chief of office (we called her Queen of Office), she could get her own assistant, which meant she could bypass my director for key jobs that would normally be assigned to us.

  Since Cindy and Christer were in savage competition, Habibi and I were increasingly given similar assignments from our respective bosses. We had a talk about this and swore to each other that no matter how acidic relations got between our supervisors, we would work things out between us. We weren’t going to mirror their behavior. We’d stay pals no matter what.

  Cindy had made it quite clear that she disliked my visits to his office. Especially when she heard laughter coming out of there, for she assumed (often rightly) that she was the butt of our jokes. Once, she banged on her wall really hard and yelled, “Habibi, get back to work! Michael, stop distracting My Little Habibi!”

  “Dude,” I whispered. “She calls you My Little Habibi?”

  “She calls you Mikey!” said Habibi, all defensive.

  “Used to,” I corrected him. Cindy had stopped calling me Mikey after my memo to von Sponeck. For a period, she addressed me simply as Michael. Then, after I confronted her at the Mafiosi restaurant, I became Mister, a term that had a distinctly negative connotation coming out of her mouth.

  “You just sit tight, Mister. We have it under control. My Little Habibi will take care of it.”

  “I’ll make sure to coordinate with you,” Habibi would venture, before Cindy had a chance to frown at him. On occasion, she would interrupt him in midsentence with a “Shush!” The room would fill up with discreet smiles. This obviously irritated Habibi, but he was powerless to do much about it. His career was entirely in her hands, and he could not afford to piss her off.

  This predicament put him in a bit of a bind on the night of his distress call.

  “We were having drinks at t
his Mexican restaurant,” he said, after I had rushed out of my cocktail party to meet up with him. He was drinking water now and looking pale. “We had all these margaritas, and she was getting all rowdy, touching my leg and stuff.”

  “Well, come on, Habibi, that’s no big deal,” I said.

  “No, you don’t understand. She slid her hand all the way up!”

  “Oh. . . .”

  “She fondled me, man! She fondled me right in the middle of the bar! There were all these people looking at us.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Well, I tried to pay the tab, but then she ordered two more margaritas!”

  “Shit. . . .”

  “Then . . . then she fell off her chair!”

  “Wow. . . .”

  “And when I picked her up, she wouldn’t let go of me. She tried to kiss me. I was like, ‘Cindy, please!’ But she was, like, licking my face! Everybody was watching. It was horrible.”

  “Fuck, man.”

  “Wait, it got worse! I tried to take her to a cab, right?”

  “Right. . . .”

  “But she blocked the door!”

  “What door?”

  “The exit door! At the bar! She wouldn’t get out! I tried to reason with her, but I sort of had to hold her up. She was kind of unstable, and she started wiggling her ass against my crotch!”

  “Holy shit. . . .”

  “In front of everybody!”

  “Man. . . . Did you manage to get her in a cab?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Phew!”

  “No, man, it got worse!”

  “How?”

  “She made me go with her!”

  “Dude . . . she made you?”

  “She pulled me in! She said I needed to take her home!”

  I shook my head, incredulous.

  “And I kind of felt worried, too, you know—she could hardly walk.”

  “OK . . . so you went to her apartment?”

  “I tried to leave her at the door, but. . . .”

  I had been to Cindy’s apartment myself, once, back when we were on good terms. She invited me up one night after work. She lived close to the United Nations, and as we walked home, I mentioned that I was looking for a good air-conditioner. She said I should check out hers, since she lived right up the block. I had barely leaned over the device when the music came on. Seconds later, Cindy was in the act of fixing me a drink. Sensing the onset of a Mrs. Robinson scenario, I came up with a lame pretext and fled in short order. Her Little Habibi had tried to do the same, but with less success.

  “She pulled me down on the couch,” he said. “She wouldn’t let me go before I had a drink.” After he managed to fight his way back up, the woman adopted a rather explicit pose and ordered Her Little Habibi to go down on her. Before he was able to get away from this wild sexual advance, poor Habibi was accused, twice, of being a “male coward.”

  I exploded in laughter, but Habibi didn’t think it was funny at all.

  “What am I supposed to do?” he asked. “I can’t show up at the office tomorrow! It’ll be too embarrassing!”

  “Dude, she’s the one who should be embarrassed. Not you.”

  Habibi thought about it for a bit.

  “Do you think this constitutes sexual harassment?” he asked. I don’t believe I was able to prevent a diabolical smile from invading my face. Until Habibi uttered the words, it hadn’t really occurred to me. Now here was Habibi, a young male fearing for his career after refusing to perform oral sex on his female boss. She had insulted him, too. And he was traumatized to the point that he would not come back to work the next day.

  Bingo! Here was an opportunity to crush Cindy. All I needed was Her Little Habibi’s cooperation.

  “Of course it’s sexual harassment, Habibi! You can’t let this stand!”

  “But what am I supposed to do?”

  “You could complain to Human Resources.”

  “Are you crazy? She’d cut my balls off !”

  “No she wouldn’t. I’ll look into what recourse you have, if you want. There’s got to be some kind of UN office that handles this stuff.”

  There had been many incidences of sexual harassment at UN headquarters. And what happened in New York was nothing compared to what happened in the field missions, where young staffers often have little recourse. Even the head of the United Nations Refugee Agency was being sued for sexual harassment, after he allegedly patted a fifty-year-old coworker on the behind. He denied having done so in a sexual manner and argued that his move had simply been meant affectionately. The guy was from Holland, and it must be said that in Northern Europe, if a woman feels offended at having her behind smacked, she’ll generally make it clear right away rather than engage in lengthy lawsuits. Of course, the coworker in question was American and liable to be offended by much less than a pat on the bum, so she pursued her case against him for years, eventually forcing him to resign.

  “Wouldn’t you want Cindy gone?” I asked Habibi.

  “I can’t do it,” he said.

  “You can’t do what?”

  “The whole sexual harassment thing. It would be too humiliating. Imagine what people would say. . . .”

  “You’ve done nothing wrong, Habibi. You’re the victim here!”

  “Right,” said Habibi, putting his head in his hands. “Shit, man. What if I just ignore it completely—like nothing happened?”

  “It’s an option,” I said. “But what if it happens again? I mean, where does it stop?”

  I almost had Habibi convinced, but my eagerness to see him bring down the woman I had come to see as my nemesis caused me to screw it up.

  “Here’s how we’ll do it,” I continued. “Tomorrow, I will call up the Human Resources department and ask them what recourse you have. Then, we’ll draft an official complaint letter, which we’ll copy to the Office of Legal Affairs. Then . . .”

  “Look,” said Habibi, bringing his head back up. “I really don’t want any fuss. Just let me handle it, all right?”

  “Sure, man. Whatever . . . maybe she was right to call you a male coward.”

  It was a mean thing to say, and we left on rather cold terms. Habibi had come to me for help, and as far as he was concerned, I had only offered to make things worse for him with all my talk of legal action. But I was disappointed. We’d never get a better chance to neutralize this pest of a woman.

  Habibi didn’t exactly “handle it,” as promised. Cindy did it for him. She walked into the office at around 11:00 a.m. the next day, sunglasses and all, and casually stopped by his desk.

  “How badly do I need to apologize for last night?” she asked. “I don’t remember anything after my third margarita.”

  “It’s fine,” said Habibi. “Don’t worry about it.”

  At lunch, when he recounted how easily he had let her off the hook, I was boiling inside.

  I made a point of visiting Habibi in his office that afternoon. Habibi was so stressed out that he literally couldn’t speak to me. All he could do was address me in panicked sign language, pointing to the partition wall that separated his office from Cindy’s and urging me to get out of there as soon as I could.

  “Are you OK, man?” I asked.

  “Yeah, yeah. . . .” And then in sign language Shush! She’s HERE! Go! Get the fuck out of here before she hears you!

  Habibi was dead scared that Cindy might realize he had spoken to me about last night. But I knew that this was exactly the button to press if I wanted to dissuade her from treating Her Little Habibi as a sex poodle in the future.

  Instead of leaving, I laughed out loud, not least because Habibi’s erratic arm movements were really funny. Habibi rolled his eyes at the ceiling. I can’t imagine the expression on Cindy’s face next door. But she didn’t bang on the partition wall this time. It wasn’t as if she had really forgotten what had happened the previous night.

  I spent some five minutes with Habibi, discussing work, even as he looked at me p
leadingly. Can we do this another time? He appeared so stressed that I decided to leave him be. But not before stopping by Cindy’s office.

  “Hello there!” I said. “How are you feeling today?”

  She would have gladly thrown a machete at my face. She could tell, by my smile, that I had been briefed on her behavior the previous night.

  “What do you want?” she asked, stone-faced.

  “Oh, nothing! Just saying hi, that’s all. . . . I heard the margaritas are pretty stiff at that Mexican bar!”

  Her eyes were vibrating with rage.

  “I’m busy,” she said. “Some people have real jobs around here!”

  “Well, you better get cracking!” I said, stepping away, half-expecting Cindy to jump over her desk and attempt a tackle.

  Confident that my visit had destabilized her, I walked past Habibi, who was sitting frozen at his desk, sweating beads. Well, at least he wasn’t the only one sweating now. His boss deserved to share at least some of the stress she had inflicted on him.

  Unfortunately, things did not improve much for Habibi after that. While Cindy never commanded him to give her oral sex again, or called him a male coward, she nonetheless kept treating him like a poodle at the office. Except now he was a poodle she was angry with. And that’s not a fun position to be in at all.

  Habibi eventually fled the office and the city of New York, which he had grown to love so much, for a UN posting in Beirut. Far, far away from Cindy.

  But before he had a chance to leave, I began devising a scheme that would bring the Queen of Office down. If Habibi wasn’t going to lodge a complaint for sexual harassment, I thought I might bring the matter to the UN personnel office myself. I rationalized that I was out to protect Habibi’s career, should Cindy continue to harass him. But the truth was, I was pursuing a personal vendetta. My first gig as a bureaucratic backstabber was well under way when I heard a knock at my door, which I was now in the habit of keeping closed all the time. I flung my research into sexual harassment rules into a drawer and answered with an explicitly angry “Yes?”