When Zia was home at night, she told Nunu stories about what was happening inside the palace, and what gossip was going around the city. One rumor, roundly believed, was that Saddam was driving around Baghdad in disguise in a taxi. Some said the CIA and Saddam were in cahoots and that they had hidden Saddam in a safe house in Tel Aviv; others had heard that extra U.S. soldiers were sent to Iraq to marry Iraqi women—Nunu and Zia giggled at this. Zia’s friends in the Green Zone were sure that the soldiers’ sunglasses gave them X-ray vision to see through women’s clothing. When Zia pointed out how impossible this would be, the other girls remained convinced. “American technology can do anything. If they can make air-conditioning inside their clothing, they can make X-ray glasses.” Based on the locals’ disbelief that the Americans could withstand Iraq’s scorching temperatures, a rumor had spread that the soldiers’ clothes were air-conditioned.
Nunu loved the descriptions of the soldiers that Zia and her colleagues worked with every day. The soldiers seemed like knights in shining armor. Rugged, tall, rich, and modern, they had done what Iraqi men had failed to do: they had overthrown Saddam and freed Iraq. They were liberators, and they were also huge flirts. Every girl had a story of a soldier winking at them, complimenting them, smiling or waving at them. Nunu told Zia her own favorite story, about one of her university friends, who had dared to wave at a soldier right behind her father’s back. When her father turned around just as the soldier was returning the wave, Nunu’s friend was terrified. But her father just smiled and waved back, assuming it was for him. The girls thought this was hysterical.
Nunu often daydreamed about marrying one of these soldiers, though Zia often had to remind her about the darker side of all of this. There was a broadly accepted stereotype that cast the Americans as sex-obsessed, godless, violent, and aggressive, which meant that simply working alongside them could be dangerous for the reputations of young Iraqi women. Zia told her that even the male workers inside IMN whispered such rumors to one another: The Americans have sex all night in Saddam’s palace. One of Zia’s Iraqi male colleagues said that if a man could get into a room alone with an American woman, she would have sex with him. Nunu was wide-eyed, but Zia assured her it wasn’t true, or at least, she didn’t think so. Even so, Zia had to be careful about her associations: she was just one of hundreds of Iraqi women working for the Americans, but, because of her ambition and ability, she was pushing the boundaries of what society would allow, and, as Mamina had warned, her reputation was now at stake.
Watching Zia stand there waiting for the bus, Nunu scanned the still empty street and thought about how quickly evil rumors could spread. The worst gossips were the spinster sisters across the street: hateful, bitter, bored women who spent their lives perched in their window, gazing judgmentally down upon Zia and Nunu and all the other girls in the neighborhood.
Nunu had once been a rambunctious tomboy who rode her bicycle, played in the streets, and beat up the neighborhood boys. But such freedoms ended as she blossomed into a young woman. In the late 1990s, Iraq was becoming more religious, and suddenly there were so many things young women couldn’t do. If Nunu ran around in the street, the neighbors would tsk tsk her. Walk slowly, they reprimanded her. If she shouted, an uncle was always on hand to shhhh her. Speak softly, they said. In the classroom, a girl who showed more exuberance or natural intelligence than her male classmates was frowned upon. Mamina tried to shield her from these messages, but she, too, was vulnerable to society’s expectations, and was sensitive to criticism that she was a loose mother. After a girl turned twelve, bicycle riding was forbidden, because a young woman couldn’t be seen with her legs apart in such a way—all the boys would stare and the spinster sisters would whisper, “What a dirty girl.” Her bicycle rusted and eventually she gave it to a younger cousin. As Nunu became a teenager, the message of shame intensified. If she wore jeans, they would say she was “wild.” Should any young woman dare to be seen standing with or talking to a young man who was not a relative or a fiancé, word would spread that she was “on a date,” and no other man would propose to her. All these actions were haram, shameful, and should a potential suitor come to the street and ask around, as was the tradition, he would certainly be counseled against associating with such a loose girl. Zia herself already stood out, with her sharp tongue and free-flowing hair, and although Nunu tried to be as obedient as possible she knew that she, too, was considered unacceptably liberal. Nunu and Zia were lucky, though, that Baba let them be themselves—Nunu had friends whose families guarded their reputations so fiercely that they were not allowed to leave the house without their brothers or fathers. No doubt that was the only kind of woman the spinster sisters approved of. Nunu shook her head in frustration and walked into the bedroom to get her diary.
Outside, Zia was thinking similar thoughts. She lifted her chin, looked up the road, and huddled her jacket closer to her, keeping an eye on the spinster sisters’ window across the way. What did they think when the bus arrived in the mornings? Did they know where she was going? Well, they will have to get used to the idea, she tried to tell herself. It was like her American colleagues at IMN said: this was a new Iraq now. They were free. They had democracy. This was the time for women. If she was pushing society’s expectations, that only made her proud. One day, she imagined, her granddaughters would look back and say, “Zia’s generation changed things for us.” The old ways were over. Iraqis were going to act and think like Americans now.
Yet as the sun rose, the dawn chill evaporated, and the neighborhood fell into its daily routine, Zia observed that little had changed in her neighborhood of Karrada.
The Americans could give them satellite television and democracy, but what would it take to change people’s minds on an issue like women’s rights? A young boy on a donkey meandered slowly past, picking through trash for anything useful. The fruit vendor set up his rickety cart to display summer fruits and vegetables such as okra, watermelon, and purple grapes. Soon, the art galleries would open their doors, along with the butcher, the cobbler, the pharmacist, and the goldsmith. Later in the evening, Baba would gather in a semicircle of plastic chairs in front of an art gallery with his six friends to hash over the day’s events. The men were mirror images of one another: wrinked, with bald scalps, wisps of hair on the sides, mustaches, and spectacles. They smoked cigarettes with one hand and drank tea with the other; several newspapers lay on the table. So consistent was their presence, the tea seller rolled his cart from a block away to be closer to them. There was Abu Hassan, an agricultural engineer who was also a painter. He lived across the street. Abu Enwar, an artist and a Christian, who had a shock of white hair that matched his mustache; Abu Kamran, a Kurdish merchant; Abu Hussein, a professor, with small round spectacles and a salt-and-pepper beard. There was also Abu Jawadi and Abu Thafir, who lived in another part of the neighborhood.
Like Baba, these men were already modern in their thinking. They were educated in European countries in the 1950s. No matter what Saddam did, he couldn’t get them to change their minds about politics. When Zia did overhear them, they were usually reminiscing about days when Iraq was a monarchy, or when General Kassim was in power, in the 1960s, or making jokes about religious extremists. When they tired of politics, they exchanged gossip: who was engaged; who was sick; who had a new job; who had moved. Abu Hassan’s wife nicknamed them the “Reuters of Karrada,” after the popular French news service, because they always knew everything happening in the neighborhood.
Mamina and the other wives teased them for being so set in their ways. With the arrival of the Americans, sunglasses had become popular in Baghdad, and Abu Hussein showed up one afternoon in a pair. “Nice glasses,” Baba had said. Soon, all the others wanted the same. They agreed, the following day, to go to the same store and buy the same sunglasses. Baba drove. Since then, whenever the sun shone brightly, they all sat around enjoying their sunglasses. When they read the papers, they all changed their sunglasses for clear spectacles.
Maybe, just maybe, these men would accept greater freedoms for women. But she wasn’t so sure about the rest of the country.
THE BUS TURNED the corner and stopped in front of her house. As she boarded, she quickly checked around the street to see if anyone was looking, but today, at least, she saw no one.
In the front row, Zia’s friend Suhaad patted an empty seat.
“Shlonich?” Zia said, Iraqi slang for “What’s up?”
“Koolesh Zein al-Hamdulilla,” Suhaad replied. “Everything’s great, thanks be to God.”
Zia slid into the bus seat next to her. Zia knew Suhaad from college. She and her brothers all worked at a ministry that had been looted and destroyed in the war. Because she spoke English, she had accepted a job as a translator, where she earned ten dollars a day. Her brothers refused to work for the Americans, and Suhaad complained that they screamed at her and threatened her for doing so, even as they took her salary.
Hind, another young woman sitting near them, had taken a job so she could leave her abusive husband. Hind’s father had married her at sixteen to the son of his business partner, who promised to allow her to attend college. At first, Hind was proud to be married before all her classmates, and she had a showy wedding to make them jealous. But Hind got pregnant immediately, and then her husband refused to let her go to college and forced her to veil. If she was defiant, he beat her. Many men believed that the Quran condoned beating women, but Zia and her family disagreed. Even under Saddam, Islamic classes taught a hadith in which the Prophet said, “Women are like glass, so treat them delicately. Don’t hurt them.” But it didn’t stop Hind’s husband from abusing her. Now, after work, she hid inside the Green Zone for as long as possible. “He knows he can’t touch me here or I’ll tell the soldiers,” she had confided to Zia.
As the bus lurched through the clogged city streets, other young women boarded, several of whom Zia had gotten to know over the first month of work. During the ride to the Green Zone, the women always chattered endlessly. There were few other people, beyond their own sisters and the women on the bus, with whom they could discuss their exciting new lives.
As a group, the women felt intoxicated by the messages of freedom and women’s rights emanating from the palace, although some took their freedoms too far, in Zia’s opinion. Many left their houses in one outfit, and then changed into short-sleeved T-shirts, jeans, and hot pink lipstick on the bus. “We can wear what we like now,” said one woman in painted-on jeans. One restroom in the convention center became infamous as a changing room: young women went in wearing veils and Islamic dress and emerged looking fit for a nightclub.
“C’mon, this is a job. You have to be professional,” Zia pointed out, but no one paid attention. The overall mood was exultant. They were businesswomen like the prophet’s first wife, Fatima—many of the young women were earning more than their fathers. They had exciting jobs that would make all their girlfriends jealous, despite the fact that none of them could know about it yet. The layer of intrigue added to the adventure. No one said it, but they all felt it: they were the envy of all the young women in Baghdad.
Partway through the morning ride, one of the girls who boarded brought some major news: an Iraqi woman, working for the Americans, had married a U.S. soldier.
“What!” Zia was stunned. “Was he Muslim?”
The girls laughed. “Of course not!”
“Even if he did convert, it would not count because it would be for convenience, not for true reasons,” another pointed out.
Zia was speechless. It was one thing to flirt—she and Nunu made jokes about that all the time—but to actually get married to an American soldier?
Under Saddam, women were frowned upon for marrying foreigners because nationality could pass only through the father. But surely the Americans could dismiss this law. Still, there were tribal restrictions and customs, particularly in the rural areas. Most Iraqi marriages were arranged by the families between cousins, or at least within their tribe.
“Did he ask her father?”
No one knew.
In Iraqi tradition, the suitor had to bring many relatives and friends to the house and formally propose, to prove to the bride’s family that he had a good reputation. The young women on the bus doubted the soldier had done so—what Iraqi father would accept him as a son-in-law? Still, they were enthralled by the story.
Zia and her friends raked over the details endlessly. The bride’s name was Ehdaa. Some had heard she was a doctor, while others said, no, she was the receptionist at the Rashid Hotel (which was more believable because everyone was convinced those women were prostitutes who had worked for Saddam’s lascivious son Uday). The soldier had fallen in love with Ehdaa the minute he met her, and a month later he proposed and they were married. The girl telling them the story had seen the wedding photos on the Internet: he was in his army fatigues, bulletproof vest, and buzz-cut hair; she was smiling, her wavy black hair falling softly around her shoulders. They kept their marriage a secret while the bride applied for a visa to the States.
The gossip was tinged with envy.
“She is not beautiful!” someone complained. “If you brought her to the home of any Iraqi man, he would say she is less than average.”
Everyone concluded that the Iraqi woman had married the soldier because no Iraqi man would have her.
OVER THE NEXT few days, however, Ehdaa’s fairy-tale romance took a grave turn. Email was a new phenomenon in Iraq, and Internet cafés had spread across the city. Young Iraqis loved to chat with one another on Yahoo Instant Messenger, spending hours and hours on the site. Before long, Zia didn’t know anyone who wasn’t gossiping about the marriage between Ehdaa and the soldier.
“They say she’s a kafir,” Suhaad said on the bus one morning, in a low voice. Kafir meant “infidel” or “pagan,” and was the most derogatory term imaginable. Some extremist Muslim groups believed Islam sanctioned the execution of kafirs. The wedding photo had spread beyond Baghdad and had been picked up by Islamic websites across the Arab world. For those looking for examples of Americans’ nefarious presence in Iraq, this photo of a U.S. soldier and an Iraqi woman said it all: The Americans are here to steal and dishonor our women. To many, even those who were glad to be rid of Saddam, this was a reminder that America was still an invading Christian army, which many believed to be controlled by the Israelis. The Quran is very clear on this point: Muslim women cannot be allowed to marry a non-Muslim. Women in Islam are considered sacred symbols, responsible for upholding the honor of the religion; they are so precious they must veil themselves to prevent another man from being tempted by them. The job of the man is to protect his women, and hence protect Islam. Zia knew there was no more striking symbol of the ultimate conquest than for invaders to have sex with Islamic women—and if the woman does so willingly, there is no greater betrayal.
She’s a dead woman, Zia thought, horrified.
Eventually, someone who recognized Ehdaa weighed in with her full name and address. The Western press got wind of it and British and American reporters wrote about it. Each day on the bus, Zia heard new, increasingly frightening developments.
“Men are outside her house demanding she be killed,” Suhaad said. “Her family locked her in to punish her.” The soldier was going to be kicked out of the military.
They debated her fate. “Her brothers will kill her,” Suhaad said. “No, her father will!” someone else chimed in.
“No,” Zia assured them. “Think about it. If she was from that kind of family, they wouldn’t have let her work at the Rashid in the first place. I bet the family knew. I bet they approved the wedding with the intention of covering it up until she was out of the country. They’re only punishing her now because the wedding was exposed.”
But they still might have to kill her, Suhaad worried.
“She didn’t think it through,” Zia agreed, shaking her head. “She’d better get out of Iraq with him, or she’ll never survive.”
/> CHAPTER TEN
THE JADRIYA POLICE station was a run-down stone building with only a folding table and a few chairs scattered across glass-littered floors. The station had been occupied by U.S. military police after the invasion, but in the six months that had passed, some of the Iraqi police officers had started trickling back in to duty. When Manal arrived with Ahmed and Mustafa, two of her male Women for Women staff members, there were mustached Iraqi policemen with AK-47s milling around one side of the front office, while a couple of MPs in army fatigues stood on the other side. Both groups of men looked surprised as Manal swept in, in her headscarf and long skirt. One of the Iraqi policemen let out a low wolf whistle.
“Sorry, uncle, I don’t think so,” she said in fluent Arabic as she and her escorts pushed past. “I’m here to see the girl,” she announced in English to the MPs.
“The girl,” Muntaha, was a prostitute Manal had been contacted about by Sergeant Lautenschlager. Some MPs had been patrolling a Baghdad market when they saw a man brutally beating a young woman, who was screaming for help. The soldiers intervened, but then had no idea what to do next. With no Arabic speakers in the unit, they couldn’t understand what had happened, so they brought her back to the police station, put her in a cell, and contacted Sergeant Lautenschlager at the Humanitarian Assistance Center.
“Can I see her?” Manal asked.
The chief of the Iraqi police walked over, looking dubiously at Manal. “Why would you get involved? This is a family matter.”
Exactly the problem, thought Manal. When a young Muslim woman was caught in prostitution, the family punishment was most often a so-called honor killing. Prostitutes in Iraq were considered less worthy than stray dogs. To restore the family honor, the men had to decide whether to stone her publicly, suffocate her, burn her to death, or stab her.
Manal didn’t bother trying to appeal to the sympathy of the police chief, as she doubted he had much. “Then murder will be your problem to handle.”
Sisters in War Page 9