After the attack on the Rashid, the Americans had changed the way they dealt with their Iraqi staff. The insurgents who hit the hotel must have had help from the inside, people pointed out accusingly. Someone must have informed them as to where Paul Wolfowitz was staying.
The Americans decided to issue new security badges for all Green Zone employees. Zia’s had a red rim around the edges. Only Iraqi employees had this red rim, she noticed. Before, there had been no difference in the badges worn by Iraqis and Americans. At checkpoint lines where soldiers used to flirt with her, now, instead, they sent her through a second round of security, emptying out her purse and waving a wand around her body. More and more sections of the palace and the Green Zone were closed off to those with red-rimmed badges. Inside the Green Zone, someone’s level of security clearance denoted the importance of their job, their proximity to Bremer, and their special status. Iraqis, she realized, now had the lowest level of security of anyone—even Pakistani immigrants brought in to fill low-wage cleaning jobs had higher security.
A badge she had always worn with pride now felt like a marker. She felt humiliated.
“So they think all the Iraqis are spying on them?” she had said to Keith. “This is ridiculous. We’re working here to help them. This is a dangerous job for us!”
Keith nodded, helpless. “They don’t know who to trust.”
EVENTUALLY, THE TAXI passed through Adhamiya and into Khadamiya. There was no sign marking the change of neighborhoods—Baghdadis just knew. Khadamiya was a devoutly Shia neighborhood, home to the shrine of the seventh imam, Musa al-Kadhim, one of the last known descendants of the Prophet. Green-and-white flags waved from homes, symbolizing Shia identity. Images of Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr were tacked up onto shop windows, showing his black turban and long gray beard. Before he was killed by Saddam, al-Sadr was a prominent Shia grand ayatollah, and the father of the current militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr. Sunnis didn’t recognize the authority of al-Sadr, and few Americans knew who he was or what he stood for, but everyone in Khadamiya knew.
Mother and daughter exited the cab and plunged themselves into the dusty open markets, packed with other black-robed figures. Mamina and Zia stayed close, identifying each other only by the white leather of Zia’s purse and the gold handles of Mamina’s. Dust rose from the ground and diffused the bright midday sun into a hazy glow. People pushed and bumped. Exhaust mixed with cooking smells. Spice markets displayed dozens of burlap sacks of sumac, cardamom, lentils, rice, and bulgur. Black leather sandals hung for sale on the open doors of the cobblers’ homes.
Above the crowd, Zia could see the helmet and black sunglasses of a soldier moving toward them. He approached like a giant, poking through the roof of a Humvee, manning a swiveling gun, part of a line of Humvees cruising slowly down the traffic-packed streets. As they turned a corner, the gun swiveled on its axis, causing the crowd to collectively suck in its breath. Zia wanted to shout at the soldiers, “Get out of your car and talk to the people!” Zia knew lots of soldiers—she heard about their pet projects and saw photos of their families at home—so she could see them as humans, but most Iraqis saw only the barrels of their guns.
Zia didn’t say anything, though, and eventually the convoy moved on. Zia heard a wake of disparaging chatter as she and Mamina hustled along the familiar route to the goldsmith.
“Salaam aleikum,” they greeted Ali as the door chimes tinkled.
“Wa aleikum salaam,” he replied.
Ali brought out a silver tray with three glasses of strongly brewed Lipton tea. The women heaped sugar into them as a sign of appreciation. They chatted, sharing the latest gossip and stories of run-ins with the military. Streams of Arabic were punctured by English terms like security and the situation, generalities that allowed Iraqis to complain without taking a position on who was to blame. There were worried shakes of the head. Once, it had been safe to openly endorse the Americans, but now it was better to be ambiguous, even among trusted friends.
Finally, Zia’s eyes wandered across the glass counter filled with dangling gold bracelets, cuing the goldsmith to show them his favorite pieces. Her long, slender fingers danced around the jewelry, and eventually she settled on a white-gold bracelet that had grooves and a pattern that, to Zia, resembled a U.S. flag. She picked out one for Nunu as well, choosing a similar pattern, but smaller and in yellow. They settled on a price of five hundred dollars for both, and Zia paid in greenbacks.
Back outside, the women window-shopped for another fifteen minutes, and then caught one of the dozens of taxis zipping past. Dropping their packages onto the front seat, they rolled down the windows and relaxed their feet.
But halfway home, they hit a traffic jam created by a “Free Saddam” demonstration in Adhamiya. Mamina sighed angrily when she saw rows of praying men. Except for the end of Saddam’s reign, his Ba’ath Party had discouraged Islam, but now they were acting like dutiful Sunnis and leading public prayer. “Look at these hypocrites,” Mamina said to Zia. “They put on any mask to keep themselves in power. Why don’t they pray in their houses?”
The taxi driver swiveled around. He was young, in his late twenties, with close-set eyes and a mustache over crooked teeth. “You’d better shut up. You’re brainless. They’re better than you and they’re going to pray and you’d better be quiet.”
The women were stunned, but Mamina was the quickest to recover. “You can’t talk to me that way.”
The taxi driver reacted fiercely, and the two quarreled until Mamina backed down, as she always did, willing to sacrifice position for peace. As the journey continued, though, the driver grew more agitated.
He told them he was a Sunni and had been a sniper in the Iraqi army until the Americans disbanded it after the invasion, leaving him with no source of income. He made general threats against the Americans. Zia, who had become used to these violent barrages, ignored him for a while.
“Yeah, I graduated from the academy and the Ba’ath Party gave me this car. I was someone important. Now I’m jobless. Soldiers are nobodies now in Iraq.”
“You love Saddam?” Zia said.
“Yeah, I do. He was a real man. The Americans are bastards and soon we’ll kick them out. We’re working on that.”
“Yeah, I love him too,” Zia said, shooting a knowing look at Mamina. Her tone was sarcastic, but the taxi driver didn’t notice.
“Oh yeah? That’s good,” he said.
The car rolled past the checkpoint outside Saddam’s former palace, where a pretty, young Iraqi translator stood near the street. She was translating between the passing Iraqis and the soldiers.
“Look at them,” the driver snarled. He lowered his voice and began to brag. “These translators are whores. I just killed two last week and I’m following the third. I’m just waiting for the right timing. The second one I killed while she was with the Americans. The bullet went through her heart; she was standing there translating and all of a sudden she fell down.”
Zia and Mamina glanced at each other, and Zia’s hand flew up to her hijab, to make sure it covered the streak of dyed blond hair. Mamina’s tolerant expression was gone. She tried to keep the conversation flowing.
“Why did you kill them? They just want to make a living,” she said. “You see beggars and street children and prostitutes. If they work, it’s not to betray anyone. Where are they supposed to work?”
“What? Are you kidding?” he said. “A girl who works with an American? Men she doesn’t know? I just can’t believe it. They are dirty. Some of them get in a car alone with Americans. A girl with a man in the car—what does he do with her? They are infidels,” he said.
Zia couldn’t stop her hand from fiddling nervously with her headscarf. She had to get out of the car. Mamina directed the taxi driver down a side street several blocks from their house, and then they stood on the sidewalk, speechless, watching him disappear into the bustling city.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
AS MANAL AND Heather were working to get
their women’s centers started in Baghdad, another U.S.-run women’s center was being opened in southern Iraq, headed by a young woman who would become a close friend to Manal. Fern Holland was a blond, thirty-two-year-old attorney from Bluejacket, Oklahoma; she worked for the CPA in its south-central branch, sixty miles south of Baghdad in the Shia heartland of Hilla.
Like Heather, Fern was being given millions of dollars to build centers for women, and Manal was hoping to have Women for Women International offer a “rights awareness” program to the Hilla women through one of Fern’s centers. Manal got in touch and Fern agreed to meet.
Once past the ring of polluted industry that circled Baghdad, Manal could reach Hilla in a ninety-minute drive down a four-lane highway that cut through empty desert. Hilla felt like a town ripped from the pages of the Old Testament, where families in mud-walled houses lived off fish from the rivers and dates from the palms. In places like these, national governments weren’t recognized. Thousand-year-old tribes presided over legal and social matters. On the phone, Fern referred to Hilla as the “real Iraq.” It wasn’t the kind of place with many hotels, so Fern invited Manal to share her tiny room.
When Manal finally met Fern in person, she was taken by how out of place she looked in Hilla. She looked fresh out of an episode of Little House on the Prairie, with her long, straight hair, soft freckles, and a sweet dimpled smile that turned up to sky blue eyes. Her veil was not pinned tightly around her face, but pushed at least two inches back, so her bangs peeked through at the front. Fern made clear that she saw the veil as a symbol of oppression, and wore it only when she had to. She didn’t seem to realize how controversial she was in conservative Hilla, or if she did, Manal thought, she used her presence to make a point.
Still, Manal was amazed at how much Fern had accomplished in just a few months. She already had a women’s center up and running, and was working on a second one. In part, this was due to the freedom with which Fern could operate, since, unlike Heather, she was outside the confines of the Green Zone in Baghdad. The same security restrictions applied, but she ignored them. Fern even had her own car, and she drove herself among the small towns of Karbala, Kut, and Hilla, setting up her centers.
While they shared Fern’s room, Manal noticed that Fern also worked herself to exhaustion. She returned to the room at midnight and sent email until two a.m. By dawn, she was up again. Even as she worked seven days a week, she complained about a lack of time. In addition to building a women’s center similar to Manal and Heather’s, Fern was also trying to put together an international women’s rights conference at Babylon University. Her Iraqi coworker, Salwa Oumashi, seemed equally devoted. When she and Manal did take some time to get to know each other, Fern could be intense, accusing the Americans in the Green Zone of “running Iraq by remote control.” Unlike Heather, a team player who had risen through the ranks of bureaucracies, Fern had a go-it-alone attitude. Manal learned she had worked all over the world, enrolling in the Peace Corps and traveling to Russia, Namibia, and other far-flung spots to work on legal issues. When the war started, she had volunteered to come to Iraq and take any job on offer. After a few weeks in Baghdad, she had been repulsed by the sheltered mentality inside the Green Zone, and volunteered to go to Hilla.
The day after Manal arrived, she went to visit the building Fern was renovating as her second women’s center. She showed Manal the premises, and described her vision of fresh paint, desks, and new computers. Fern didn’t speak Arabic, and as she disappeared inside the building, Manal chatted with two local guys whom Fern had hired to guard the site.
“Who was in this building before we took it?” Manal asked them.
When Manal heard the name, she almost fainted: Muqtada al-Sadr! She knew that al-Sadr headed the most powerful anti-American insurgent group, the Mahdi Army, responsible for hundreds of attacks against U.S. soldiers. He had serious clout in the Shia regions. And she imagined he would be very unsupportive of a U.S.-run women’s center.
When Fern returned, Manal tried to convince her to give back the building. “You don’t want this building!” she told Fern. “You are in Hilla, you know, you are in al-Sadr’s territory. You don’t want to take a building from him.”
But Fern didn’t see it that way. From her perspective, women had been shunted aside for too long in the region, and she was going to put a stop to it. Why should Muqtada al-Sadr’s needs take priority over her women? “It’s not his building,” she said.
“Fern, slow down,” Manal said. “Look, you are talking about the south, you are not talking about Baghdad. And you can’t constantly push—you have to build contacts and support.”
Though she was very worried for Fern now, Manal admired her courage and commitment. Women’s rights was something they would have to fight for—it wouldn’t be handed to them—and Fern was unafraid to ruffle feathers to defend Iraqi women. Manal also admired her conviction, since she herself vacillated constantly: Were they pushing too hard, or not hard enough? Was Fern doing the right thing by putting herself out there, meeting people, and getting the job done? Or was she just going to make enemies and get herself hurt, or worse?
But when Manal saw Fern interact with the old, wrinkled widows, with small, faded tattoos on their faces to identify their tribal affiliation, almost invisible under the layers of black but for their callused, aged hands, she felt inspired. She realized that the local women had genuine affection for Fern. Around Hilla, they called her “daughter,” “Barbie,” and “the angel.”
“If I don’t stand up for these women, no one will,” Fern said. Manal knew this was true.
MANAL SET UP a program in Fern’s women’s center, in which she sent women from Baghdad to train women in Hilla to teach classes to other women. After this, Manal returned to Baghdad, but she and Fern stayed in weekly, sometimes daily, email contact. She thought about her constantly; Manal knew how controversial a figure Fern was inside the CPA, where many people, including Sloan Mann, refused to work with her because of her disregard for security precautions. They considered her reckless, but Manal wavered on whether her new friend was courageous or cavalier. So many of the Americans were hiding inside the Green Zone; by contrast, Fern was actually spending time with those she was trying to help.
As the fall wore on, Fern’s profile continued to rise. Even as she opened centers and ran programs, she had somehow found the time, by October, to head up the organization of a four-day international conference for Iraqi women. Manal again was impressed; the sheer logistics of holding a conference in Hilla were daunting.
“With no airport, how will the internationals get there?” she emailed Fern. “With few hotels in Hilla, where will everyone stay?”
Fern had taken care of everything. She organized buses from Baghdad and the regions. She convinced the head of Babylon University to allow the women to stay in dormitories and to host the conference. Fern didn’t want the kind of showy media event the CPA had held in July. She wanted “real women,” as she put it. She wanted to invite Baghdad dentists, doctors, and politicians, and to sit them next to poor, illiterate, and vulnerable farm women. She arranged for delegations of Kurdish women to come from the north. She arranged for buses to collect women from the Shia towns of Babil, Karbala, Najaf, Diwaniya, and Wasit in the south. The point was to unite Iraqi women of different sects, classes, and politics to work together for the greater good. Women from the group Muslim Sisters Organization, in black cloaks, gloves, and socks, would sit at tables with former expats such as Rend al-Rahim, who was about to be appointed Iraq’s first female ambassador to the United States. The conference would be called “The Heartland of Iraq.”
As the conference gained momentum, more and more U.S. groups attached themselves to Fern’s coattails. As Manal saw what was happening, she grew more uncomfortable. The three groups hosting the event, the American Islamic Congress, Women for a Free Iraq, and the Iraq Foundation, were the same Pentagon-backed groups that had dominated the July conference of which both
she and Fern had so fiercely disapproved. Manal worried that, while Fern’s instincts and intentions were clearly good, she couldn’t stand up to Bremer, and she simply didn’t understand the complexities of bringing this kind of change to a country like Iraq.
By the time Manal saw the agenda for the conference, she realized that Fern’s initial mission had been hijacked by those more powerful than her in the CPA, whose support she needed. The conference didn’t include any of the types of issues Manal felt the women needed—shelters, health care, human rights, reconciliation, or education. It focused on democracy training, and as far as Manal was concerned, that served the Bush administration’s political agenda, not the Iraqi women’s social one. Maybe Fern’s guest list was egalitarian, but the speakers and topics were elitist. And the fact that all this would happen in Hilla, a conservative town surrounded by poor, religious, struggling farmers who worried more about their next meal than about elections, seemed a recipe for disaster. What would the local men think when they saw all this attention for women? A clash seemed inevitable, but there seemed little that could be done to prevent it.
“You need to keep an Iraqi face on this,” she warned Fern, who agreed with her. But then, mere weeks before the conference, Manal heard that U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice had prepared a video message to be shown to the attendees, and Ambassador Bremer was going to fly down by helicopter from Baghdad to congratulate the audience.
At this, Manal called Fern again. “Condoleeza Rice? Fern, I wouldn’t do that. It’s not going to go over well.” Rice was the female face of an occupation that was growing more and more unpopular. Manal thought it inappropriate to bring together Iraqi women under the pretext of listening to them, but then involve people with specific political and military agendas. It smacked of helping them, but only on U.S. terms. Help with strings attached.
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