Sisters in War

by Christina Asquith

  But the issue was on the table, as the Iraqi women activists had intended.

  When the Governing Council tried to dismiss it, the women could negotiate. When the lawmakers took a break, Zainab al-Suwaij was waiting for them in the hallway, positioned strategically by the coffee machine. Many lawmakers knew her influential family.

  “Zainab, my dear, what brings you here?” one greeted her.

  “Well, I’m here for forty percent representation for women,” she replied in Arabic.

  He looked at her and said, “Zainab! That’s too much to ask for. Even in Sweden they don’t have forty percent.”

  “Well, okay, maybe, but look: we do so many things different from Sweden this year, so how about we do that too?”

  He said he would think about it.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ZIA OPENED HER laptop and saw an email from Keith marked “urgent.”

  “After work, we need to talk,” it said. Her heart skipped a beat.

  They hadn’t seen each other in a week. Keith had been working in Mosul, and he had called her each night from his hotel room. Zia knew he was lonely. In Baghdad, he kept himself surrounded by his contractor family, that swaggering group of overpaid, divorced, middle-aged men who drank heavily and bragged endlessly—mostly about the last war, the current war, and the next war. Keith felt comfortable in that world; it was like anesthesia for reality.

  But alone on his work trips, he couldn’t escape feeling depressed, he admitted. They began to talk more openly and intimately. He had confessed that, in coming to Iraq, he was supposed to be escaping an already complicated life—a failed life, he sometimes thought. He hadn’t expected he’d be allowed to even speak with the women. But he felt that, in Zia, he had found perhaps the closest female friend of his life.

  Zia returned the sentiments and kept his spirits high. She told him the story of the London PhD and the botched proposal, and made him laugh. She stayed on the phone with him for hours and then went on her computer to write him email. Even she was surprised by the emotion that poured forth.

  “I am no different than most Iraqis. I have always lived in the present, day to day,” she wrote in one. “Life for women in Iraq means you try to make it through the day alive, without one of Saddam’s sons taking you home and using you, or throwing you off a building. Life for 22 years had no future for me. I got up, went to work, and went home and whatever life was fortunate to give me was all I was going to get. There was no dreaming in Iraq. But now that I have met you, I have dreams. I feel like I have a future.”

  No sooner was Keith back in Baghdad than he wanted to see her. She was sitting in her office when he burst in. He closed the door. The sun was just beginning to set, and many of the workers had gone home already. “I had an epiphany in Mosul,” he began. He missed her, he suddenly realized. A lot. He told her that he had spent New Year’s Eve rereading her email in the airport. He confessed that while he had laughed with her about the marriage proposal from the London PhD, he’d been jealous and worried about losing her.

  “It took me by surprise. The last thing I expected was to fall in love. But I have. And for the first time in my life, I am not falling in love with your body or the sex. We are friends. And I am falling in love with you as my friend, with your heart and your soul. This is a new experience for me. Zia, you are one of the toughest girls I’ve ever met. But underneath, you have this incredible warmth and innocence. I see all you’ve been through and yet you are so optimistic. Being with you makes me feel strong enough to face anything.”

  He got down on one knee. “I want to be with you, Zia. I will do whatever it takes for you,” he said.

  Zia was crying. This was the moment she had been waiting for. The excitement of the war, the liberation, the new job, her freedoms—all the momentum of the last eight months of her life roiled inside her. He leaned toward her. She didn’t refuse him. Alone in the office in the warm air and pink light of dusk, she gave in to the swooning abandon of her first kiss.

  THE CITY WAS too unsafe for Keith to venture into the busy, crowded souks to find a goldsmith, so Zia shopped for the rings. They had to ask Baba.

  Zia had some doubts that he would approve, but Keith was all enthusiasm. He wanted to adhere to Iraqi traditions, and was sure he could win over Baba. Keith had many Iraqi friends inside the Green Zone who were eager to give him advice.

  “What happens is you overwhelm the father by bringing along a cohort of supporters,” one man told him. The men must be passionate and speak so highly of the groom, the father would have no chance to refuse him. Traditionally, fathers, brothers, neighbors, and the local sheik are all present. Keith’s group would include a few of his Iraqi friends, his brother, some South African mercenaries, and some contractors. Keith also found a sheik, and convinced him to come.

  “If permission is granted he’ll tell the mother to go and prepare some sweets,” his friend Wisam said. “But if not approved you’ll get bitter coffee. So if you see that coming, you basically have to keeping talking and talking, and he won’t have a chance to say no. Before he knows it, he’ll have said okay.”

  Keith was doing his best to understand the Iraqi rules, but he had always been buddies with his past fathers-in-law. He knew about the time Baba had tried to hunt him down, but he was confident his charisma would win Baba over.

  However, on the day set for him to go to Karrada, there was a security threat and no one could leave the Green Zone. The next time, he couldn’t get in touch with the sheik. Soon, the crowd whittled down to just his brother and the South African mercenaries. At that point, Zia believed it would be better if Keith just came to their house on his own. Meanwhile, Mamina had mentioned to Baba that another suitor was interested, and had begun dropping vague hints that he was Western. From Baba’s stone-faced reaction, she started to lose faith that he was going to agree. The Americans had lost much popular support over the first year of occupation, and Baba was susceptible to pressure from his friends, tribe, and family. “This is not going to happen,” Mamina worried. “Not now. It’s more than likely he’ll say no.”

  When Keith finally arrived, Baba looked grouchy. Keith realized he had seen Baba around IMN doing contract work, but hadn’t realized that he was Zia’s father. Nunu brought out drinks and a plate of fruit and nuts. All the women sat on one side of the room, and Keith and Baba sat on the other. Baba lit a cigarette and barely said anything. Keith, suddenly unsure of himself, tried to fill in the gaps. Baba did nothing but smoke and stare at Keith. Quickly, the conversation became awkward.

  Searching for common ground, Keith asked Baba a question directly. “How do you feel about Americans in Iraq?”

  A few weeks earlier, the U.S. State Department had issued a memo to CPA staff advising them to avoid conversations with Iraqis on three topics: religion, politics, and the future. That was all most CPA staffers talked about, but apparently the subjects were so controversial that talking about them had led to trouble. But Keith’s style was upfront and honest.

  After a few moments, Baba responded. “It is good that they came, but it’s better that they leave soon,” he said.

  Keith nodded vigorously. “Hmm. You know, a girl in my office said to me yesterday, ‘Everyone I know believes you’re here for one thing: to steal our oil,’ ” Keith recounted. “Yeah, okay, I told her. We’re spending eighteen billion dollars trying to reconstruct your country, and as fast as we can put it together, you’re blowing it up. C’mon, don’t you understand? This is tax dollars out of my pocket, to reconstruct your country. And we’re not stealing your oil, we’re buying your oil on the open market just like anybody else, and we’re trying to fix your oil refineries and pipelines so you can get more oil sold.”

  Keith rambled on nervously.

  “I’ve seen the maps. Practically this entire country sits on top of huge, huge amounts of oil. Everyone in this country should be living in a house of comfort with a nice car and parks. This is nuts, what’s happening here. We�
�re not trying to take it away, we’re trying to make sure you have what you should have.” He laughed.

  Baba took a drag of his cigarette. His silence said it all. Zia knew he would refuse Keith.

  After a few more painful moments, Zia ushered Keith out the door and quickly into the car. If the neighbors saw Keith outside their home, they would gossip.

  “Gee, that went well,” he tried to joke. He gave her a quizzical look, but Zia’s face had gone ashen. She looked as though she was about to cry.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  UNDER THE SUNNY, cloudless March skies, Manal hurried across the spacious pavilion, through the arched entryway, and into the sunny Mansour Women’s Center. She couldn’t believe that after six months of sweat and tears, opening day would finally arrive in less than a week. Once Manal had identified the Iraqi women who would be involved, and Heather had secured the property, the rest had gone fairly quickly and smoothly. Women for Women had done most of the work, subcontracting an Iraqi construction company to renovate the site, and working in teams to decide on a computer room, a meeting room, and the many different programs they would run from the center, including democracy training. The renovation still wasn’t complete, but they wanted to open the center on March 8, International Women’s Day.

  The center would signify their biggest accomplishment thus far. Manal’s staff bustled back and forth, hanging yarn artwork from Baghdad’s Fine Arts Institute for Girls and arranging space for the Ishtar Iraqi Women’s Ensemble to play their jangling music. Everything about the day was being designed to send the message that this was a center for Iraqis, even ensuring that the buffet included their favorite dish, mas-gouf, a fish caught in the Tigris and cooked over open coals. Manal expected one hundred guests, and had carefully selected local sheiks, business leaders, Iraqi media, and all of the many women’s groups.

  Despite the feeling of accomplishment at Women for Women, however, all was not well in the rest of Iraq as the first anniversary of the occupation approached. In Karbala, a Shia city in the south where Fern Holland had set up a women’s center, suicide bombers had recently attacked a crowd of worshippers celebrating Ashura, a religious feast commemorating the death of the Prophet’s grandson Hussein; hundreds of people were killed, mostly Shia. They left behind tens of thousands of grieving relatives and tribesmen, thirsty for revenge. Down south, tensions ran high. Traveling to cities such as Hilla and Karbala was now considered too dangerous for Westerners, which meant Manal could no longer safely visit Fern. In Baghdad over the past month, there had been several major suicide bomb attacks, including one outside the gates of the Green Zone that killed twenty-eight Iraqis. Manal felt that the danger was growing closer each week, like walls closing in. They were opening the center just in time.

  Her phone chirped and she recognized Heather’s number. The two of them talked several times a day. Six months had passed since Heather had estimated the nine centers would be an “instant thing,” and instead they had just this one, which felt to both of them like a Herculean accomplishment. Manal had gotten used to Heather’s reedy insistence, and for her part, she had toned down her reservations. They had become friends, despite talking about nothing but work.

  Inside the Green Zone, Heather had been spreading the word of the center’s opening in the international community, the Western media, and the various donor agencies that had given funding, such as USAID. She had received an overwhelmingly positive response. Victories and accomplishments were in short supply in the CPA, and even those people only tangentially involved in creating the Mansoor Women’s Center wanted to be on hand to recognize its completion. Heather had spent most of the last few days arranging security convoys to shuttle dignitaries to the big event.

  “How’s it going?” Heather asked briskly.

  “Pretty good,” Manal said, filling her in on some last-minute details.

  Then Heather paused, unsure of the reaction to her next sentence. “Bremer wants to come.”

  Manal stopped in the middle of the hallway. Sure, she thought bitterly. Bremer wants to turn up for the Kodak moment. But had he really stood by women when they most needed him?

  “That’s not a good idea,” she quickly replied.

  In Heather’s world inside the Green Zone, Bremer’s interest was a mark of recognition for the center, but in Iraq, Bremer was a lightning rod. As the most powerful symbol of the occupation, he was a moving target for the insurgency and his presence provoked suspicion among Iraqis and accusations that anyone working with his approval was a “collaborator.” Manal suddenly envisioned Iraqi guests arriving to see Humvees parked down the block; robotic, machine-gun-toting security guards at the doors; and television cameras harassing the shy women.

  “No, no, no. We need this opening to be an Iraqi event,” she said.

  In plenty of other places in the world, more experienced donors understood that the key to their success was keeping a low profile and letting the community take ownership. But the CPA was not experienced in aid work, Manal reminded herself, and cared as much about how the occupation played back in the States as it did on the ground. All her efforts to win over the locals would be destroyed if the CPA swished in to be thanked. Manal had spent months ingratiating herself into the neighborhood. The locals had been curious when they saw construction crews going in and out. Manal had immediately gone to meet the local sheik to assuage his concerns. She had had to quash a rumor that Women for Women was an Israeli front, which started because its offices closed on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, rather than on Friday, the Iraqis’ day of rest. Manal was constantly fighting for credibility.

  “We need an Iraqi face on this,” she repeated to Heather.

  Heather understood Manal’s concerns, but this was a huge problem. She didn’t care about personally receiving credit from Bremer for her work, but victories were in short supply around the palace. They had replaced the currency, opened the schools, and captured Saddam. Great, but that wasn’t enough: the electricity supply was still at pre-Saddam levels, the police were more loyal to the militias, and the Iraqi soldiers were abandoning their posts in droves in fear of being seen as defending the Americans. Even reopening the factories, which would create thousands of jobs, had been delayed for months as the CPA tried to privatize them.

  Therefore, Heather’s tiny women’s center was being seized on for publicity. She couldn’t turn down the groups who had funded it, like the CPA and USAID, and top brass like Bremer. Plus, the deterioration of support for Americans was precisely because the Iraqis didn’t hear about successful U.S. projects like the women’s center, she believed. Plenty of Americans inside the Green Zone were working around the clock, but how would they convince the Iraqi public they were doing something for women if they couldn’t take credit when they did?

  “It’s publicity and recognition for the center,” Heather replied. “And we’ll get more support to get the other centers done. The upside beats the downside.”

  A silence yawned between them. For the last six months, Heather and Manal had navigated cautiously toward a friendship. Despite their differences, they liked each other and shared a similar, wry sense of humor and a respect for each other’s work ethic and commitment. But in moments like this one, they felt pulled toward their respective identities of soldier and aid worker. “The U.S. military is using the aid workers for its war propaganda” was what Manal heard from her friends. “The aid workers whine from their five-star hotels while we’re getting shot at” was what Heather heard the soldiers say.

  “I can’t have a convoy of Humvees and tanks pulling up in front of the center, you know that,” Manal said nicely. “The women won’t like it.”

  “We’re going to need to go to the CPA for funding for the rest of the centers,” Heather pushed back. “We can hardly reject someone like Bremer and then ask for more money. And there’s no way we can ask him to come without security.”

  Finally, they landed on a solution: get Bremer there first thing in the morning.
Manal would make sure a few Iraqi women arrived early enough to sit next to him. He could have his photo opportunity, and then move on before any of the other Iraqi guests arrived and saw him. They could spin it as though they wanted Bremer to be “first” to “open” the center.

  “This could work,” Heather had said, relieved. “Let me talk to his staff.”

  Manal hung up and thought, This is what happens when you make a pact with the devil.

  SINCE DECEMBER, IRAQI women had been lobbying for the quota in government and protesting against sharia law. They had collected tens of thousands of signatures. Zainab al-Suwaij worked the southern territories. The group Manal had trained and helped organize months earlier, the Iraqi Women’s Network, held rallies and protests in Firdos Square, and painted signs and placed articles in the press. In their veils and pantsuits, with their purses and heels, they walked from door to door handing out leaflets.

  Their actions thrust them into the spotlight, however, which was extremely dangerous. Aqila al-Hashimi’s assassination was never far from the women’s minds. In February, in the midst of the campaign, Yanar Mohammed, one of Iraq’s most outspoken female activists, received an email with the subject line “Killing Yanar Mohammed Within a Few Days.” The message demanded that she stop her activism on behalf of women’s rights, described as “psychologically disturbed ideas about women’s freedom,” and promised to kill her if she didn’t stop.

  Some women did quit in fear, but she, and many others, refused to back down.

  The women had none of the security of the Green Zone. Their houses didn’t have concrete blast walls. They couldn’t afford high-tech security companies like Blackwater USA, a private security company staffed mostly by ex-Navy SEALs, who Manal heard were paid about a thousand dollars a day. None wore bulletproof vests or drove armored cars. Many were volunteers, working without pay. Bremer’s words echoed bitterly in Manal’s ears. “This is good democracy training for you,” he had said.