She looked again at the photo of the balding Jordanian, and sighed to her sister. “Why not? Maybe I should marry him. He will take care of me. I will have my problems solved.”
“No way,” Nunu said, horrified. She hugged her sister. “I will never let you marry this man.” Zia had to smile. “Come on,” Nunu said. “Come with us back to Baghdad.”
Nunu was right. Zia didn’t want to stay in Amman alone, where she had no friends, no family, no memories, no job. She packed her bags, and emailed the same friend she had emailed so excitedly in her first week:
Sometimes you move vertically and sometimes horizontally. This time in Jordan turned out to be a horizontal move. I learned something and I got some knowledge of life. But it’s time to go back. I’d rather die once in Iraq than every day here.
BUT BEING BACK in the cramped apartment in Karrada brought Zia no sense of returning to the comforts of home, though it had been four months since she’d last lived there. The apartment was a perverse prison, she decided, where the innocent people were locked inside and the criminals roamed the neighborhoods freely. Zia felt incredibly alone. On the streets, Zia noticed almost no young women walking around. Those who did were veiled. The rest were taking shelter in the refuge of their bedrooms, a life that, no matter how depressing, was, ironically, their only chance for survival in the “new Iraq.” Zia knew she couldn’t live for long like this.
Within a few days she arranged to meet up with the bureau chief at the American channel NBC, who she’d heard was hiring reporters. As she walked past the concrete blast walls and up the white marble steps, she passed dozens of unemployed Iraqi men who waited outside in the hopes a Westerner would emerge looking for a driver or translator. Even though they, too, were vying to work with the Americans, the men hissed at her as she went in, calling her a whore. She snapped back at them, although she knew she could no longer count on the safety of the Green Zone and it was reckless to make enemies.
The NBC producer turned out to be a rude Australian who thought too highly of himself. After the interview, he offered her $250 a month, less than $10 a day.
“I don’t work for less than five hundred dollars a month,” she replied. It wasn’t just the money; the producer and his staff rented several floors in Baghdad’s nicest hotel. They had fancy equipment, a fleet of SUVs, bodyguards, and all the nicest imported foods and liquor—she saw it as she walked in. Yet he offered her a slave’s wage and acted as though he were doing her a favor, even though it was she who would be risking her life driving to and from the office and going out on stories.
The more desperate Iraqis became, the more prideful Zia felt. Mamina’s words were her wings. She told her, “Don’t work for nothing. We have survived worse than this before and we will do it again. But don’t lose your dignity.” The producer upped his offer to $300 a month, and when Zia refused, he showed her the door. She went home and lay down. She didn’t sleep or talk, she just lay there. Three weeks passed.
All the while, Keith called and called. She hadn’t seen him since their Aqaba trip.
Finally, Zia couldn’t stand another day locked in the bedroom. “I want my old job back,” she told Keith.
Keith told her about a vacancy in the Project Contracting Office in the Green Zone.
They talked to some people. There were plenty of jobs available for Iraqis, but they couldn’t offer her safe housing, any security escorts, or anything other than her salary. Zia took it, even if it meant making the dangerous daily commute from her home to the Green Zone each day.
“I will die before I lose this job again,” she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
POP, POP. GUNSHOTS rang out in the cool night air of the Green Zone.
Standing with their drinks on the patio of the U.S. Institute of Peace headquarters, not far from Saddam’s palace, Heather Coyne and her friend Clarke exchanged an alarmed look. They both recognized the sound from their military training. “A nine millimeter?” Clarke said.
She nodded. “That was a little too close for comfort.”
“Could have been a negligent discharge?” he asked hopefully.
He and Heather were the only two soldiers at the party. Around them, the other party guests—embassy officials, State Department officials, and consultants to the United Nations—noticed their alarm. It was late October 2004, and over the prior months more and more houses in the Green Zone had been handed back to Iraqis as the CPA had moved out, and no one was quite sure anymore who was living nearby, and where a threat might come from.
“You think an insurgent slipped through?” someone whispered.
Whatever it was, it stopped the party. Heather had started throwing these weekly networking events after she joined USIP in September 2004. This new gig was, at last, the nation-building job she had dreamed about as a twenty-something in the Office of Management and Budget. Free of the crippling bureaucracy of the U.S. military, Lieutenant A. Heather Coyne was now just Heather, and she dressed in plainclothes and no longer carried a weapon. She viewed her job as part of a loyal, determined effort to bring the country back from the brink of civil war. Either that, or she was just unable to wrench her eyes away from the train wreck she had helped create. She had to admit to herself that, at thirty-two, she wasn’t trying to get back to the States and get on with some other more traditional life. Her career was her life, and, after eighteen months, Saddam’s palace compound had become her dysfunctional home. Her prewar existence felt like a distant memory. As bad as things had gotten, Heather told herself that the situation could be turned around. She found reason to hope in the upcoming elections, and in the drafting of the constitution. She still wanted to believe that she could make a difference.
Since the dissolution of the CPA on June 28, Iraqis seemed to be on tenterhooks wondering what would happen next. Signs were bad. For most of July and August, relations between the military and the Shia militias worsened as they battled in southern Iraq for control of the city of Najaf. Meanwhile, in western Iraq, Sunni insurgents had moved back into Falluja. Attacks against Western civilians were down, mostly due to the fact that most had left the country or were staying inside the fortified walls of the Green Zone or their hotels. But soldiers patrolling neighborhoods were constantly under attack. By September, the death toll of U.S. soldiers had reached one thousand.
Even more worrying for Iraq’s prospects of long-term stability, Heather thought, were the reports of increasing sectarian violence. Immediately after the spring uprisings, Sunnis and Shias had united in their opposition against the Americans, but lately they were turning against each other. Many believed that Al Qaeda was provoking tension by attacking Shias, while others accused the Americans of secretely trying to spark a civil war to weaken the country and prolong their occupation. The embattled Iraqi government launched a campaign, “Sunnis and Shias Unite,” but random acts against Sunni tribal leaders or Shia shrines continued across the country.
From her limited reach inside the Green Zone, Heather’s hope was to, at least, get the structures in place for a civil society that could function once the anarchy abated. She had some reason to hope. Most of the ineffective Republican Party loyalists had left in June, and many of the new arrivals were trained Arabists from the State Department, seasoned diplomats and experts in constitutional law and postwar reconstruction—although they gravitated to office work over getting out and meeting with Iraqis. She felt confident in the Iraqi employees on her team. The first nationwide elections for parliament were scheduled for January 2005, and she was running training sessions in campaigning and governance for Iraqi leaders. She was working with Manal to recruit female candidates and prepare them for lawmaking. The elections would be followed by a yearlong effort to write and finalize the national constitution, and Heather was doing her best to advocate for inclusion of a 25 percent quota of female representation in government.
Yet, as hard as they worked, and as monumental as were their tasks, Heather had to acknowledge the p
ossibility that no one was paying any attention; that the Iraqis were on course for a civil war; and that the Americans were just a bunch of bureaucrats writing a constitution that no one would read and forming a government that no one would respect. They were tired, stressed, and lived in constant fear of attack. That month, a suicide bomber had snuck into the Green Zone and blown himself up inside the Green Zone Café, killing one and wounding five others, including Heather’s good friend Kristi, who had been sitting near the bomber and was hit with shrapnel and hospitalized. She had spent the hours after the attack recuperating in bloody bandages on Heather’s couch. Heather knew they had to get the right structures in place before the rising tide of violence consumed them all.
Guests started pulling out their cellphones to report the shots. When they determined there was no widespread attack, they broke off into groups to investigate the sounds. As she wandered around the artificial pond behind the bungalow, Heather could hear Clarke shouting taha khuli for Samson, the friendly one-year-old border collie he had adopted as a puppy from the streets. Clarke didn’t go anywhere without him; he was the Green Zone’s beloved neighborhood dog. After a few minutes of wandering, Heather came out onto the empty street, where a dog was barking agitatedly, but it wasn’t Samson. When she turned around she saw Clarke a few yards away, bent over under a fluorescent streetlight, strangely concentrating on a pile of leaves. Then she realized; it was Samson.
Clarke was trying to scoop the dog up, but as he rose to stand he wobbled. “I feel dizzy.”
Horrified, Heather leaned in. “How is he?” she asked, knowing the answer.
“He’s dead. As soon as I picked him up I felt the heat and the blood,” he said weakly. He patted Samson’s stomach. “Here’s the entry wound.”
Party guests gathered behind them, silhouetted by the lone streetlight. “Oh my God.”
“Someone shot Samson?”
“Why?”
Heather knew how much Clarke loved that dog. “Oh, Clarke, I’m so sorry.” She laid a hand on his shoulder. She searched up and down the long, empty asphalt for a clue or a motive, but there were only the usual gray Jersey barriers lined with barbed wire. “There’s no reason for this. Why the hell would someone hurt an innocent dog?”
As the crowd thickened, paranoia set in. Was this a wanton act of cruelty, people wondered, or an orchestrated attack on Clarke’s boss, like a warning? Was this a veiled threat against the Americans, or a revenge killing? Had the gunman fled, or was he watching them right now, from the bushes or even standing among them? Heather overheard someone calling for security on their cellphone. The crowd huddled together for safety and a few guests fought back tears. Heather didn’t feel like crying, she just felt tired.
Then a voice broke through the din of the crowd. “Hey, man, it’s just a dog.” The accent was Iraqi. His words cut through the group.
Heather swiveled around to see who had said such a thing. It was her friend and translator, Firas. “It’s not just a dog.”
Glaring back at her, Firas walked over to Clarke. “I’m sorry, man,” he said, putting his hand on Clarke’s shoulder as he leaned over Samson. “But there’s all kinds of crazy shit going on here. I’ve got cousins who have died. There are worse things.”
Clarke looked up, embarrassed. “Yeah, I know. It’s okay.”
But Heather felt he was missing the point. “Don’t make an excuse for this. It’s just violence, an innocent death for no reason,” she continued, her voice rising. “What, whatever whim you have, you indulge it with your weapon and who cares about the consequences?” It was clear they were no longer just talking about the dog. In Heather’s mind, this was yet another example of a well-intentioned effort crushed by reckless violence.
Another Iraqi emerged from the group, one who also wanted to seize the moment to make a broader point. “I’m sorry, but people are getting killed all the time out there,” he said. “There’s a lot of pain. It’s a luxury that your loss is just a pet, and not a brother or sister.”
Clarke tried to placate the group. The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of several Humvees with troops, responding to the shots. Someone suggested burying Samson, and ran off to fetch an ATO mail-bag with which to contain him.
Guests began to wander back to the house, to get their belongings and leave. When Heather returned to the château, she saw Samson’s red leash hanging by the door. Maybe he was just a dog, but such a random act of cruelty against an innocent animal stung. Heather knew exactly how Clarke felt. He had poured his attentions and affections into the one thing that he could control. He thought he could make a difference, even if it was just to a dog. Now that promise was destroyed as well.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
ZIA RETURNED TO work for the Americans, but it was not the same.
By the late fall of 2004, the CPA felt like a distant memory. It had left behind an interim Iraqi government headed by Ayad Allawi, a doctor who had led efforts to overthrow Saddam for thirty years. He would run the government, officially, until elections the following January. But the country felt adrift. Kidnappings, abductions, and public assassinations occurred weekly. Suicide bombers struck every few days, explosions rumbling for miles, sending thick clouds of smoke into the air, filling up the morgues. The militias publicly refused to recognize Allawi’s government. Iraqi police hung around, but they were poorly trained and increasingly loyal to local militias such as Muqtada al-Sadr’s. The feeling around Baghdad was that no one was in charge, and uncertainty hung in the air as Iraqis waited to see who would fill the power vacuum before they aligned themselves publicly. Women, for the most part, stayed indoors unless accompanied by a male relative or husband.
Feeling shut down and embittered, Zia now socialized with no one but Keith. She drove each day to and from the Green Zone, despite the growing risks. Sometimes Baba drove her and sometimes she drove herself, but she always kept her hand close to the gun in her purse. Neither Nunu nor Baba challenged her about it; it would have been useless. Each morning as she walked out of her house to her car, she put on a false face of confidence for her sister even while she silently hoped she wasn’t saying goodbye for the last time. “What is destined to happen will happen,” she would say to Nunu, hoping to comfort them both.
Outside the Green Zone, she watched in horror as Islamists stood at the gates of schools and universities, and at checkpoints in neighborhoods, threatening terrified women to veil. Zia refused. She would prefer to die than live like a caged bird. All around her, women’s rights activists had been killed for speaking up for their rights, professors were murdered for supporting secular laws, and Iraqi lawyers, judges, and journalists were being assassinated. Soon enough, she felt sure, they would come for her as well.
AT THE END of one brisk winter’s day, a few days after she returned to working inside the Green Zone, Keith drove Zia to the edge of the zone, according to their new routine. Before them was a maze of concrete blast walls and heavily guarded security sites. Perched in a tower above were American and Iraqi snipers. The border between the Green Zone and downtown Baghdad was as fortified as if it separated two countries at war, which, in a way, it did. Since cellphones were banned near the checkpoint, she called Baba from the car to confirm he was waiting for her at their regular meeting spot, beyond the barbed wire, parked close to Zia’s exit. Keith quickly squeezed her hand goodbye and they exchanged intimate glances, the most public display of affection they could risk. She got out and crossed the 14th of July Bridge, named for the day the Iraqi army overthrew the British-installed king in 1958. As beautiful as the view of the city was beyond the sparkling waters of the Tigris, this passage felt to Zia like walking a plank.
Though she’d done this before, Zia could not stop her heart from pounding as she exited the checkpoint, stepping out onto the crumbling pavement of downtown Baghdad. The city throbbed before her; cars whizzing past, vendors crowding the sidewalks, groups of unemployed men gathered under the shade of a tree. Was ever
yone staring at her? Every face felt hostile. She checked the nearby rooftops for snipers, but saw none. With all the radicals crawling around the city, feeling empowered by Muqtada al-Sadr, fewer and fewer unveiled women could be seen. Zia wore a veil and dark glasses and a bullet-proof vest under her coat. She had had to leave her gun at home, because the Americans wouldn’t authorize her to be armed inside the Green Zone. She remembered the taxi driver from the goldsmith’s, shuddered, and hurried to her father’s car.
“Hi, Baba,” she said breathlessly, sliding into the passenger seat. He drove off immediately in silence. As they drove Zia repeatedly checked the side mirror, purely from force of habit. She wondered how many times she would have to make this trip before she’d be able to relax—if ever. Though nothing had happened so far, each time it gave her the same panicky desperation.
Today, however, not even a few blocks had passed before she noticed something that made her heart sink.
“Baba, make this turn,” she said quietly, hoping against hope.
He turned, and then turned again.
Both times, a man driving a blue Toyota turned and followed behind them. His license plate indicated that he was from Samarra, a city north of Baghdad, where attacks against Americans were common.
Minutes ticked by, but Baba drove calmly, steadily through the streets.
“How many in the car?” he asked.
Zia took a deep breath. “Just one.”
Without turning around, she sized up the man in the side mirror. He was in his early thirties, with a mustache and an open-neck shirt. He had no distinguishable features but a maniacal, focused look on his face. Zia’s entire body stiffened, thinking that at any minute he might shoot into their car.
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